You Never Know What Life Brings

A long time ago I learned that every decision you make will affect the rest of your life. Some decisions are difficult, some are easy. Some bring you trouble, some bring you success, and apparently some bring you family you never knew you had.

I don't know what made me decide within the past couple of years to try to draw. My high-school art teacher told me I had no talent for it, so I stopped even trying more than 55 years ago.  A funny thing happens as you age. You no longer care how good you are at something, or what others think of your efforts to do things you enjoy. For instance, I sing when I'm among other seniors. I doubt that I can carry a tune, but seniors don't make fun of each other the way kids do. I'll get up in front of them and talk too. I don't know if I make any sense when I do that as I don't write out a speech first, but for some reason it doesn't make me nervous anymore. And so, now I also draw and post the results on social media for all to see. I did that all through the month of October for Inktober. The rules said to draw something every day in ink and post it online no matter how it turned out.  I got lots of support, in most cases, and it gave me confidence to continue.

This is where the decision to take part had an effect. Someone I didn't even know liked my drawings enough to reach out and ask me if I would draw their dog. I basically said it would depend on the photograph. After a week or so she sent me a few photos to choose from. Most of them had the dog in the distance, and I could have gotten off easily doing one of them, but I wanted her to be able to recognize her pooch. So, I chose a picture that was more of a close up, but it was really hard for me to see certain key parts of it, like the eyes, and the ears. I ran it through my photo editor a few times until I thought I had some idea of how to attack it. Then I told her I'd give it a try.

She had offered to pay me, so this would have been my first commissioned work. But I didn't know how to charge for that. I have sold photographs and paintings in the past, but I figured a commission is likely worth more, since you are trying to make someone else happy, instead of them just finding something you have already done that they would like to take home. I sent out feelers to people who have done commissions and got a lot of advise.  A common theme seemed to be that I should charge by the hour a fee of  at least minimum wage, for however long it would take me to draw the subject and then add on the cost of my supplies. They also insisted that I should get half before I even began. Well, I had no idea how long it would take, and so I didn't know how much half would be either. Worse than that, since I'm new at this, I wasn't even sure I could produce a dog that would be recognizable to the owner.

Coming up with a price and taking anything up front was causing me to stall. I wasn't comfortable with that at all. I asked questions while I was thinking about it. I asked what kind of dog it was as it looked like it might be a poodle cross of some kind. It had the curly hair, but didn't have as pointy a snout as I'd expect a poodle to have. It turned out to be a purebred Parti Poodle. I'd never heard of those before, but it at least gave me something to look up online if I needed to clarify the shape of things. I asked how big she wanted the drawing and she left that up to me, as long as it was at least 5 x 7. I asked which of my Inktober drawings had caught her eye enough to contact me for this job. There were, after all, various styles done with all different kinds of pens. She just said she like my drawings. I decided ballpoint pen would be the best choice, for this particular dog. I told her I had to get some better paper as I didn't want to just do it in my sketchbook. That was really just another stall tactic.  I went off to look for some hot press watercolour paper and had decided I would draw the dog as an 8 x 10 since I knew how to price a photo at that size, so I at least had a base number to work from.  I found a pack of mixed media boards that said they were good for crisp smooth lines. I'd never worked on such a surface before, and they were 9 x 12 but I bought them anyway.  She seemed happy with my size choice.

That's when I made a whole new decision. I had been enjoying the whole process of drawing everyday until someone mentioned a possible payment. As we had not discussed that further and I really didn't want to bring it up again, I decided I would just do the job for the fun and experience and accept whatever I was offered upon delivery. I could have just mailed it, but I wanted to see her face when she saw the drawing as I hoped to be able to tell if she was happy with it or not. We arranged to meet.

When she arrived she was not alone. She had a sister with her.  As I mentioned previously, I had never met this lady before.  I did know that we were related in some way though but I didn't know she had a sister. Automatically, I got another relative!  It seems that while they also knew we were related, they didn't know exactly how. Once I verified who their father was I was able to explain that my uncle was their grandfather, and while we had all met this man at some point in our childhood, none of us ever knew him well. We had a lovely visit, and I do hope to see more of them in the future.

