Doodles 🖼️

It’s been a hot minute since I shared some doodles, so I felt like a post would be in order.

I’m not above using erasers or cover-up tape to make my drawings better if the first try goes awry. 😉

For my birthday last year, my awesome sister got me a doodle journal. I’ve had lots of writing journals over the years, but never one specifically to encourage my development as a visual artist.

Each page has a prompt. They range from very broad and easy to interpret to real headscratchers that make me amp my creativity and test my sketching abilities, like the day it suggested drawing the final scene from a movie (gulp!).

I spend just ten to thirty minutes on each drawing (the shortest sketch was my Easter tulips), often in-between grading and making a snack or at the end of the day when I’m wide awake but too mentally tired to dig into a draft in-progress.

I find I care much less about whether the sketches are realistic enough to satisfy my inner censors and much more about the fun of using the art supplies.

The slowdown is very rejuvenating on my nervous system—almost like swimming, I can feel the languid time opening up. I was thinking about that a lot this week, as I paged through what I’ve doodled so far and treated myself to a box of soft oil pastels, which are new to me.

This has also given me a chance to practice doodling people, one of my weakest skills. I gave it a whirl on a doodle of a Jane Austen book cover as well as my version of The Bard.

I used a variety of colored pens, colored pencils, gel ink, whatever was handy on these sketches.

Sometimes, I accompanied the sketch with a short sentence or two reflection, almost like a journal, either in answer to the prompt or just a thought on my mind, such as the day it was 18 degrees outside.

Enjoy this medley of doodles from my sketchbook, and may you continue to find enjoyment and inspiration in your own writing and artistic journeys! Create on. 🥳

Thanks for taking a look at these sketches and for all of your support of my books and teaching. Signed copies of my latest poetry book, Does It Look Like Her? , available at my Etsy store: clickety-click. Also, available (unsigned) through Amazon: clickety-click. 📔

This prompt asked doodlers to draw a self-portrait of themselves from another era. I drew myself in an 1860s tintype. My 1860s self is not as smiley. 😁

Copies for Signing Have Arrived! 🥳

Great news: my copies for signing have arrived. If you’d like a signed copy, here’s the link to my Etsy shop:

Does It Look Like Her: Signed Poetry Book— Clickety Click!

Copies [unsigned] are also still available through Amazon: Book Clickety Click!

I also had a ridiculous amount of fun creating this self-portrait with my book. 😁

Thanks for all of your support, and here’s to books and poetry! 📔

Does It Look Like Her? Book Birthday! 🎂

It’s book-birthday time! 😊So excited to release my little-book-that-could out into the world of readers. It’s available now at Amazon: clickety-click. 🥹📚

Photo: Free Stock at Unsplash.com, courtesy of Laura Adai

For anyone who’d like a signed copy, I have some books en route: I’ll post that link to my Etsy when I have copies in hand, likely later this week or early next, so sayeth the postal estimate. 😉  

If you’re on Goodreads, please consider adding my book as a want-to-read and/or leaving some stars and a short review at Goodreads or Amazon—reviews make a huge difference in championing a book and are much appreciated. 💗

 A poem from the collection to celebrate book-launch day🎊 :

Alix Encourages a Discouraged Student Who Stays After Class at the Art League 

it’s okay

to be tired

of it all and

yet to keep

showing up

in fact, what

they don’t

tell you is

we all do,

it’s how we get

to a breakthrough

Photo: Free Stock at Unsplash.com, courtesy of Ashe Walker

Reach 🤩

Reach

Sketch in colored pencils & black felt-tip pen.

I haven’t shared a doodle in a while, so I figured it was about time to break out my sketchbook and play a bit.  

I was thinking yesterday, too, about swing-arm lamps. The kind architects often have on their desks, but sometimes also students and offices. I didn’t know that they were referred to as “swing-arm” lamps until a quick search-engine search delivered that little golden nugget into my life, which I now share with you. 😉

Speaking of innovation and knowledge, I read a book two or three years ago about the Bauhaus, a German school of design, arts (including theater, sculpture, pottery, stained glass, wooden toys, and poster design), and architecture in 1919-the early 1930s. Fine arts and crafts and some very sharp-looking designs were created by young students and their professors which continue to inspire designers of furniture and architecture. They made innumerable creations in their carpentry and metal-working workshops, from chairs and swivel lamps and photography and arts posters for theater performances given at the school to coffee-and-tea sets and glassworks and weaving and you name it. If the design was geometric, spare, innovative, and functional during that time period, it was probably cooked up and refined at the Bauhaus.  

