Draw What You Live

SoMuchtoLove2

For me, drawing my life is a direct link to loving my life. Take the above for example. I did not set about it with any thought that I needed to love my life more, or that I was going to find my heart pulled in the direction of my life, just as it is now, upon completing the drawing. I simply thought, “I want to make a drawing of the new table centerpiece”, having changed it from the winter one a few days ago.

I began. I arbitrarily chose the front and center beaker (of the Brambly Hedge tea set my mom gave me) to start following the contours, as I love to do. From there, the contours led me around to the knitted bunny I made a couple of years ago, to the little bird I received from a  friend when I was in the hospital last year, to the teapot, the tea cloth, the wooden stand my mother-in-law gave me, to the desert rose salt and pepper shakers and flower tea bag holder, to the tea light holders, the tea strainer, the crocheted-by-my grandmother cloth underneath. When I looked up after this, I realized it was not centered well at all. Lots of gaping space at the top. This happens a lot to me. Life has a way of being off center, a bit off kilter, much of the time.

So I did as I always do and set about to fill in that space. A line leading from the top of the teapot climbed up the wall where the molding to the opening of our kitchen begins. I followed contours of things on the right of this molding, where my painting of a girl knitting hangs on the wall, a fruit stand and lamp sit on an empty wine rack. (Must do something about that!)

As I looked farther out from the dining room, contours of the kitchen counter, the piano further beyond in Genevieve’s Workshop, the star bunting, the Magic Cake Ruffle Shawl hanging on my dress form named Genevieve also.

When I sat back and looked at it all, I breathed in…look at all that! So much I love contained in one little sketch. All of it radiating out from the table where my family sits and eats meals and shares their day and does homework and bills, where friends eat with us, and where we listen to Garrison Keiller on Saturday nights while we have dinner.

If you want to love the life you already have, to really see it for the beauty that is surely there, to wipe the dust off of everyday living (Picasso reference), then draw something in your life. Get lost in the contours of it. Then sit back and look at what your hand highlighted on the page.  You might be surprised at what you see.

**If you want any encouragement and motivation for Drawing Your Life, click here, to access 12 Mini Lessons. They are getting a ton of traffic these days from hither and yon. That is thrilling. Let’s Love the Life we Live, one drawing at a time!

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