Be All Here

Sky&OceanOakIsland2016

I sat on the edge of the steps leading down to the ocean from our beach house. Saying goodbye is always hard. A week of family, fun, rest, relaxing, walking, reading, drawing and knitting…hard to top that.

I drank in the gorgeous sky above the water, trying to notice and take in everything about it so I could take it back with me, remember it, paint it when I returned home. It is how I could transition from this lovely week back to my everyday life. Even though I’d been drawing and painting it all week, I felt I had only just begun to capture the force, the movement, the textures and colors of the ocean and its ever-changing sky.

Water&SkyOakIsland2016

My intent this week was to make marks. I have a tendency to become seized with a love for a particular medium and I’m compelled to use it as much as possible over a period of time. For this week it was oil pastel and watercolor. An exciting and whimsical combination. Yet when I got home, I wanted just watercolor for the first image above. Just paint to depict how the ocean’s waves mirrored the sky’s clouds. Just a brush to sweep and flood the sky and water with the colors that reflect off of each other.

Sun&WavesOakIsland2016

There are too many qualities in the sky and ocean that make it necessary to limit oneself to just a few of them for depicting in paint and crayon. Color. Texture. Movement. This week was less about shape or perspective. Impressions. Emotion. Joy. Freedom. That’s what I was after. For my sketchbooks, as well as for my life.

I’m back at home, filled with gratitude in my heart and with numerous drawings in my sketchbooks. It is as if each one was drawing out of me the weariness that had accumulated over the past months. Each mark, sketch, swoosh of color unleashing burdens, yet harnessing peace, drawing all the color and light into myself, ready for what life has in store for the rest of the summer.

*****

P.S. I’m always hopeful that you will find drawing to be as immensely poignant and helpful to you as it is to me. I am renewed in my desire to draw daily as a way to bring my full attention to the life I have. I need this. We all need this. So I’m planning future blog posts on this topic, to encourage you, inspire you to draw, take up your brush and dip into the ocean of your life to see the beauty that lies therein.

You might enjoy this little video I made from a beach trip a few years ago. Same house, family, and fun.

Artfully yours,

Jennifer

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