Weeknotes '26 - February 15-21

Okay, rounding the corner of this February experiment that actually began the last week of January, this makes week four. This week, I decided to lay out each day into a comics-style grid one one sketchbook page, painting and writing directly.

As opposed to week 1 where I collaged into a composition painted cards and text, week 2 where I painted and wrote my days in a more haphazard weekly spread, and week 3 where I collected a week’s worth of 5X7 paintings, written text over-layed on Procreate.

I am going to wrap up the experiment this next week with a final review of this month-long project, so I won’t get into what worked best or worst or what I learned, but I will say, for this week…the grid is okay. It does kind of tell the story of my week. Kind of. I don’t know.

I get a sense that I will get more out of this week’s work (and maybe the whole project) after some time has passed. I’m finding it hard to tell its value to me right now. Except I will say, I do like how the two faces turned out (Oliver and me).

Text reads left to right:

[SATURDAY]

“Congregation,” Jacob asked us in his one-man show at Berkeley Rep ([How] Shakespeare Saved My Life), “What would you choose - safety or freedom?” What a terrible choice.

[MONDAY]

Why is it so satisfying to make color copies on cardstock and slice them down edge by edge using a rotary cutter?

[TUESDAY]

We convince ourselves the rain has stopped, but as we drive down our street it pours again. We turn around and go home.

[WEDNESDAY]

After a busy, grey-skies morning, I settle into the purple hair to read, Oliver climbs into my lap, and suddenly the sun comes out, sunshine finding us through the windows. We both close our eyes.

[THURSDAY]

As Sherry and I walked in the sunshine pas the roaring creek below the street, I didn’t at first realize the water hitting my face wasn’t creek mist kicked up by the wind.

[FRIDAY]

Archie do it! he said, asking to be picked up. So i did and one by one, his little fingers switched on the electric candles on the mantel.

Weeknotes '26 - February 8-13

Continuing my search for how I want to do these Weeknotes (having tried so far this and this), I used gouache again, but this time on 5x7 watercolor papers and I limited my palette to JUST Winsor Newton Opera Rose, Holbein Cork Yellow and black and white.

THEN I uploaded them into Procreate to write the text on top of the digital images using a guoache brush. Much easier than trying to fit all that writing on top, believe me. Maybe not super legible? But I like the visual aesthetic.

I learned so much this week! First, man those colors out of the tube are BRIGHT, but once you get mixing, you get some lovely purples and oranges. I wish I’d mixed more. I was pretty critical of the colors mid way through the week—but as happens, I’m happier now with it. Bold and bright, yes. Me? Sometimes, yes.

Second, I have so much to learn about painting. Painting takes practice and it is time consuming in a good way. It was really absorbing and satisfying to paint in this way. And yeah, it took too much time for a project that is supposed to be small and sustainable over the long haul. But painting a series like this is good practice. I felt more and more in control as I continued with it and I know if I keep work, I’ll get better with guoache.

Third, I really love to abstractify objects—and ideas. The alarm clock and the water bottle, I think, are fun—and the C for Curves and using grey as a symbol. That was fun. The egret is my favorite, though. All in all, it’s been and continues to be a journey to develop an abstractified style—but I am improving and this kind of project really helps.

Finally, it takes so little time to write about one thing that happened in a day. It’s just about making it a habit. I end up editing the few sentences I write down even further—and of course, the writing is even better as a result.

Okay - so here they are individually - with the words and a few comments:

After a rough insomnia night, I woke up at 7:07. I made it out the door and too bootcamp by 7:40. Younger me just wouldn’t have believed it!

This was Monday morning. I’m kind of proud of this alarm clock depicting the alarm going off.

Pastor Paul stood at the entrance of the chapel in robes arms and doors wide open. “You are the light of the world” was the sermon of the day.

I don’t do Religion but I believe deeply in spirit. So I went to the Presbyterian church in Sausalito with friends this Sunday because I’d heard good things about Pastor Paul. Yep, truly spiritual.

I opened the door for Oliver to go out, but the wind blew leaves and rain spit at us. He turned away and, I’m sure of it, sighed.