I’ve never owned a swing-arm lamp, nor a gooseneck lamp (which I think of as their fanciful second cousin), but I’ve often admired both. There’s something very appealing about the way they’re designed—form and function working hand-in-glove. They don’t just sit there stationary, but offer instant flexibility for the user. Wherever the light is needed, le voilà! Here we go; instant warm spotlight. Then, economically pushed back when not in use—until the next time.

Continued growth as a writer often requires a reaching process that combines a hearty blending of the initial sizzle of the imagination intermingled with the stability and support of consistent application, mixing the heat of creating with the cooler temperatures of refining and editing the vision into new forms for sharing.

This end-of-year time gets all of our gears turning with goals we’ve finished and those we haven’t and those we’d like to dream up for next year. Without putting pressure on ourselves (because nobody needs more of that!), it’s a good season for this kind of if-you-can-imagine-it-you-can-make-it-happen reflection.

It’s a good time for downshifting, daydreaming, and putting some plans into action for the coming months.  I have the kind of mind that needs no encouragement to cook up a project or ten and imagine the endless permutations and exciting possibilities. I also have the kind of mind (and enough experience as a writer and creative) to know it takes time, organization, trial-and-error patience, and planning to see a project to its conclusion so that it’s ready to share. I try to give my imagination free reign for a while, and then I begin to organize that wide expanse into a series of steps (accounting for setbacks and a learning curve along the way).

I’m cooking up some fun projects for 2024 that I can’t wait to share. At the moment, one project in particular is very new, wobbly, interesting ground for me, stretching what I already know with the many, many things I don’t. It includes a-million-and-one steps that I’m learning (and reading about and trial-and-erroring and trying-again-and-againing).  Stay tuned!

I am delighted to share that I have three online classes that I hope will inspire fellow creative writers and artists to invest in their own dreams and goals and talents as well as to try new creative goals that will inspire reaching into new territory as well.

If you have a friend you haven’t purchased a gift for yet or would like to invest in your own artistic process, I’d love to work with you and a friend! Mark your calendars. All three courses accepting sign-ups now 😊:

*In Tune: Writing about Music in Fiction (starting Friday, February 2, 2024; 4-week class; NEW!):

https://wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/MelanieFaith_Music.php

*An Inside Look at Launching as a Freelance Editor (one-afternoon webinar; 1-2 pm ET; Friday, April 12, 2024)

https://wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/MelanieFaith_FreelanceEditorWebinar.php

*Art Making for Authors (starting Friday, August 2, 2024; 4-week class; NEW!)

https://wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/MelanieFaith_ArtMaking.php

I also have craft books aplenty that make excellent gifts, such as: From Promising to Published:

Here’s to reaching into our imaginations and cooking up the projects that will interest and sustain our creative growth both now and throughout 2024!

Write on!

In Tune: Writing about Music in Fiction! 🎶

I’m crafting some exciting new projects for 2024, including a delightful 4-week online writing class at WOW! for February.

Introducing: IN TUNE: Writing About Music in Fiction!

If you’re looking to treat yourself to some writing motivation or looking for the perfect holiday or birthday gift for the writer in your life, look no further! This class will rock! 🤩🎸🥁

Course description:

“Fiction is filled with references to music: from high-school dances and music-school students, singers, music teachers and lessons, garage bands and musical instruments to records, rock concerts and folk/indie festivals and coffee-house performances, opera and musical-theatre performances, and so much more. Many of us spend our happiest hours with music in the forefront or background of our lives as soundtrack. There’s a type of music-inspired prose for as many musical genres as you enjoy.

Whether you’re writing a scene or story about a music practice, a novel with a musician or music fan as a protagonist, or just want to know more about how musical fiction works and/or add musical references, vivid characterizations of vocal performance, or music-centered scenes or references to your writing, this course will explore how music culture, sound, setting, POV, and more are portrayed within fiction to enhance and inspire your own rhythmic, compelling prose. Knowing how to read musical notes isn’t required for this class—just the desire and sincere appreciation for both music and literature and to add another tool to your literary toolkit.

