T1 Day1, pencil and charcoal
Just as great authors have their morning pages, I’m trying a new routine of drawing exercises before or after I paint each morning to gain a better command of the fundamentals — my homemade art school as it were. These are very well-laid plans – the best-laid plans, so I’m not taking any odds on what will happen to them. But the first day was fun.
Yesterday, we went to the ballet recital of a young friend. The younger sister of T1’s girlfriend, we’ve come to think of both girls as practically family and were excited to cheer her efforts.
It was blissfully typical of most dance recitals.
We watched the older girls, getting ready to soar into the next phase of their lives, enjoy well-deserved accolades after years of practice. Then we watched younger dancers emerging like butterflies. Our friend distinguished herself beautifully, hitting her marks and helping the youngest dancers hit theirs.
As usual, those youngest dancers, with their fairy costumes and exhuberance, stole the show.
One little fairy in particular captured everyone’s attention. About four, she sashayed onto the stage as gracefully as a four-year-old can, glancing back at her group for confirmation that the steps were right. Glee infected her as they began twirling, causing us to wonder if she would twirl right off the stage. She was often just a beat behind the others but always a bounce or twirl above, dancing to the music as if she had her own rhythm section in her head.
The music ended, and her partners sashayed off to the left. She began to skip and hop after them, and for a moment she seemed to be trying to fly. The audience chuckled as one and then applauded, as if we were all remembering what it was like to move just for the fun of it and hoping that the little magic spark that lit up the tiny ballerina might actually get her to fly someday.
Arlington had barely enough interested nine-year-olds to field a team for the Little League minor’s team this year, so when one of the players couldn’t make it to the first away game, parents and players were relieved that an older player from the Majors volunteered to play.
I was happy the boys got to play, but the older boy’s good deed bumped T2 from his position behind the plate as catcher. Knowing how much he loves catching, my relief was tempered a bit. However, I knew it made sense for the older boy to catch because, even in the minors, winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
If the change bothered T2, he didn’t show it. He danced on his way out to center field, bopping to the beat of the internal music in his head as he waited for the ball to leave the pitcher’s hand. In the second and third and fourth inning he danced as he play right field, then center, then right again. He skipped around the bases as he scored a run, sliding into each base for good measure, even when the ball was still in the outfield.
All of the Arlington boys got dirty sliding. The scoreboard was broken, but as our rag-tag team scored one run after another, victory seemed likely.They had faced much older boys for the first two losing games of the season, a win would mean a lot to all of them.
The game ended just after dinner time and shortly before bedtime. Fully revved up, the team began a complex game of skill and strategy that involved racing up and down the bleachers and throwing their gloves at each other. A few dads were talking cars. Moms were talking carpools. The boys were screaming with laughter, making up rules as they played. It was well past official bedtime by the time each boy was buckled in and being chauffeured home.
T2 was sweaty and panting when I asked him if they had won.
“Yeah,” he laughed.
“What was the score?”
“Oh, we weren’t keeping score. We were just having fun.”
“And the ballgame?”
“I can’t remember the score,” he said after a minute. Then he grinned and pointed to his dirty pants. “But I got to slide three times. I think that’s a win.”
It was, and it really was everything.
So my post about turning brother against brother to get a room clean, generated a few comments and a bunch of emails, mostly from or about other moms recounting tales of terror inspired by room-cleaning events. There were stories of discovering new life-forms that had evolved from 3-month-old left overs, of dirty socks that could only be moved to the washer while wearing protective gear, and more than one person admitted to blocking out their kids’ rooms from memory until they flew nest.
The disgusting kids room is the 800 pound load of laundry overflowing the mental-health hamper. So in the furtherance of parental peace and sanity, I created a coloring page in honor of anyone who’s been tempted to do a Joan Crawford on their kid’s room.
Download and Enjoy!
I admit it. I have never loved The Crucible.
I read it in high school and then again in college. I went to a few performances and even watched the movie to try to love it. I love history and I love reading about this period, but I never got into this play. When I read or watched the play, I rarely felt invested in any of the characters. I felt sorry for them, but most of the time, I just wanted this play to be over.
Last Sunday, Thing1 volunteered to babysit Thing2 so I could go to Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY and see my husband perform in the Crucible as Giles Corey. I was excited to see him and other actors whose work I’ve come to love, but I was skeptical about the event, even as I climbed the steps to the darkened theater.
So I sat down and got out my sketchbook, doodling in the dark as we watched girls, caught dancing in the forest, try to assuage their guilt by turning a town upside down. I sketched a few more vignettes, but soon I realized I was just gripping my pen as sadness over the impending fates of the girls’ victims took over.
I watched John and Elizabeth Proctor (played by David Snyder and Erin Ouellette) tried to repair a damaged marriage even as the world began tearing them to pieces, and suddenly there was more than just pity. There was an irrational hope that history would change, and, as Elizabeth Proctor was torn from her home, all I could do was grip my sketchbook from the end of that second act until John Proctor was led to the gallows at the end of the play.
For the first time since I’ve known about this play, I felt the incredible sadness but also new admiration for victims of the witch hunt who were defiant until their last breaths. I even experienced little momentary pity for the instigator of the chaos – the damaged and deceptive Abigail Williams beautifully played by Catherine Seeley Keister who managed to bring depth to a character that seems to lack dimension on the page.