Not bad with the abstractifying. I like the orangey-pink here. Wish I used it in more places.

A nice morning, i walked a few blocks to the gym before i realized i’d forgotten my water bottle. i had to pay $1.00 for hydration and its plastic insult.

That was Wednesday. I was so mad I had to buy a watter bottle—but I needed water!

“Twenty years ago,” Pat said as she showed me the machines,” there were eight Curves in Marin. I looked around t he room full of frail women in their eighties and nineties. all who are left. and me.

Yep, I joined Curves. And yes, at least in the morning, no one is under 75 I think. Grey hair for a grey Curves…but I need to build up my leg muscles on the machines and I need the cardio and the flexibility, so who cares?

At bootcamp, the egrets fished next to us, silently, peacefully.

Thursday - I watched the egrets as we worked out by the marshes. They are so beautiful.

Anything Goes…in my sketchbook

Ok, THIS was fun—and meaningful. I am following along with Carla Sonheim/Kara Kramer’s class this month and trying to play in my sketchbook. The goal is to loosen up and be more prolific: fill pages and capture ideas quickly.

I am filling pages, but for today I’m just focusing on this spread.

First, this art page is true journaling. As I’m creating, I’m speaking to myself about how to start, because of course I know! My Inner Self always actually knows.

And also, I LOVE IT! I love the colors and the graphic qualities. It feels like me. I want to create more like this - bold shapes and patterns.

Everything but the chartreuse background and the titles is collage, and the process was so fun. I found a magazine with this gorgeous indigo/aqua visual texture I fell in love with. I started cutting shapes and then more shapes, arranging on the page, paying attention to the negative spaces, and then choosing chartreuse to complement the blues made me swoon, as did lettering on bubble shapes.

As I worked I thought about all the different things I want to create on any given day - sometimes paintings or collage, sometimes comics or zines, sometimes illustrated journaling or just wild creating in my sketchbook—Anything goes! But so often it’s so hard to choose and start.

So I thought as I worked, how do I start making something if I don’t know what to make? First, check in with myself: what do I need? I listed some possibilities. Do I need to play, explore, work on a goal? Maybe I need some calming or to tell a story or just to express something.

And also, how am I feeling? I added some feeling words for when I get stuck. Even though I’ve worked on it, I still struggle to remember to check in, name it and feel what I’m feeling.

On this day, I needed answers. When I acknowledged that I was feeling confused about my art practice, I realized art journaling was the thing I needed to do—and I’m so glad I did!

Weeknotes Feb 1-7 2026

Seven days, seven Weeknotes. Yay! I like this practice - it’s bringing me into my life (and less in my head). What is one thing each day to remember and express. One thing each day to draw.

I’m experimenting with how I want to do this new Weeknotes practice. I’m finding the process of capturing one thing each day in a few sentences super easy. Wake up, fire up Notion on my iPad, think about the day before and pick one thing to say something about. Easy. The next step is to capture one thing about that one thing visually - but how?

I can draw or paint or collage and also compose them collectively in any way. And I’m not sure yet which way I want to do this.SO. I’m experimenting to find what I like best.

Last week I painted on small papers and then arranged them as a spread in my sketchbook and collaged in typed text. This week I started on the left side of a blank spread and moved my way to the right, day by day. Drawing/painting/writing directly on the page.

I’m not sure either of these ways is how I want to go. Both weeks I painted with gouache, mostly. I like gouache a lot, but it is time consuming and I’m finding that I don’t know how to use gouache as much as I thought - again, good practice. I’m not loving how they are arranged on the page. Maybe I’d prefer something more linear. I also don’t like my handwritten text here.

I’ll try something different this week.

Mendo Botanical drawing in my sketchbook

A graphite sketch I did while visiting the Mendocino Botanical Gardens with Yvonne and Mimi this past weekend. Rough but I like the ideas for abstractifying.

Weeknotes '26 - January 23-29

Seven days - seven notes

As I talked about last month, I’m working on an illustrated journaling practice that mashes the concepts others have developed: Weeknotes and Homework for Life. Each day I write a few sentences (only) about one thing the day before in Notion (*text copied end of this post for readability) and then later in the studio I make it visual in my sketchbook.

