Provence Life Lesson Number Two:

Age Should Be Appreciated


North Americans fear aging. Countless ads offer products or procedures that will help us turn back the clock to keep us looking and feeling younger. Most people trade in cars or switch houses as soon as things begin to get worn out or cause trouble. Some even do the same with partners... trading in the older model for a younger one. Is it any wonder that our society feels a little bit worried about growing older?

I can already feel it in my bones some mornings, especially my hands. They are stiffer and creakier than they have ever been in my life. The artist worries what would happen if I couldn’t hold a brush or pencil or needle comfortably to create images any more.

My house is the same way. Nick and I have lived here for 17 years, but it was built 21 years ago. The stairs have recently begun to squeak more as we climb them, perhaps done in by the exuberance of my girls as they barrel up and down them with abandon, despite constant reminders from their parents not to “stomp up and down like a herd of elephants”! All the doors but one have been replaced as well as the roof and some of the window seals are starting to go. With a house, there is always something that will need your attention or your money, but there is also the sense of creating a home. Nick and I have lived longer in this house than either of us did anywhere while growing up. It is a place we have built together.

By Provence standards, our house is brand-spanking new! Wandering around villages where some of the buildings could trace a history of a thousand years, it was easy to see why one person I met called us a “cowboy culture”. He meant that North Americans were set in a more frontier mentality because we still had so much wide open space and our buildings were all so very young. We think of something over 100 years old as being “historic”. I saw one farmhouse being refurbished that had been built in the 1400s and was considered a “newer house to remodel compared to some!”



Every hill in Provence seems to have a village perched on it. Far rarer are the villages like Coustellet that are built on the flat plains. These are newer ones, planned out with care like many of our towns in comparison to the cluttered wonder on the hills. Given the history of the Luberon valley area, where huge battles fought during the Crusades caused the fields to “run red with blood”, it makes sense to built up on a hill where you can see an enemy coming.



Safety is provided by building on top of and in many cases almost INTO the hill on which the town or village is built.



Invariably, a church is near the very top of the village, closer to God and worth the climb.



Its bell tower, wrought of iron, is unique in its design and so is the sound of its bell. People used to know which village bell was which by its tolls indicating a call for help, a celebration or a death.



The rest of the village, almost every one we visited, then clusters down and around the church. Buildings rise and tangle with each other, leaning on each other for support to share common walls instead of sitting on individual lots of fenced in land as they do here. There is more of a sense of community with the buildings so close because nothing escapes anyone’s notice. To celebrate a sense of individuality without a huge lawn to mow, each house owner seems to have their own way to decorate the ancient stone with coloured blooms,



create shade for their cats to rest in



or grow potted herbs to add to meals along staircases, in window boxes or on doorsteps.



Any hole in the wall can hold a potted plant to become a thing of beauty.

We watched a grey cat streak in through the hole in this door.



I could only marvel at some of the cracks and spaces I could see in the buildings, imagining all to well how snow and cold would seep into such a space in Moncton.

Instead of a quest to make something look new and “perfect”, Provence seemed to celebrate making things that were old or worn still beautiful and worth appreciating.



This respect for age carried over into the food as well.

We drank a young wine created by a son taking over the winemaking business from his father and resurrecting an older almost extinct grape to make an amazing homage to his father called “À Mon Père” that is the best red wine Nick and I have ever had in our lives. It lived up to all of the memories we had from our last visit. The two bottles that we brought home with us are already gone, used for very special meals with friends, but the taste still lingers on the edges of my tongue.

As I mentioned before, cheese is an entire course in France and you can find everything from young, nippy one to cheese that has surely been aged inside a sweaty sock and buried deep within some well for hundreds of years before being served in tiny chunks to unsuspecting cheese lovers. One such pungent morsel left a smell that seeped under our fingernails and remained there despite much scrubbing with soap. My sister in law was horrified that she might carry that lingering smell on her business trip the next day and have people wonder why her handshake stank!