Each member of the cast brought new life to the characters they portrayed. Deb Borthwick as Rebecca Nurse had a perfect no-nonsense attitude to the early accusations that only someone who has weathered a host of fussy eaters could muster. Lia Russell-Self as both the trapped Tituba and the pitiless Judge Danforth expertly walked both sides of the mayhem, and Digby Baker-Porazinski (still in high school) was the picture of conflict as he portrayed Reverend Hale, an expert on witchcraft who comes to regret the events he has helped to accelerate.
I know more experienced theater critics will have their opinion of this performance, but this isn’t a critique. It’s a thank you note to Hubbard Hall and places like it that recruit seasoned veterans, up-and-coming actors and talented amateurs to create a community of artists that breathes humanity into something that was once dull and lifeless. It’s gratitude for creating something new.
It’s what great art does, and as I headed home, thinking about the message of the Crucible as if for the first time, I remembered once again why art matters so much not just to those who create it, but to the people they inspire.
i’d like to tell you I have a veggie garden because I’m really into organic everything, but the truth is there’s nothing quite as satisfying as watching my kids fight over fresh greens. In my defense, I have stopped telling them the peas were candy.
You can buy prints and cards of this painting here
I’ve been making cards for a Holiday craft fair in December. I started making cards with flowers on them after creating a few pieces for family members and then kept painting flowers — get well cards for humanity.
Then I added a few cards for Christmas and Hanukkah since it’s a holiday fair, but, as an atheist, I felt a little funny at first. And I wondered, for the umpteenth time, if it was hypocritical and why we celebrate those holidays at all.
This year, health issues are changing our Thanksgiving celebration, separating us from family members. We still have so much to be thankful for, but being separated from family on this one holiday that is sacred to me helped me understand why the religious holidays of others are still celebrations for us.
There are the rituals and the memories. But there are also the holidays themselves. Hanukkah and Christmas and other religious celebrations that occur concurrent with the winter solstice are often celebrations of light at the darkest time of year. They are celebrations of miracles against all odds and of physical and spiritual growth even in the coldest winter. They are perennial demonstrations of communal good will and of hope.
Right now the world is in a dark place. It sometimes seems like the bomb throwers (literal and figurative) are everywhere. If there were ever a time to celebrate light in darkness – to celebrate and nurture hope and good will in those who want it, this is it.
I don’t have any illusions that the bomb throwers and disrupters in the world are going to come to our house and sit down for Thanksgiving dinner to solve the world’s problems over a bottle of wine. I do, however, look at the very existence of these holidays as unscientific proof that in our species there is an innate, inextinguishable desire for peace and even good will that is as vital as our competitive and destructive natures. That desire is something I am willing to work for wherever possible.
As an atheist, a belief in an inherent desire for peace not only gives me hope, it gives me faith (something I guard closely and try to nurture) in the future of humankind. And I’m happy to celebrate it by lighting candles, stuffing a stocking, or simply sitting at a table to acknowledge the good in my lives and hope for good in the lives of others.
My Giverny
Watercolor, 12 x 16
This is the field and the hills a few hundred feet down the road from the end of our driveway. I must have sketched
And color penciled..
.. and magic markered..
.. and watercolored.. 
This road about a zillion times.
I should be bored with it. But I’m not. It’s my Giverny. I know I’m no Monet, but I do know Monet spent a lot of time painting his own front yard too.
Little Green Mess
So my collaboration with Jean Glaser helped me get bigger, and for once, going bigger is a good thing.
Her suggestion for a change in grip (unlike so many others who have told me – with some reason – to just get a grip), got me drawing fast and loose and then out to the back yard to look for some scabby green apples to draw and paint along with the fake sunflower and pumpkin which are the only foliage that are safe inside our house.
Little Green Apples II, Watercolor 8×10
And I drew painted…
Little Green Apples Pen & Ink and watercolor wash 5×7
And painted and drew and, Heaven help me, even cleaned up my desk a little – but only in the drawing.
Now I can’t wait to go home and see what else is lying around the house and yard that may have seemed boring a few days ago.
St James Harvest Festival, View from Burdett Commons
As TS Eliot once said, most of the stupid stuff in the world was done by bloggers with good ideas and not enough caffeine. Or something like that.
In my case, the good idea was consolidating my online split personality into a more cohesive unit under my own name. Yup, riding the high from a successful craft/art fair last night, I was ready to take all the stuff on these pages – the toons, the tales, and the ahtsy stuff – and call it put it all under the heading of My Sketchy Life (which is pretty accurate). And I got it all moved nicely to http://www.rachelbarlow.com.
You can still get to new Toons and Picking My Battles stuff from days of yore by typing http://www.pickingmybattles.com into your browser.
And you can click Home and look at Art (or Ahht if you’re from New England pronunciation of the word) or find a new HOGA pose (Thing1 and Thing2 were working on Brotherly Hoga last night).
But (here’s where the stupid stuff comes in) you might not get all the goings on in your inbox (hopefully you’re here anyway). As the caffeine left my system, I managed to remove the feed that sends this chaos to your inbox. Said feed should have redirected here, but if you come to this page wondering where the heck your next diet cartoon is, it’s here.
You just may need to re-enter an email address to get it in your inbox.
Management is having a good talking to with the webmaster this morning who has decided, after a night of good intentions almost gone awry, not to risk any further snafus and leave cleaning for another day.
I started sketching for a new painting this morning. I’m finding kids are a favorite subject – not too different from the cartoons.
I used to wish I could make my artwork dark because dark meant deep. Instead I end up drawing the opposite of deep – the people and things that pull me out of my dark spaces.
Picking My Battles 