That’s the idea anyway. One set of sentences, one image each day added to my sketchbook. This last week I tried painting the images on cards rather than directly into my sketchbook, and then this week, as we see here, I pasted those images and words directly from my computer (edited) into my journal as a weekly composition.

So how did it go?

• I like the images very much and I do like them on separate cards. I like painting with goauche very much!

• I do not like after the fact putting them together into a composition. I considered keeping them on cards…but the idea of boxes of separate cards feels overwhelming. A two page spread is a good container for a week.

• I do not like typed journaling on the spread. Looks clunky.

• I found writing daily sentences is super easy first thing in the morning on my ipad. It’s a good practice to think about what happened the day before and select just one thing to capture visually.

• I don’t always have time to create that image every day - I was away for a long weekend this week, for example - but since I can keep up with the sentences, it’s easy enough to catch up with the visuals.

What’s next?

This week I’ll try adding daily entries to a spread over time from left to right, writing the words instead of collaging in text.

---

*Text for above spread:

Friday - I hold my mug in both hands, breathe in the Bengel Spice tea, and feel the steady resolve spread through my whole body. I’m ready to step into the art and life practice I’ve been building. It’s ready for me.

Saturday - Woke up ruminating about how anyone who sides with the government right now is saying yes to brutality and violence, racism and misogyny, white supremacy, no to our Constitution and the Rule of Law. If this was the 1930s, they would be backing Hitler and Mussolini.

How, how, how could any American get behind this?

Sunday - Walking through the crowd at the farmers market today, after we left the protest, Sherry holding her NO ICE sign above her head, Chris and I clustered next to her, I looked around at all the people of so many races, which is what we look like in California, and it is beautiful. People. All different and the exact same.

Monday - The shopping trip to Sebastopol was a bust, but we both found the perfect pair of shoes—purple trekking shoes for Karen and black Ugg boots for me—and the sun broke through the chill to warm our faces as we ate lunch on a patio, together.

Tuesday - With a dry leaf, I scooted the centipede-like bug who tried to flee down the last stretch of the purple slide. At the foot of the slide, Archie watched our every move with the deep concentration of a two-year old as the bug made to it to the lip of the slide and fell a foot to the tan bark. Archie then crouched low to find him, but he disappeared. “We saved him, “ I said. “Now the bug can go home.” He thought for a moment and then nodded, “Bug go home.”

Wednesday - I spent a pleasant afternoon making eggplant soup (with white beans, tomatoes, onions, leeks and sausage).

Thursday – Back on cypress trail after too long, Bill I knew was close by. Old friends and some new ones clomped through the forest, all of us ghosts to the redwoods.

February 2026 Art Practice--and what happened in January

And here we are to the second month of the year already! As I explained at the beginning of last month and the new year, I’m beginning each month with art practice intentions which I commit to in a Cover spread in my sketchbook, which I’m sharing here on my website.

I’m using it to set and stay focused on my creative intentions all month and then to reflect on what happened. Hopefully I end each month with some learning and growth and lots of creativity.

So first, what happened in January?

Illustrated Journaling - Became Weeknotes

I worked hard to figure out the best way to approach illustrated journaling in January (which is, by the way, using pictures and words to journal and express something of what I experience, think and feel).

What I lacked was both a container and a process for this visual form of journaling, because up until now, the container has been any page in any sketchbook (little pieces of my life scattered across books and time) and the process has been non-existent. How to start? What to say? What not to say? Basically how to get it done—and then move on to other art I want to make. I just felt really frustrated NOT doing this kind of work more often than not.

I’m happy to report that I made great headway this month. I did quite a bit of illustrated journaling, though still in several sketchbooks and also on individual cards. But where I really excelled was in process. I finally figured out that I could mash a couple of ideas out there in the world into a practice of my own: Weeknotes and Homework for Life .

Basically what I’ve been doing that feels very sustainable is I wake up and create one bulleted entry each day in my Weeknotes page in Notion (on my ipad) about ONE thing that happened to me the day before. I use as few sentences as possible (one is best).