As an artist, I was also fascinated by the faces of the elders in each village, the ones who had earned their spot on the wall around the town’s fountain or courtyard, who sat in the sunshine waiting for a turn to play pétanque (a form of boules or lawn bowling played throughout Provence), who perched on chairs knitting and discussing those who walked by or sat under the awnings of the cafés sipping on something in the heat. Many of the faces, wrinkled and tanned by the strong sun, reminded me of the apple dolls I always tried to make. The sun and wind had weathered them as they lived their whole lives in this area, watching things change as tourists moved in, discovered the area, bought houses to transform and then left when each summer was over. People in Provence, and all over France for that matter, dressed with more care than most of us here in North America (no sweatpants or sloppy looks), but without trying to look younger. Perhaps it it simply that money is to be spent on other things that creams and potions. Many villagers in the area live on less than $25,000 a year quite well. It is a simpler life and there is less need to fill a house with the latest, fastest, newest things. Tables and other furniture get handed down over generations and they are built to last. A bit worn and loved, smoothed from years and many hands, but sturdier than almost everything in my house!



I came back from Provence with a determination to appreciate age and to embrace its steady march more easily. With a birthday looming just around the corner, I will remind myself every time I look at my girls, who have that boundless energy that takes my breath away, that my years have shaped and sculpted who I have become. By Provence standards, I am still a baby and my house is brand new!

Provence Life Lesson Number One:

Treasure The Moment, Love Where You Are.

The thing about vacations is that they can’t last. To stay on vacation forever would mean that eventually you would take things for granted or get bored. It has rained 5 out of the 7 days that we’ve been back, so it is perfectly natural for me to think longingly about the pool at Roux-Cailloux or the smell of “lavendre”... but then I look at how lush and green my garden is. Each place has its own beauty, each culture has its own food and riches to share and each moment is alive with possibilities.

This shadow captivated us because something about the mountain’s shape causes the heart to appear when the afternoon sunlight hits just right. I am sure that I wasn’t the first to notice or try to capture the beauty of that view, but it was fun to suddenly look up and see the shape there on the hill. A simple moment that would have slipped by if not captured with a camera.



I miss the marketplaces in Provence. Shopping for fresh food was so much more intimate there, even if the selection was more limited. At the big supermarkets this week, I had to look at produce under sterile, plastic wrap or hunt for peaches that weren’t rock hard because they needed to travel so far to reach us. Just over a week ago, I stroked pallets of peaches and baskets of apricots to see which one we would buy, chose sun-warmed tomatoes from the farmer himself and wondered at the variety of colours, textures and smells around me. No wonder they say “good food remember where it comes from”.



Part of savouring the moment is appreciating what a local area has to offer in terms of food that you don’t get back home. For me, my trips to France will forever be tied to the taste of cheese. Cheese is a separate course there, served after the main course but before any dessert. From tiny stalls in marketplaces to glass cases full of incredible variety, there are dozens of flavours and textures to explore. None of these products would travel well and many of them are pasteurized differently from what we eat in North America... but OH! what incredible tastes!! From soft cheese that puddles from the spoon onto a crisp baguette slice to goat cheese coated in black ashes for a smoky taste, each bite touched different taste buds in your mouth. No wonder I am finding it a bit hard to go back to cheddar, mozzarella and cheese strings!

In the cult classic “Buckaroo Banzai”, there is a quote that says “No matter where you go, there you are.” Provence Life Lesson Number One was to appreciate just that. Great memories, experiences or tastes are fun to relive, but you cannot live in the past. Celebrate what can be appreciated right around you and make memories, even on rainy days!

To Everything A Season...

Today, I helped one of my very best friends say goodbye to her mother. I watched Karen and her family share memories of a wonderful lady amid tears, laughter and hugs from old friends. It was a touching reminder that from Death, there is ultimately no Passover. What matters is not how much wealth you have accumulated, how powerful you have become but how many lives you touched while you were here on this planet. Those whom Mary touched with her presence while living will now treasure their memories and carry on.

