Chronicling your life in drawn images, is a bit like waterskiing.  You’re flying by at a blistering pace in life, and you let go of the handlebars, dropping into the waters to swim around a bit, pick up pen & paper to draw. When you’re finished, you resume skiing, perhaps a bit less furiously, with more direction, and maybe even a bit more energy.

It might also be thought of as parachuting down into some random moment in your life,  dropping in to draw what you see around you, before your parachute takes off again.  The former may be a better way to picture what it’s like to sit down, pen & paper (or stylus & iPad), to slow the pace enough to actually DRAW.  But whichever it is, to sit and draw in the moment of something happening means that I get to engage with the moment in a way I would not have otherwise.  It means I get to preserve that moment, to chronicle and celebrate it, no matter how exciting or mundane.

I have to remind myself of this.  I have to “work” at slowing down, instead of flying through my life and all the various places I go and all the things I feel I “must” do.  Dropping down into one of the moments by drawing it, allows me to SLOW DOWN the rat race, to be present in that moment, to relish it, and remember.

So much of life is fleeting. Nine year old will soon be ten, senior in high school will soon go off to college, unforeseen events can change even the smallest aspects of the landscape of our lives. Dropping down to draw makes me think about what’s important in the scene before me, what’s necessary to tell the “story” of that moment.

Do I ever “come on in and set a spell?” to use a colloquial phrase from my mountain upbringing.  Do I ever get to just sit and really experience where I am?  Drawing does this in me.

Won’t you “come on in and set a spell” with me?

**The above drawings were made with good ‘ole paper and fine liner pens. I added a splash of watercolor to these “dropping in” drawings of moments I want to remember with my daughters…just sitting around the little table in our kitchen.

***My next posts will be more on the wonders and benefits of drawing…stay tuned. Not that I haven’t already expounded so much verbage on the subject!  Here, here, and here are just a few posts you can read on the subject….if you want to!