Then later when I have time, I’ve been playing with illustrating each entry each day very simply, which I think I’ve now figured out is the exact way to illustrate the journaling!

However, having used individual card sized papers I’m now grappling with how best to put them all together into a sketchbook. I think I need to ditch the cards and work on layout ideas direct in my sketchbook—so I’d say I’m not yet done creating the container —but I AM doing the work and I believe I’ll have the whole project nailed down this next month.

Abstract and Geometric Shapes Project Started by not Finished

I created three sets of shape experiments in January for this project—all of which I like very much. But I still don’t know WHY I love shape images or what to do with them exactly.

Inner Magic Art Club a Little Stalled

I am sad to say that I did not attend either zoom session this month. Setting aside that two hours just didn’t work—and I didn’t go back and create with the recording either. Also, I admit that I have a really hard time opening up to strangers and I when I did participate the month before, I didn’t talk. Hmmm.

Daily Drawing - Mostly Not as a Practice

The intention was to sit down and draw something as a project for the month—but the reality was that I drew a lot of illustrated journaling instead. AND I ended up creating a nine panel comic—not an intention for the month, but grew out of illustrated journaling. That took a lot of drawing (and many other stages of work to get from idea to final)—and time. I think I pretty much did draw every day in January!

All in all, January was a good creative month. I made some big headway on nailing down a sustainable process for illustrated journaling which I will now call my Weeknotes—as well as created a good amount of entries, and I created a nine-panel comic, and I explored shapes…

February Art Practice Intentions

This month I’ll only focus on three things: Weeknotes, and then two other things which I explain below.

Weeknotes

I intend to keep up with my daily Weeknotes in Notion accompanied by a daily simple drawing of that entry. I am going to try to add one entry a day into my sketchbook instead of on a card, and copy the sentences as well. I’ll first try a unplanned composition where I’ll add one then add another the next day without lines or space allocations—see how a page develops organically. I will also try designing layout first and adding daily entries into allocated space.

Because I do have a process developed now, this should not take much time each day in my sketchbook, leaving plenty of time to focus on other art making. Which will be…

Anything Goes

This offering came up last minute for the month of February and I knew I had to do it: “A Mixed Media Adventure” with Carla Sonheim and Kara Kramer. I know and love both artists and I’m looking forward to a month of prompts and ideas for creating wildly and loosely—one of my main challenges. Perfectionism bends me to its will too often! So I’m really going to take up the challenge of lots of messy creating. This does mean, sadly, that I will have to suspend the Inner Magic Art Club. Boo. But given that I didn’t participate in January, it’s for the best.

A Project

Finally, I’m leaving room for ONE project. I haven’t decided what I will make this month. Last month I created a nine panel comic. I may do something with those shapes…I may find a good ideas to develop for the County Fair this year. We’ll see!

Okay - there you have it. February is now here. It will be interesting to see what I make of it.

You Can't Find It!

A nine panel comic

I finally made a finished comic. I love comic art, but I have found that it is much more difficult that it looks to actually make one. What I’ve learned about making comics, both from this and other attempts, is that it is true what seasoned comic artists say: the biggest challenge is to just accept the drawing that comes out of your hand.

And as this comic reveals, self judgement is a big challenge for me—as I think it is for many creative people. It’s not just facing down a blank page for me, but when I create ANYTHING, that judging voice itself never stops questioning and criticizing.

It’s taken years to keep on going anyway.

As for process, wow, creating a finished comic takes many steps. First, write the script. Edit it. Thumbnail it. Edit the script more. Tape off the grid, pencil it in, ink over the pencil add color (a whole choosing process in its own right), and then add the words. More judgement about my handwriting. Do it anyway.

As often happens with finished work, I’m more pleased than I expected while making it. All through the process the Judge told me it was terrible. Maybe not perfect, but it isn’t terrible.

Not only that, but when I finished this comic I suddenly had more ideas for other art than I could do.

Imagine that.

Aghast and Distraught!!!