After celebrating 20 years with Nick in Provence, I cannot image what John is going through after losing his wife of 62 years, but he spoke so beautifully today. There are some who say that such a loss would be unbearable, but I think of the famous quote “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Goodbye Mary... we will help watch over your family for you now that you are gone.

Celebrating Twenty Years...

Twenty years ago to the day, I married my best friend. I had known him since I was 17 and dated him for almost 5 years before we married. When I walked down the aisle and saw the expression on his face, I knew that our adventures together were just beginning. After all this time, he has forgiven me for forgetting his wedding ring in the back of the limo and still jokes that we was married to our minister for about 20 minutes (our minister slipped off his own ring for me to use and it only went down to Nick´s knuckle) instead of me.
We have had our ups and downs like other couples. We have supported each other through career setbacks and changes, challenges and triumphs. Together, we have raised two amazing daughters. As much as we love them, we are also painfully aware of how little time we have left with them under our own roof. Already they are growing into young women who will head off on adventures of their own in such a short time. Funny how I thought those sleepless nights would never end when they were little children. Being here in France with my niece and nephew (who are 8 and 4) is like taking a step back in time to 6 years ago when my girls were that age. It is wonderfully exhausting. I watch my husband toss them around the pool and smile. Although there may be a few more grey hairs on his head, he has lost none of the youthful enthusiasm that makes me call him Tigger in the first place.
So many of our friends have divorced already that we are now considered to be an old married couple by today´s standards. I think of my grandparents who still teased each other after more than 45 years together and hope that we will have as long to treasure each other´s company. However many years we have left together, I will try never to take them for granted. This day, this moment in the blazing sun of Provence, with the cicaidas buzzing and a gentle breeze blowing, I know that I am truly blessed to have such a wonderful partner to share this adventure called life with.

Being Happy In Your Own Skin...

Nothing is harder on an artist or crafter than not being able to use their hands!

I overdid it a bit spreading 4 yards of mulch around our property before we leave on vacation today over the past 3 weeks, working like a fiend on the few non-rainy days we had. In the process, I gave myself a nasty case of tennis elbow (shouldn’t that be mulch elbow since I don’t play tennis?). In order for it to heal, I’ve had to do little or no drawing, stitching, gaming, knitting, typing or anything involving my right hand for the past week. Aaaargh!

Though Erin reminds me that the same thing happened when I shoveled all the gravel a few years ago right before my back went out, I found myself wallowing in worries and fears about my body being less invincible than I think... and how that affects my ability to be creative. I am less afraid of growing old than I am of getting something like arthritis that will cripple my hands... but this is the only body I live in, so I will just have to learn how to pace myself.

All I am taking to France is two sketchbooks. I plan to draw for the sheer joy of it and give my hands a break from everything else they do to fill my days.

Here’s what I meant to blog about last weekend when my hands couldn’t type...

The death of Michael Jackson and all the video tributes has made for some very interesting discussions in our household. Neither of my kids are very familiar with his music or videos and had certainly never seen pictures of what he looked like as a young man before the endless rounds of plastic surgery.

The French have a wonderful expression “etre bien dans sa peau” which basically means that you are comfortable in your own skin and happy with who you are.

Erin wore 3 inch heels to her Grade 8 graduation to have fun with her height since she knew that she’d be the tallest one there anyway. Some of her classmates had “dissed” her choice of dress as not being fancy enough when she described it to them (this is a grade 8 graduation for pete’s sake!) or told her that she didn’t know how to dress up from her jocky everyday school look... and BOY, did she prove them wrong! Why go for “pretty” when you can go for statuesque and stunning?



Nick was heartbroken that his school ceremonies were on the same night, but he bought a corsage for her and posed in our front hallway with her before she put on her heels to be taller than him.



When she strode across that stage to accept her award certificate, all I could think of was how proud her 6’3” great grandmother would have been! She always put her fingernails between my shoulder blades if she caught me slouching and told me to be proud of my height. I am sure that she is the reason I up straight and have great posture to this day.



There are many things about ourselves that we can change and quite a few that we cannot.
What matters is that each of us try to learn to “be well in our own skin”, to love who we are as unique creations and to take care of our bodies both inside and out.