I believe the drawing was somewhat recognizable, and accepted by the new owner. My decisions all worked out in the end. I was rewarded with a bag of expensive goodies, I earned valuable experience, and scored a couple of new cousins.  Not bad for having a bit of fun and learning a lot in the process and all because I made the decision to start drawing again after so many years.

A Gift From the Squirrels

Last spring while I was planting my garden I discovered a good looking little plant growing in the grass near the garage. I had no idea what it was but decided to keep my eye on it for a while. When I was watering one of my flower pots a week or so later, I saw another of these interesting plants  It didn't belong in my flower pot, so I dug it out. That's when I discovered a peanut at it's base, so I decided to move it to the edge of the vegetable garden.  One of my neighbours must have been feeding the squirrels peanuts, and the squirrels had apparently planted a couple of peanuts for me. I immediately moved the one from the grass into the garden with the other one.  One of these plants ended up under the canopy of leaves created by the zucchini and tomatoes, but it survived, even if it didn't grow as well as it's neighbour.

It was a long hot, dry summer, but I watered the plants everyday when I watered the rest of the garden, though apparently peanuts don't require a lot of water compared to other nuts.

Peanut plants produce small yellow flowers close to the ground. The flowers send spikes into the ground and the peanuts grow on those. I don't know of anything else that grows in this manner, but if you do, I'd be happy to hear about it.

I looked up when to harvest the peanuts, and it said to wait until the leaves on the plants turned yellow. Well, we had snow before that happened so once that melted away I decided to dig up the plants and see if there were actually any new peanuts in the ground.

Each plant had several new peanuts, though definitely not the 40 my research says they might produce. I shook the dirt off the roots and put the plants in the basement to dry.  After a couple of weeks I removed the peanuts from the roots and put them in a single layer to dry some more. 

I may eat them raw or roast them. I might even replant them next spring. I am thankful to the squirrels for supplying me with these little treats.  I never would have learned so much about peanuts without their help.

Inktober

In 2009 a guy named Jake Parker created a challenge for himself to draw something in ink everyday for the entire month of October. He called it Inktober and hoped that it would improve his drawing skills and instill a more positive habit of drawing on a regular basis.  Inktober has since spread throughout the world with thousands of people of all skill levels taking part.  This year I was one of them.  I even enrolled in Jake's course through Sktchy to learn how to handle the pens better.

I've just finished taking part in my first Inktober. It's been quite the experience.  Until recently you would have heard me say, "I can't draw."  Now, though I know I still have a lot to learn, I have gained the confidence to go ahead and at least attempt to draw just about anything.  For the month of October, I pledged to draw something in ink every day, and to post it online, good or bad. Believe me when I tell you there were some really bad ones. I used all sorts of different pens and drew in all kinds of different styles, and not only gained confidence along the way, I also gained a good many Instagram followers from the art community and learned some valuable lessons.

I learned that certain pens don't work well for certain subjects. Though I seem to have accumulated a good number of different types of pens over the past year or two, I have discovered that the plain old ballpoint pen is my best friend. I am totally amazed at what I can accomplish with that one simple tool.
 



 I also learned that though this was supposed to be an exercise in drawing with ink, I frequently reverted to colour rather than the laborious job of shading with pen. Also, I felt that in many cases, the picture would only satisfy me if it was in colour. People used to ask me what I liked to photograph, and though I know they really wanted to know if I liked landscapes, people or extreme closeups, etc, my standard answer was "colour"  It was always the beautiful colours that caused me to point the camera in any particular direction. Well, apparently the same goes for my art. I just need to add colour or in many cases I just don't find the drawing interesting, or finished. In fact, I find colour helps hide things that I might otherwise consider to be flaws.  I learned that trick while urban sketching last year.

I discovered that I can draw a somewhat recognizable portrait better than just about anything. How that happens is beyond me, but it works well in both pencil and ballpoint pen.

I don't do too badly with food either, though that requires colour and comes off more as an illustration.

A lady I have never met liked something I did so much she actually asked me if I'd draw her dog. I told her that I will attempt that if she comes up with a decent photo I can work from. (This one belongs to my neighbour). I would never have even considered such a thing a year ago!  Friends are commenting on how far I've come in such a short period of time. I can't wait to see where it all leads me.