Students will choose one novel with a musical plot to read independently, and the instructor will provide excerpts from music novels as well as handouts and a weekly writing assignment to get the muse melodically flowing! Join us for this new course that’s sure to strike a chord.”

To the great joy of writing and music! Sign-ups open now! Clickety-click: IN TUNE: Writing About Music in Fiction!

Give Yourself a Break 🍂

Here's the nudge you've been waiting on. Go ahead. Give yourself a little break today.

My daily and weekly to-do lists run off the page; I'm sure most of yours do, too. I so seldom decide to clear some time in my afternoon for a slowdown, but I knew when I woke this morning that it was just what I needed to rejuvenate my artistic well.

For an hour or two, I'll continue to play with my photos and maybe start some poetry or prose, too. And perhaps read or listen to music.

Even if you can only squeeze in twenty minutes and you schedule it in for tomorrow or a weekday or an evening after work or at 4 am before work, give yourself the gift of a pause to daydream, create, nap, listen to music, reflect, take a walk, take up space.

You, too, deserve an unexpected respite. 🥳 #artistslife #artistslifeforme #createeveryday #rejuvenate

New Doodles and Reflections 🎉

I felt like doodling some teapots yesterday, and then I sat down and wrote a few reflections that fell out of my head in essay form on the theme. Just fun to share. 🌞

For a few years, I bought a lot of tea kettles. I wasn’t starting a collection; I was gifting them.

If you had invited me to your wedding or to your housewarming party or to a similar occasion in that stretch of time you likely received one of these beauties wrapped in a roll of polka-dot or confetti-print paper. I bought them one at a time, brand new, and with the individual receiver(s) in mind. They were, in that way, personalized.

Sometimes, I picked enamel ones with a spate of blue, green, or red geometric designs or tiny, hearty yellow flowers across the belly; other times, I picked a plain kettle of shiny russet or a penny color; or a glass or porcelain teapot. It depended on the store’s stock and sometimes on my mood or the color combos that seemed to match the friend or cousin or coworker I was shopping for. Some of the kettles came in printed cardboard boxes and some did not. Regardless, I hand-selected and filled-in a personalized message for each kettle.

I always added a box or two of the sachets filled with pocket-square sized, often-flavored tea (orange pekoe, black tea, green tea with mint, English breakfast tea, lemon or another fruity flavor with fun, often alliterative product names) to go along with the gift so that it was immediately useful, immediately (I hoped) a part of the recipient’s daily life.

In my enthusiasm to gift, I could have planned better. Thinking back on it now, I guess I could have/should have asked if they even liked tea. I could have just gone with something on a registry, to ensure they didn’t get doubles and have to return it. I didn’t know if any of my recipients already had kettles. I loved tea, still do, and what I wanted to gift most was what I loved most: the ritual of starting with something basic and elemental and fortifying—water that would also become some steam, herbs—and within just a small amount of time (usually less than 5 minutes) a whole experience: a break, or a companion for the morning, or afternoon, or evening when sleep was futile, was created. Over and over, this comforting surety of rest and fortification.

Most tea is made now (mine included) in a small microwave that gives a tiny chirrup of beeps and then stops. Sometimes, I wait with my eager spoon a few feet from the muted window as my mug spins and spins inside the machine, and sometimes I use that time to fish through my many boxes to find the flavor of the day. It never gets old—selecting the flavor.

I don’t have a kettle at the moment and haven’t gifted anybody one in years, but I still love everything about these simple beauties: their hollowness and their heft; their handle like a purse a great aunt handmade for me when I was a kid that lifts up or can be tucked back, out of sight when not in use; the elephant-trunk curve of the little spout; the dainty lid with its knob that makes an easy lift-and-remove or fit-into-the-groove possible.  They do not require an app to operate; they run on the thought to use them, time, and patience.

Those minutes waiting for the water to bubble are a handbrake—Slow it down, down, and down again. The additional moments of the sachet simmering fragrance also speaks a similar language—Don’t leap ten steps ahead; be here. 