I remember my own high school years and know that it will have challenging moments for Erin as well... but I am so glad that she is learning to have fun with the inches she has been given and celebrate them. To paraphrase the words of She-Hulk in her classic graphic novel “I’m 6’7” and green. People are going to stare anyway, so I might as well wear what I like!”

AMEN!!

It Make The Heart Hurt As Well As Grow Fonder....

Nick is up in Quebec City right now as the principal and also a chaperone on the Grade 8 field trip. They left early Thursday morning and though we’ve managed to touch base a few times by phone, it certainly isn’t the same as seeing each other on a daily basis.

These days, spending time apart for couples is becoming common again as one spouse may seek work out West or serve overseas. I am certainly not the only one to find the empty side of the bed disconcerting, but tonight I am feeling it deeper than I usually do.

I took the girls to see the movie UP this afternoon right after school. What an awesome, wonderful and poignant film. The only drawback was that I blubbered like a big softy at least twice in the movie. The opening scenes set up the premise so well and so passionately, that I doubt there was an adult (or savvy child) in the audience with a dry eye. The scene that got to me the most was the one later in the movie with the scrapbook. ( No, I won’t spoil it for those of you who haven’t seen it yet!) In the darkened theater, I suddenly realized that if I was missing Nick this much on a 4 day trip after almost 20 years of being married, what on earth would I do if he were to die before me after we’ve been together for another 20 or 30 years?

Being a total glutton for punishment, I picked up some pizza for the girls and we had a picnic in front of the TV for supper while I drank a few litres of water to wash the salty popcorn taste from my mouth. We put in the first DVD of Season 4 from Little House on the Prairie... and it happens to be the episode where the beloved dog, Jack, dies!! Luckily, Nick bought several boxes of tissue when they were on sale last week!

Now that the girls have gone to bed and the heavy rains have eased up, the only sound in the house is the tapping of my keyboard as I make this entry, avoiding going up to the half empty bed until I am so tired that I will sleep despite the absence of any weight or snoring noises on the other side of the bed. It is good to have time away from those who are closest to you now and then, because it makes you understand how easy it is to take people or stuff for granted.

The thing is, we cannot go through our lives without feeling things and taking chances. Any writer or illustrator who is going to REALLY speak to children wrestles with this. If there is no conflict and challenge for a character, then there is no growth. Truly great stories, legends and movies teach us about rising up in the face of adversity, about not losing hope in the face of insurmountable odds, about loving with our whole hearts even if it means that they might get broken, about standing up for what is right instead of just doing what is safe and won’t make waves.... and so much more.

That's what draws me to children's literature more than anything. Children may be growing up faster than I did in my day, but there is still room to believe...

When we see someone being heroic, we remember that it is possible for all of us to be more than we are, braver than we think and more tenacious in our hope.

BEWIXT AND BETWEEN...

At first, dealing with all the chaos of the unexpected, I didn’t know what to say...

Then, I wasn’t sure of how much I wanted to share...

Then I just got caught up in taking one day at a time...

Suddenly, so much time had gone by that it became almost intimidating to think of how to sum up the last few months.

I guess the best place to start is at the beginning.

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Right before Easter, I went in to teach 6 days of High School while my best friend took a much needed leave without pay to go on a cruise after completing her Master’s thesis and producing the musical Jesus Christ Superstar at the school. I went in to teach Office Technology and Journalism classes for the person who replaced her as the Vice-Principal.

A day after she and her family returned, my friend’s house was burned to the ground and her two cats killed in the blaze when a faulty propane tank on their BBQ exploded and destroyed their house in the ensuing blaze. As we helped them pick up the pieces of their lives, gave our godson a place to come when his parents needed to deal with all the chaos of sorting things out, the school decided that keeping me in for that teacher would offer the students a sense of consistency. Thus began over 3 weeks with one set of classes and then a variety that led to working 27 out of the last 38 teachable days!

