. . . except that I found no time to actually sketch. We traveled to Arkansas to help a dear friend (actually we adopted her as our sister) move her parents, both dealing with dementia, to Kansas. And that was quite an adventure!
An example of what we walked into: the day before the movers were scheduled to arrive, our friend's dad yelled at her, saying he told her to pack up the kitchen stuff --- every plate she put into a box, her mother took out and placed back in the cupboard, telling her to stop or she'd slap her.
But we eventually got things packed up, with the help of a very gracious team of movers, and helped them get settled in their new house in Kansas. Then a quick trip over to Wichita to see my mom and then visit my dad & step-mom. We even got to spend time with our dearest friends from El Dorado and Bill visited several old work buddies --- we squeezed quite a lot into one day.
All I got sketched was the first pages of my new journal, showing the supplies I packed in my bag. But I took photos to draw in the book now that we are again home, to document the trip. It is a very long drive, made longer when an 18-wheeler crashed with a cement truck north of Dallas, closing a main freeway right as we were coming up to it.
40-mile-an-hour winds literally blew us home as well, complicating the load in the back of the truck, a small industrial metal lathe that was given to Bill. And 7 petrified wood "rocks" that I kept from Arkansas for a new rock garden I'm putting in. Of course, they are what Bill said was tipping our weight over the maximum allowed in his truck!
So glad y'all are home safe. Sounds like an interesting trip!?! Good that you squeezed in visits with family and friends. Your first pages look great! Now you can take a breath, relax and draw from your photos. Oh, and it is always our stuff that weighs too much or takes up too much room! LOL!
ReplyDelete"Interesting" pretty well describes it! Dementia is actually very sad but it helps those of us who remember them as they were before to keep our sense of humor at all times.
ReplyDeleteI actually thought I was packing light for sketching, but then didn't use any of it.
Wow...I'll bet you are GLAD you're home! and a sense of humor is mandatory, isn't it!?
ReplyDeleteSO VERY GLAD to be home! At times it was a choice between laughing, crying, or screaming and madly running away --- I'm glad we all chose to laugh.
ReplyDeleteWhat a pretty sketchbook! And what an adventure! I've experienced that gamut of emotions with eldercare and know just what you mean. I'm glad you got your friend's parents settled and were able to catch up with other friends and family.
ReplyDeleteThe Whiskey Painters palette is a nice little palette. I have one too. I took a small kit like yours on a trip we recently took with our church group. But we were so tightly scheduled and so exhausted by the end of each day that I didn't sketch a thing either. I was so disappointed in myself--that awful comparison gremlin liked to remind me that so many of my favorite artist bloggers sketch their vacations, so why couldn't I? Sketching must not be as important to me as I thought. Sketching from photos is cheating. Blah, blah, blah. But I took pictures anyway and am sketching from them now that we're back home--and enjoying it too! Thanks for sharing that things don't always work out the way you'd hoped either.
I can get quite rebellious when anyone tries to inflict their rules on what I personally do in my own sketchbook journal. As the really great artists of the past did, we use what ever tools we have at our disposal to achieve the results we want. Cameras included. (Didn't artists of the past use something called a camera obscura?)
ReplyDeleteI like to document events in our day-to-day life in my books, which are really illustrated diaries --- years later, I can look at the sketch and recall minute details of that whole experience, much more so than simply looking at a photo because my thoughts were engaged as I drew. That has real personal value!
I've never been good at rebellion, but I'm learning. ;-)
DeleteGlad you survived! Humankind thanks you for helping a friend in need, too. As for packing your sketch gear, I do the same while realizing there is always the chance I cannot get to it on a trip. At least I'm ready. I do the same with my guitar when I visit son and daughter in law (who both play music, too). Sometimes we get to it, sometimes not. But I'm ready.
ReplyDeleteJe suis prest!
Delete(Fraser clan motto: I am ready)