Two spreads in my Sketchbook - I needed to express how I’m feeling about the current paramilitary occupation of our cities by ICE, agents of our own government! I remind myself that this is how MOST Americans are feeling right now. I didn’t mention the word “ICE” because I couldn’t bear to have that word live on in my Sketchbook.

The worse it gets the more resolved I am to lean into helping. I spoke during public comment at the Marin County Board of Supervisors Meeting this week to demand they out the SCAAP Program on their agenda and vote to withdraw from it, which is a federal reimbursement grant for incarcerated immigrant “criminals” - and most likely hands over these people to ICE. I’m donating. I have protested. But I need to do more.

How did I make these pages? I taped the words on the page, then scribbled furiously with colored pencils (many; cathartic), removed the tape and added black ink.

Set 2 of January Abstract Shape Experiments

Okay, so this shape idea came from the A-B exercise I did for the annual “30 Days of Drawing” series of the very popular Drawing newsletter, Draw Together With WendyMac.

Not that I’m keeping up with the exercises, but sometimes, like this one, I get to it. And I really like what happened! I loved the lines and shapes…so I decided to really play with those organic shapes. I love everything about this second set of shapes. I used Copic markers again, which are so lovely to work with, really, on smooth Bristol paper. I love the limited color palette—and so many of the compositions and figures! I’ll definitely have to explore them more in my work.

Set 1 of January Abstract Shape Experiment

This month I’m studying shapes as a focus for my art practice. This is the first set of 16 cards. The self-created assignment is to pick one shape idea and play with it 16 ways on 4X6” Bristol paper—And then see what I learn. This first set I stuck with black rectangle marks using a Copic marker.

Overall, I love the graphic boldness of all these compositions in one set. And I see that marks composed in patterns—or even figures—works better than marks not repeating in any pattern except to make a shape (like cards #2-5) if you count top to bottom, left to right.

I really dislike #15 - white space on all the others is much more soothing! As for my favorite cards, hmmm, I like the movement and change in the marks in cards #8, #10, #11. And I’m surprised that when shapes are made into figures #9 and #16, it really pleases me. Shapes create figures—and texture.

"More vs. Less" meme of the new year

What you want MORE of and what do you want less of in the new year?

A good way to practice simple illustrations to describe what I want more of and what I want less of in 2026. I wonder what if I get what I want—I’ll have to come back to this spread in December.

Tarot Card of the Year - Illustrated Journal

2026 Year of Wheel of Fortune and The Magician

The Tarot Card of the Year for 2026 is Wheel of Fortune. I’ve been following Theresa Reed (aka The Tarot Lady) for years for her sass her weekly Hit List, which always contains a bit of sass and some good links.

I love the Tarot, not because of whether or not they hold clairvoyant properties so much as I recognize that our intuition and subconscious speaks in imagery and symbolism and we ourselves are definitely connected to a larger Unknown wisdom. So I’m not interested in predicting the future—but I do love to listen to what my inner Self is trying to tell me.

Add up the numbers of the year and you get 2+0+2+6 = 10 Wheel of Fortune—or 1+0=1 The Magician. It does feel like this year is ripe for change and manifestation, which these cards represent. It was so lovely to throw paper and glue and ink and paint together to represent all this possibility.

January 2026 Art Practice

I’m beginning each month by creating a cover spread in my sketchbook, scanning it as you see here and then posting it on the top of my website for the month. So any time you visit, you’ll see what I’m working on that month front and center.

Except to tell you the truth, I’m doing this for myself more than for anyone else. You’re welcome to check in here any time to and see what I’m creating, but I’ve decided what I’m doing here on my website, a personal website, is really mostly for me. I’ve come to see that a website can be a sort of creative diary, a tool to help me think about my art practice and document my creative life.

This cover spread is meant to solve for the challenge I have in my art practice is to stay focused! It is so easy to start doing one thing and then another and another, and suddenly I’ve forgotten all about my intention to finish what I started. So with my creative focus items front and center both in my sketchbook and on my home page every month, I should be able to stay focused on what I set out to do for the month—and save all those other ideas (which I do track in a notebook) for another month.

