New coffee rings and trees

Mice, birds, books and monkeying around with pens

A hearty welcome to all new subscribers and thank you!! I've been playing with my coffee lately realizing either I dribble when I pour it or the pour spout on my carafe isn't compatible with smoothly dispensing coffee. Or both. No matter. I'm good at wiping up spills. Lately, see my last newsletter, I've been playing with the idea of coffee rings as portals. Here's the playing this week:

For my new subscribers: I draw most mornings during breakfast though I primarily share my pages on Friday. Here's an attempt at a selfie showing my corner of the breakfast table with my 3 x 5 inch sized sketchbooks, small paint sets, inks, fountain pens, coffee cup and the essential lap dachshund.

Besides working in bound sketchbooks I also do my morning drawings on small boards - these boards are smaller than my sketchbook. Here's another coffee ring drawing on board that I worked on over several mornings.

The progress this week for my ongoing tree drawing project was a trip one afternoon to the Aurora Gallery to talk about getting some of them framed. We also discussed the upcoming holiday exhibit at the Aurora Gallery and what art I'll have in the exhibit. The long wood strips you see on the left in this photo are the frame colors being considered with the tiny 2.5 x 3.5 inch artworks.

Here's a few more sketchbook drawings and written thoughts that I finished during this week.

In my morning sketching times I often use fountain pens and have 5 of them. To make sure all of my 5 pens feel loved and appreciated (aka stay in good condition) I have “use every pen" pages in my sketchbook. These pages are created over several weeks as a place to use whatever pen hadn't gotten recent attention. Here's a monkey character using every pen… (pen number 5 was in my hand and I forgot to include it in the photo. Oh well. 🤷‍♀️)

If you're a new paid subscriber - thank you! - the index page for 9 of the downloadable ebooks I've written and illustrated is here - grab whatever you like!

Thank you all for subscribing, reading and for being here! I appreciate you and I hope your weekend is as pleasant as it can be.