Amid all this, Erin coped with the pinched nerve that caused the headaches, finished her volleyball season with another injury and is now waiting for the results of a mono test.

Bethany starred as one of the 2 lead roles in her school play at the District Drama Festival, finished Explorers, went off to a weekend camp and finished her 10 week preteen modeling course.

Nick has been wrestling with scheduling for next year amid one of the most ridiculous and insulting round of cutbacks to Education that our province has ever seen and trying not to rip his hair out. Thanks to the Liberal government here in New Brunswick, our schools will have less Teachers Assistants, almost no library time at any school as well as the highest number ever of split grade classes in Elementary schools as they fill each class to the legal limit to avoid paying for extra teachers. So much for the literacy-centred, quality education we were promised where our KIDS would come FIRST!

Despite the low teacher morale, I have indeed LOVED working with kids of all ages as a substitute teacher. I have taught one out of every 3 possible days so far this year, which has been way more than I expected to. After almost 2 years of juggling things around with the ebb and flow of cross stitch income, it has been really wonderful to bring in more income... but that can also become a temptation and trap unto itself.

The whole point of choosing supply teaching was to work a certain number of days a month and then devote the rest to illustration and designing...

Instead, it has been so easy to say yes to extra teaching and extra income instead of taking risks and sending work off to publishers.

Time and time again, I ask myself WHY it is easier to get busy at other things instead of allowing myself to be vulnerable.

Maybe I’ve become just as conditioned as the rest of our society to want everything FAST!

Some tasks need to be done slowly and properly if they are to accomplish what is needed.

See this junk? All of it came from our shed beside the house which hadn’t been properly sorted in 4 years. Victoria Day weekend, we took EVERYTHING out... even the dust and spiders. (I swept the dust, Nick handled the spiders)




We even had people stop at the end of the driveway to see if it was a yard sale only to leave disappointed.

4 hours, 2 runs to the dump and one run to the Salvation Army drop-off, we had a shed again.



Nick teased me for being way too OCD after labeling one set of drawers, but I smiled ever so sweetly and reminded him WHO bought me the labeler! In celebration of having a tidy shed and burning off all the calories moving stuff around, we went for the first Ice Cream Cone of the season as a family.



Now begins the transition into school closing activities, Grade 8 graduation ceremonies, piano recitals, Church picnics etc. I am learning to celebrate little moments and not take them for granted. Do you want to know how cheap lobster was here for Mother's Day or does my grin say it all?? (Cooked lobsters were $6.99 a pound! Whooo Hooo!)



Somewhere along the way, I need to think ahead to the fall and remember that I wanted this to be about balance instead of just diving into something to the oblivion of everything else.

It just goes to show you that even after school gets out, you never stop learning!

MOMENTS YOU DREAD...

There is nothing scarier than sitting beside your child in a hospital bed as they sob, not knowing what is wrong. After a great performance in the Greater Moncton Music Festival today, I took Erin back to school shortly before lunch only to receive a call around 1:30 that she’d almost collapsed in class while giving her oral presentation. I raced to school to pick her up and found her in tears with a blinding headache, almost unable to stand or walk on her own.

Five hours later we are home again and I have nothing but praise for the ER staff at the Moncton Hospital who got her right onto a stretcher in the trauma side and up for a CAT scan in a matter of hours. How thankful I am to live in a country with medicare tonight and for doctors who took her pain seriously, especially when they discovered that pressure on a certain spot at the back of her head made the pain escalate. The doctor immediately reassured her that this was a good sign since it probably meant that it was muscular or nerve related. I feel blessed that the CAT scan revealed nothing internal to worry about. The pinched nerve that had been bothering her earlier in the year has probably just reared its ugly head again in a rather dramatic way. The doctor recommended a stronger anti-inflammatory and a follow-up with our own family physician in a week to explore other options if the pain is still there.

I feel weak with relief and yet also far more sensitive to parents whose answers aren’t always as a relief as what I heard tonight.

UNEXPECTED MOMENTS...