I also set aside the next spread after the cover for journaling about the month. On the left side, I write out my intentions and I’ll come back to the right side to review how the month went. Highlights, challenges, Insights and Lessons. I think it would be nice to look back at this year and see that I sustained certain practices that led to growth. We’ll see.

For January, as you see, I’m going to focus on four things:

Illustrated Journal

I have done illustrated journaling off and on for years now, but very inconsistently and I haven’t yet come up with a sustainable format. There are so many ways to illustrate one’s life and I have yet to find my way. This month I intend to find a process and a format that will sustain my going forward—and I’d really love to keep an exclusive sketchbook just for that purpose.

31 Days of Drawing

I want to draw something every day in January

Geomoetric and Organic Shapes project

I love shapes! But I really don’t understand this response I have to shapes. So I’m going to spend the month exploring shapes. My thought is to choose a shape or shape set and then iterate on cards different ways to create with just that shape/set, then reflect, and then choose a different shape or shape set to explore again, and so on. Hopefully by the end of the month I’ll have more insight about my relationship with shapes.

Inner Magic Art Club

Yet, I just signed up to this membership with Jessica Swift and Becky Hershey where two times a month the group gathers on zoom to create intuitively—which is my favorite way to create. AND I could definitely use more creative community in my life. Both Jessica and Becky are lovely, the music is greatr, and when I tried it out last month I fell into such creative flow! More please!

Okay - so that’s what I’m doing month by month

October 15 Morning Practice

Well, I did it. Working both mornings of 14 and 15th, I left black and white ink behind and filled two pages with illustrated journaling and lots of color (posca pens). I used Michelle Allen’s color block and lettering styles, and then continued with my own subject matter and style. I used to fill sketchbook pages like this now and then and it was fun to come back to it.

I started with an insight I’d had recently that underneath all the things I think I might want in my life, my real goals are pretty simple: make friends, feel peace and excitement and connection in al the good ways that all link together like chain.

I illustrated a quote from a book I finished recently, Meditation for Mortals by Oliver Birkman, that really stuck with me. If life is like being thrown into a big mysterious sea as the philosopher __ Heidegger proposes, Birkman rightly observes, we’d all like to feel as if we’re “captains of a super yacht.” in full control. But in fact we are just paddling around on our little kayaks. So much of life is actually not in our control. I liked that analogy a lot.

I captured my poor grandson’s ambivalence about halloween. Almost two years old, Archie is coming across all kinds of halloween decorations out in the world that scare him. The other day he was on my lap and we were reading a halloween book together when he turned the page to see a Frankenstein figure. He puzzled over it for a moment and then looked up at me with a worried expression on his face, “Not spooky?” What a good question!

And finally, feeling gratitude for several friends and still fighting my own lack of confidence in drawing comic people, I tried my hand at drawing them. Not my style, I think, but a good exercise.

I decided that I really don’t like using Posca pens to fill large blocks of color. I should have broken out the paint brushes with goauche. To draw it out first before paint, I’m thinking I could do something like this in rough colored pencil and then go over it with goauche and ink. That might be more fun to do—and I’ll have many more color choices too.

October 4 Morning Practice

Today I took the theme of “windows” and ran with it. Just let myself doodle, basically. An altogether quick morning page. Worked on varying line weights and values while still staying monochrome.

I’m coming to the end of this sketchbook and I’m wondering what I want to do going forward. I’ve been focusing on black and white ink because 1) I love the bold contrast of black and white and I love using ink pens, and 2) drawing with pens is probably the easiest way to make art (especially when traveling). But I find myself yearning for color and other mediums.

Lately, I’ve been admiring several other artists who create visual diaries—Amandaworks with her wild expressive and colorful mixed media daily pages, Kevin Mercer’ and Marc David Spengler’s shape-driven collage journals…collage is definitely calling me back. Jane Davies shared a collage artist this week, Ashley Mary, whose work I loved…and then also Michelle Allen has some visual journal pages in either/and ink and paint in her instagram feed call that me too. (I’m not bothering to provide links because as a digital journal on my own website I’m not expecting too many people to stumble here—but if you do, you can find the above artists on instagram or pinterest or a quick browser search.)