One day soon, I may likely find the perfect one to gift myself. But even if that time is a ways off, there is the ritual of the cup, the water turned to curlicue steam, the flavor. There is the everyday transformation to stillness and reflection: much like words, available for combination, creation, consumption, and recreation. A small part of the day, but one that betters in its own steadfastness, in its own pleasing way. 

Purple gel pen, colored pencils.

Some kettle practice. 😉

My first kettle that somehow ended up in proportions looking rather like a genie lamp! 🤣

Strawberry Doodle and Poem

Trying something new today--a poem I wrote to coordinate with this doodle I made and then colored in this week. 🎉

“Strawberry”

Remember

how Grandma’s lawn

although about an acre

expanded, endless

in bare feet, the orange

tiger lilies that grew almost

as tall as you

wild in a tangle

of July sun

in the far corner

of the garden?

You can return

anytime you like

in your mind’s eye,

even more than

twenty years after

the land, the house

was sold

when you were already

an adult

you keep this

summer, this sweet

strawberry taste on your tongue

as if seven again. Recall

all the days and days

awaiting then

into a new millennium, faraway

feeling as the spangled cosmos.

New Notebook, New Season, New Doodle📝

Starting a new notebook—this little 5 x 7 beauty was a whole $1.25—is always a good feeling for me. Potentiality on each page. I’ve been experimenting with different types and sizes of paper for my doodles.

Last night, right before sleep, I broke out my new notebook, my 0.7 mm lead pencil, and my colored pencils and made an outlined sketch of a photographer. It was a peaceful, simmering hour as I drew a preliminary/reference sketch on scrap paper, opened the second page of the notebook (I often skip the first, as it sits a bit askew in the binding), and then started this drawing.

Filling in the figure was a particularly pleasant part of the process as well—colored pencils force a kind of quiet contemplation and over-and-over-and-over patience that slows my thinking and flashes me back to childhood hours quietly coloring or writing.

It’s probably not surprising that I would choose to draw a photographer in motion. One of my other happy places is photography (a few years ago, I wrote a book that combined my writing with my photography practice and tips, Photography for Writers).

Much like when writing, when I’m behind the lens, the daily drops away. I like the challenge of making what I see and how I see it into a composition. I like that it’s not an easy process nor a process I can take for granted or even a process that I fully steer, but that there are many do-overs available—as many as I have time and inclination to make.

Mostly, photography is a place of rare transcendence where the world slows and I make my thinking and my seeing into something at once me and not me. It’s a good space.

This is my first go-’round with sketching what I’m calling a silhouette portrait. Kindly ignore the erased shoulder and erased original feet, which I only realized after pondering them were pointing in the wrong direction from her body’s stance along with the smudge at the bottom of the page by the date. We’ll just call those markers of authenticity.😁

I have to say, though: I was a little surprised that one or two elements of this drawing felt to me like what it feels when I’m behind my camera: a liminal in-between space that just is what it is and unfolds as it should (if, frequently, not as I would have originally imagined).

Or maybe this is just my fancy-pants way of saying I couldn’t believe it actually sort of resembles a human and not a stick figure. 😆

The little notebook says “Plan” on the cover, but as we know, there are many things we simply cannot plan. Mostly, we can move, slowly, in a slightly new direction and see what happens, and then repeat the process as the happening unfolds. Drawings, photographs, writing, ourselves—all unfolding.

Art & Interview in Bait/Switch 🥳

A true delight to get to participate in Bait/Switch, an innovative, inspiring “call and response art publication” where creatives are given a piece of art as a prompt to then create a new piece of art.

I had the best time creating my cyanotype, “On the Move,” and had a blast talking art, letter-writing, and more with multitalented editor and executive director Lu Valena. Check out the latest/fall 2022 issue for the work of wonderful creatives here: clickety.

Extra props and a very special shout-out to powerhouse of art and dear friend Christine Tierney. Many thanks for your encouragement to submit to Bait/Switch and for the marvelous poetry and life conversations. Such a joy to be publication twins with you, and kudos on your group show! 🥳Check out Christine’s gorgeous collage art and interview in the issue as well as her fabulous poetry book, chicken+lowercase=fleur .

To continued artistic inspiration!