In the whirlwind that has been supply teaching, drawing, stitching and volleyball season, I sometimes don’t know whether I am coming or going! We’ve had 3 tournaments in 3 weekends, only one of which was close enough to avoid a hotel stay. Erin has been in her element, but the rest of us are a bit bench weary.



The past few weeks have seen a wonderful melting of our snow which causes neighbours to stop and chat during their evening walks or children to don sneakers instead of boots to test out bikes. Yesterday, it was so warm that I hung the first load of towels outside on the line while I coaxed my family for a walk in the park near our home.

What a difference 24 hours can make here in the Maritimes. We woke up to our second spring blizzard in less than a week. Everything ground to a halt last Tuesday as well. The difference with this storm is that we’ve had SO much snow fall today that the roads are still almost impassible. We’ve certainly had more than the 20 cm they were calling for (almost 8 inches) Nick JUST came in from wrestling with the snowblower for over an hour and a half. The massive storm looks like it will dump a further 15 cm (almost 7 inches) on us tonight!

I have spent the whole day in my pyjamas. I can’t remember the last time I did that when I wasn’t sick and it felt wonderful. We sometimes need these unexpected moments that force us to be still to remember to recharge our batteries.

In a society where we heat or cool our cars and buildings, we sometimes think that life should go on “as normal” every single day, regardless of what Mother Nature throws at us. I think perhaps that we have separated ourselves to much from listening to the rhythm of the seasons and the weather. So instead of trying to get anywhere today, we spent time as a family. We watched Twilight, Bethany and Nick enjoyed a good round of Lego Batman, I knit and stitched, Erin researched a mini-project due Friday and drew a manga.

With the arrival of a grand nephew in the family, I’ve had an excuse to play with some baby wool that creates its own pattern as you knit. Here is Liam’s jester hat before I put the first pompom on!



Here is the wool that I want to play with to make a long pair of socks as soon as I finish my blue pair. This is all Barb’s fault for sending me that first ball of Opal wool over a year ago and Yarn Harlot for writing such an easy to follow sock pattern!!! I honestly never thought I would get this addicted to socks!



Of course I learned the hard way over the past 3 weekends that I can only knit scarves at volleyball tournaments. I knit by feel and use the needles in my hand to keep from chewing my fingernails to little stubs when the score gets close. The 4 row moss stitch pattern that I’d tried to start for Liam’s jacket was a total disaster because I could never remember which row I was on. So I just made 9 scarves instead! Maybe that’s why winter hasn’t left yet.

It is wonderful to see both my daughters coming into their own. Bethany has started a 10 week modeling course and just loves it. I enrolled her to help with her posture, because she’d begun to slouch a bit, but she is having fun learning about proper nutrition, body care and how to walk down a runway. Great fun for someone who was hooked on America’s Top Model in reruns!

Erin had a brilliant weekend in Halifax at the tournament, even though her team got eliminated in the semifinals after going into them as the top ranked team in the tourney. Her coach had purchased silver medals for each team member to make up for the lack thereof at the last tournament along with two MVP trophies. Erin not only scored the winning points to get her team to the semifinals, she also spent Saturday encouraging her team not to give up when the going got tough... which earned her this bling from a very classy coach.



This weekend, she also met the scout from one of the universities in Nova Scotia who asked if he could talk to us at tournaments over the next few years as Erin went through High School! I am sure that this won’t be the last time someone talks to us about where Erin might play and go to school someday, but it was pretty exciting to meet a scout at almost 14!

Just as the weather can switch from one extreme to another, our lives can change from one day to the next...

but with every warm day comes the promise of spring...

with every blank page comes a drawing to be...

with every ball of yarn come countless possibilities...

and with every experience... come hundreds of dreams.

Dream Well!

Trying to Find the Right Balance...

It feels a little bit like walking a tightrope!

I came home from the SCBWI conference in NY and leapt right into a crazy round of supply teaching days and Writers In The School visits. After two years of very bleak income from designing cross stitch, it has been a real help to our family to be able to earn a fairly regular income from substitute teaching. I’ve also discovered that I really, REALLY love it!

