EDM 166 - Draw a Fish

After several medical tests earlier this week, I think I am about to be diagnosed with borderline high blood pressure. So goodbye to alcohol, salty snacks, ham and cheese sandwiches, and those extra 20 pounds. I will learn to love brown rice, bulgar, beans, and the varied species drawn here. I will swap fish for sausage (apparently it's better to die of mercury posioning than heart failure). Seriously, if I do everything the doctors tell me, I should live forever! And I'd also be perfect (and we all know how much fun perfect people are!) I wonder how many people can actually be the perfect patient - the one who only eats the right things, exercises the right way and never misses a workout, has no vices or weaknesses, practices perfect preventive hygiene. It seems to be an impossibly high standard to achieve. The whole thing has made me feel very self-indulgent and ashamed of myself for enjoying some of the finer things in life - like a medium rare steak and margarita. And I admit, I'm a little resentful of that. However, I'm hopeful that within a few months, I can again enjoy those occasional treats without guilt (or with only a little guilt).

These fish were drawn with my new dip pen and ink, a medium I've never used before but I think I like it. It takes a bit of practice to get a smooth line, but I like the effect. I colored them in with watercolors pencils, as this Robert Bateman sketchbook doesn't like water very much. The saying came from a T-shirt I saw.

EDM 239 - The gorilla that scared me

When I was about 4 years old, I went to the circus for the first time. The ringmaster wheeled out an enormous cage with a gorilla in it. The gorilla roared and beat it's chest and shook the bars of the cage. When the ringmaster turned his back on the cage to tell us all how fierce and dangerous this particular gorilla was, the gorilla shook the cage furiously and broke open the door. He bounded off the stage and into the stands, roaring and howling. Further and further he came, closer to where I was. I wanted to leave, tugging on the adults' hands, pleading to go. But they wouldn't move. Closer and closer the danger came. I burst into tears and shrieked. The child-eating monster came right in front of me, reached up its hands - and ripped its own head off!!

That's a cruel joke to play on a small child. I'm sure the man in the gorilla suit thought that by proving he wasn't a real gorilla, I would be comforted. But for many years, I was haunted by nightmares of gorillas pulling their heads off.

This is watercolor pencils in Aquabee journal.

EDM 23 - Draw your foot

Aah, summertime... and the livin' is easy.

At the beginning of summer, I bought myself some flipflops. Now I don't believe in paying a lot for these bits of plastic foam that by the end of the summer will be worn flat and misshapen. Most of the time you can't wear them the next summer because they and your feet are no longer compatible and they feel hard and ugly. So I buy a couple of cheap pairs - this year turquoise and pink - and they match most of my outfits. At Michael's they sell strips of adhesive that have sparkly beads or sequins on them in just the right shape and length to glue onto plain old flipflops. And now my $3.99 shoes look like a million bucks!
Because what's summer without a little bling on your shoes? Life's too short to wear ugly shoes.
I wore these to Expo Latino on Sunday. I sat in the shade and watched the salsa dancers, and the mariachi bands, ate tamales, and freshly made corn tacos, drank an icy cold Corona, and yes, I admit, I danced in my chair. Later that evening, I wrote in my journal that this was a perfect day. And it was, but it occurred to me that I had written that ver same phrase about a lot of days this summer. Maybe I'm easy to please, or not very discerning, but I'm pretty pleased about that. Yep, life is good.

The Garden's Second Wind

The first two weeks of August were cold and grey and rainy. It was so gloomy that my solar-powered fiber-optic glow light didn't even come on at night. The tomatos were shivering and sulkily refused to ripen.
But the last two weeks have been gorgeous and hot and sunny. The tomatos are feeling much better, and the roses and nasturtiums have found a new reason to bloom again.
The symbolic meaning of this pink rose is simply "happiness". What could be more perfect?
And the meaning of nasturtiums is "victory in battle and conquest" which seems odd for such a short-lived blossom.
This post has taken me 45 minutes to do, mostly because I can't figure out how to first of all add a second picture, and secondly, how to arrange the pictures. And preview looks nothing like the real post. Aaargh! (Technology can sure blow away all the serentity you get from both art and nature, can't it?) So Iwill leave you with a poem, and go and do some yoga to rebalance my chi.
Namaste
Kind hearts are the garden,
kind thoughts are the root,
kind words are the blossoms,
kind deeds are the fruit
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