Not sure where I’m going next, creatively, but I do know that I want to continue doing morning pages and most likely I’ll switch up the media. I also have to make a decision about whether to bring this digital journal project out into the world on those other platforms. We’ll see.

It’s been all black and white drawing this month and I do like this group of morning

October 13 Morning Page

One of the best things I do are early morning outdoor workouts three days a week with a lovely bootcamp group. Recently we moved from a fully landscaped park to open space near wetlands and I am so loving nature all around us.

Today was my first day back to bootcamp after our trip so maybe I had new eyes, or maybe it was the light between all the clouds not gathered yet for rain, but it was a truly beautiful morning.

Instead of Morning Pages October 11-12

I don’t know why I did this exactly, but I had woken up as usual, grabbed my coffee, started reading on my ipad…and when I came to Anne Lamott’s newsletter in my inbox (because Anne just started a Substack newsletter and of course I subscribed), I was inspired to pull out my sketchbook and sketch out her essay in comic form. Here’s what happened in a snapshot (larger images at bottom of post):

It didn’t look like this on the first go round. I just quickly penciled it out in the messiest way for each panel —I wish I’d taken pictures at that point—and I was done for the day.

Again, I really don’t know why I created this illustrated essay. Lamott’s writing is SO engaging and especially visual. I just “saw” the images in my mind in her text and I wanted to draw them out.

And also, as a writer (and a former English teacher) I appreciate her take on writing that “shitty first draft” (her own moniker that I think she defined in Bird by Bird). It’s nice to be reminded that writing IS hard for everyone, especially at the beginning. I find myself in that lost place all the time when I write. It may or may not be why I’m not writing newsletter posts over on Substack much at the moment…

But that idea to make a comic? It just came to me and I went with it and I’m glad I did. It’s true what Anne says about ideas being like goldfish, and not just for writing—for any creative idea. Too often I let that bright goldfish just swim away and I lose it.

This time, though, I acted on the idea of making a comic and I made it. I went back the next day and inked it out, and copied her essay and pasted the excerpts of her story to finish it, even if still pretty rough draft-ish (but it’s a sketchbook so that’s ok!)

Comics intimidate the heck out of me. I don’t often make them, although I have come to love and appreciate comics as an art form and I follow several artists who make comics…Lynda Barry, Mike Lowery, Edith Zimmerman, for example. Occasionally I have created visual diary pages in comic form (that I have to say I like very much). But still. Comic making REALLY intimidate me! I don’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to draw from imagination.

This little exercise, though (and it is just an exercise in my sketchbook. Without Anne’s permission I would NEVER share this for commercial purposes), this little exercise was super enlightening for me. First, I was so very judgmental about the drawing, especially the humans, as I drew and inked it all up. I wanted to give up a million times—my inner critic was screaming!

But you know what? I kind of like it now. Someone said that a big part of being an artist who draws is to accept what comes out of your hand. I think I’m in a part of my drawing journey where I’m just beginning to let my “bad” drawing come out as it wants…

The other thing I learned is that this feels like something I should do more of—tell stories and illustrate them in some way. Hmmm.

Okay, here are pages in readable form (click on each if you want it even bigger):

Morning Page October 10

Except this was an evening page…and I’m shaking things up - gasp - changing out ink for graphite.

It was a busy day getting back to life and I still felt jet lagged. So I sat down early on the sofa and started watching Cruella (based on my daughter’s advice).

And I intended to just doodle and I was going to just sketch lightly in pencil before ink - but then I remember how fun it is to shade in pencil so I decided to just go for it. Nothing too exciting. Just fun.

Morning Page October 9

Today I devoured half of Lisa Miller’s book, The Awakened Brain (h/t Andy, Creative Peptalk podcast #525 after meeting with the Wilder practice group* and doing some journaling…and this felt kind of like a download. Like something I’ve been traveling towards for quite a while. I feel ready to live into the connected, spiritual being I know I am.

Obviously, this wasn’t a morning page, but an evening page. First day back from traveling and it was a jet lag dayI hope to read the read rest of the book today.