slowly but surely . . .

Lately my sketching seems to get slower and slower. Not the initial sketch — I drew the basic lines above rather quickly during our Sunday morning Bible study class. But I didn’t get around to adding watercolor until early this morning. (I think it was around 4:00 am — I couldn’t sleep so I gave the wee cats a treat and then painted a bit.)

Not sure what type of paper this is in the middle of my hand bound sketchbook; maybe Stonehenge? It seems to show a lot more texture in my paint mixes (this is mostly burnt sienna and ultramarine). And my Kaweco Liliput fountain pens won’t write smoothly on it at all! This bit was drawn with a “Frankenpen”: a Hero M-86 bent nib in a Noodler’s Creeper body (Cathy Johnson’s instructions can be found HERE).

And here’s my main distraction that pulls me away from my sketchbook: my main “job” at the moment is to tame these two donkeys. Tater and Tot came from a farm (near Austin, I think) where the old man who owned them had died and a donkey rescue group re-homed them with us. They come to us for carrots and cucumbers but so far they haven’t allowed us to touch much more than their faces. We need to get them halter-trained before the vet will come out for a check-up.

So I’m spending time each day just sitting in the east pasture, allowing them to get used to me (As I just typed the last few sentences, Tater came right up to me, curious about what I’m doing — or hoping for another carrot?). Today we need to do something about the stinging nettles in the pasture — it seems to be irritating the jennies’ legs a lot. Bill unknowingly caused it to spread by his constant mowing before we adopted them.

Another “distraction”: we signed a contract on selling our cabin so we’ve been moving the rest of our stuff to the farm. For anyone curious, the new listing can be seen HERE. After the previous 6-month listing getting us nowhere, with this agent it sold in only 16 days!