Drawings and new life journeys

Don't think I've ever blogged about drawing. Mostly because I rarely do it anymore. Many, many moons ago, when I was a young lass, I loved to draw. That is how my interest in art began. On my own, I experimented some with painting, but mostly I drew. When I was in college obtaining my 2 associate degrees, I took several drawing and painting courses, all they offered at the time actually at WSCC except for the pottery classes. The painting was with oils, so I've never had any teachings in watercolor or acrylics.

The drawing above is one I did while about junior high age, I think, from looking at a picture in a National Geographic magazine. I entered it in the local county fair art competition. Won a first place ribbon. Unfortunately I just drew it on some stationery paper since I had no real art papers and mounted it to a burlap-wrapped piece of cardboard with regular cellophane tape instead of a frame. It looked nice at the time and suited the subject matter, but over the years the paper has yellowed and the 6 spots where the tape touched the paper had turned brown. I scanned it yesterday for this post and retouched the brown spots and posterized it some with the photo editing software to minimized the damage time has inflicted on the paper.

I married while in college, got a lab job immediately upon graduation, and then we had our 2 babies not long after. Life got very busy and as is the case with a lot of working Moms, I put the artistic side of myself on hold. Locked it away somewhere for safekeeping actually. I did do some embroidery and cross stitch which was my way of creative expression at the time. Still have lots of patterns, threads, fabrics, etc. from these times put back that I keep meaning to go back to.

Several years ago, while on a frugal lifestyle forum, I ran across the mention of altered books which led to my exploring the internet for further information. This has led in turn to my widespread interest in all forms of altered arts and thus my return to art. I had never been exposed to mixed media art and find it so fascinating with all it's infinite possibilities. So mostly I've been going from this to that just having fun learning and trying new things. Still, I have wanted to return to the basics to see if I can still draw or paint, maybe finding a way to bring all these things together. I started a sketchbook journal, but so far only have a couple of drawings in it. The drawing below is not even in there. It is one I did at work one night(it was a slow night, what can I say) at Woodland on a piece of printer paper from a Time magazine cover picture of Kate Winslett(see link here). Yes, I realize it doesn't really look like her. My intent when I started the drawing was just to get one that I could use as a base for a mixed media painting in the style of Kellie Rae Roberts or D.J. Pettit. Of course, I have a lot of good intentions, too many and too scattered, I suppose. But sometimes blogging about some of this helps me to remember it later and to actually follow through with the intention.




In general, non-art, life news, I am about to embark upon a new phase of my working career. I have accepted job offer that just came up with Diatherix Laboratories in Huntsville. You can click on the link to see what the lab does. So, for the first time since becoming a lab tech, I will be working in a non-hospital setting. I can't even get my head around how different it will be yet. I do know that I feel like a burden has been lifted off my shoulders, so I would hope that is a sign that I've made the right decision. My present job at Hartselle involves me working by myself almost the entire 12 hour shift, putting me in some very difficult and stressful situations at times. I just turned 49 and I feel like it was taking years off of my life working like that. I had been praying that God would help me find where I needed to be and if possible a job where I could be off on Sundays. This job presented itself, with the schedule being dayshift, Tuesday through Saturdays and all holidays off. I can't really even comprehend being off every Sunday and on all holidays. I will have to drive to Huntsville, but was already driving 30 minutes one way to Hartselle. Two of my former coworkers at Woodland are working at Diatherix and were the ones that told me about the job opening. We will be able to car pool sometimes, if we want to,so that will help some.

Referring back to my earlier post about "light through the trees", I do believe the light is growing and that I feel like my feet are actually resting completely on the bottom so that I am going to be able to start walking toward that shallow water and maybe even up on dry ground.