Doing school visits with the Writers In the Schools Program (or in my case Illustrator) is even more fun because I get to talk to the kids about a fairly nontraditional career, living a creative life and, of course, having a back-up plan.

But I have REALLY missed the FULL days to DRAW!

So I think that I am finally finding the balance between teaching enough days to help the bottom line and not feeling guilty when I need a day to work on pieces for my portfolio. I have trained myself to think of it as a DIFFERENT kind of work that day, instead of a day at HOME... so that I don’t get lost in the trap of laundry, e-mail, paperwork etc. That’s what weekends are for (except for right now when 3 consecutive weekend volleyball tournaments are making things interesting!) and not my painting/drawing days.

It is a bit like knitting a sock. I finished the purple pair for my sister and jumped right in to a blue pair for myself. A sock has many stages and you cannot rush or avoid any part of the sock... or it ceases to be a sock.



Slowly but surely, I am finding the balance between all my various parts: teacher, artist, wife, mother etc. and learning to savour the tasks at hand for each instead of dashing between them and getting tangled!

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

Here is a fun, Girl Power, calorie-free, guilt-free little design to stitch up for yourself or for someone you love to remind them that they don’t HAVE to have someone in their life to be complete.

I have been happily married to Nick for almost 20 years now, but I also have a lot of friends who have been through messy divorces, lost husbands to illness or sudden deaths lately. I am also raising two girls in a world where the pressure to “pair off” and have someone special in your life has never been stronger. I keep telling them not to settle for SECOND BEST and to just spend time figuring out who they are for the next few years at least.

This year’s Valentine Treat can be found on my website Newsletter page.

Since my Mother-In-Law has taken the girls for the night... that’s all the time I am going to spend blogging. I have a date with my Best Friend (who just happens to be my husband)!

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!

Messing With My Wacom Tablet...

I booked today off for drawing and also to get a Power Point presentation ready for tomorrow’s high school visit with the Writers In The Schools program. I am used to doing smaller sessions with kids where I can show my drawings and paintings to 30 kids at a time, but this is over 250 Grade 9s at once in an auditorium. I am certainly NOT going to pass around my artwork!

I wanted some images to tie together the 4 Creation Steps and decided to make my own clip art using the tablet and Photoshop Elements.

Stage One: The Idea



This is that eureka moment when an idea pops into your head like a bolt of white lightning. Sometimes it even wakes you up from a deep sleep and demands to be captured in a sketchbook. Nick says it is like living with a giant hamster when he wakes up in the dark and hears me scribbling in my sketchbook without turning on a light....

Stage Two: Thumbnails



These are supposed to be scribbles. I often fill a whole page or two with little postage-size scrawls to try out different compositions. Time and time again at the SCBWI conferences, I hear that if your book doesn’t work at the thumbnail stage, it won’t work when the pictures are bigger. I’d rather spend my time getting it right at the smaller stage than having to repaint all my final artwork!

Stage Three: Drawing



This is where the rubber meets the road. At this stage, I like to spend the time to get the drawing just right, without losing to much of its energy. That can be a fine line between perfection and rigidity, but at least I can still erase things at this stage.

Stage Four: Final Image



The finished product is actually the only step that most people see. This is why I feel it is SO important for kids of any age (and even adults) to understand all the work that happens before they see the final painting, story, video game, movie, song etc. Maybe if more people understood how much time and effort goes into creating things that inspire us, they wouldn’t be so quick to steal it or share things illegally!

So there are my four little doodles of the day with my Wacom tablet. It still feels clunky compared to what I can do with my “bare” hands, but I did have some fun with textures and effects that I couldn’t have done easily with my pencils, markers and paint. It is a learning curve of sorts... and I will have to learn to be patient with myself.

I arrived home safely from the SCBWI show in NY, after Air Canada’s best attempts to strand me in Montreal for a few extra hours, and our plane got in only 45 minutes late. Sitting in airport lounges for longer than expected gave me lots of time to journal about my experiences and reflect upon WHY I feel so strongly that this is what I need to do.

What is this hunger to speak or draw stories into being? What is this restless gnawing in the pit of our souls that demands release? No wonder the creative process is often compared to giving birth... the travails of loving something enough to it change you as it grows inside of you... and the sheer work/pain/sweat of bringing it into the world where you set it free to grow and have a life of its own...

The feel of holding the first and second books that I illustrated were similar to the wonder that swept through me as I held each of my daughters in my arms for the first time. Each one was unique. Both of them were different from the other and yet that same swell of emotion poured forth from some deep inner well of my being. “Look, World! Look at what I have helped to create!”

In an instant, all of the work and pain and sweat are forgotten in some glorious euphoria of pride and you know that you would do it all again. That you would put yourself in that place of vulnerability and doubt and sweat and angst because it is simply what you need to do.

I wish I didn’t have meetings today. All I really want to do is paint after all the ideas I got this weekend!

All Done and Just Beginning...


It’s like finishing a story. There is something about an ending of a book when you can still think about the characters and the magic that you’ve just been involved in lingers with you for a while... That’s how I feel now that the SCBWI conference is over here in NY. It will take more than a few days to process all that I have seen and heard... it will linger with me as I am getting back to family and routine, percolate at the back of my head as I fall asleep and be in mind every time I pick up pen or paint brush.

Not that it wasn’t also fun to wander out into New York City this afternoon and gawk like a total tourist!!

Times Square was very cool!


I am glad that my kids didn’t see how huge the Toys R Us was here, but I did have to pose in front of the Animal Crossing display. I would have been even more excited if it had been for Harvest Moon Island of Happiness!



The guy in the giant panda suit was just TOO funny!!



We walked all the way up to the sushi restaurant that had been recommended to us, only to discover that it didn’t open for another 2 hours!! We found a tiny little restaurant that did pizza and each got a slice before we ate each other then wandered the 8 blocks or so back to the hotel.

Since then, I have been packing and percolating ideas, dreaming and doodling and thinking about how badly my fingers are itching to pick up a paintbrush when I get home!

INFORMATION OVERLOAD!

I feel like a sponge that has been thrown into a pool instead of a bathtub! I can’t possibly process all the information that has been floating around the Illustrator Intensive program today, but I thought I would blog about a few of the highlights.

Our morning started off with an amazing talk by Leo & Diane Dillon who work in tandem as a husband and wife illustration team. Their incredible body of work was inspiring to see and also uplifting in how it encouraged any artist to continue to grow and learn. I bought one of their books and had the chance to get them both to autograph it afterwards.

After that came a head warping session about how to paint in a traditional manner using Digital medium. I only have Photoshop Elements rather than Photoshop CS3, so a LOT of the pull down menus he was showing us didn’t work the same, but many of us sat there with our laptops and tablets trying out the shortcuts, tips or tricks that got crammed into the two hour session. At one point, I just shut my computer down and took notes because my head was starting to hurt! The room was also very chilly. Even the heat of all the computers humming didn’t warm us up much.

At noon, we had to take our portfolios and promotional cards down to the other end of the floor to enter them in the exhibition. With over 100 illustrators taking part, even though we were dropping them off in alphabetical chunks, it took about 15 minutes of our 45 minute lunch break. Teresa and I headed up to our room and decided to leave our computers behind for the afternoon session, but that meant running down to the business centre to print out our “childhood memories” for the graphic novel workshop. This didn’t leave much time for anything other than a granola bar and a banana before we headed into our afternoon session.



Elise Primavera ran the workshop on graphic novels which included some of her history as an illustrator and then a challenging round-robin story activity where we had less than 5 minutes to create and introduce 2 characters in 2 panels of a graphic novel thumbnail. When the time was up, we passed the page to the person on our left and started a new 2 panel illustration continuing the story by the person to our right. Elise guided us by telling us things we had to do to introduce conflict etc. but with only 4 minutes for each 2 squares x 5 pages... it got a little exhausting and overwhelming. To top it all off, our group got to act out the best story from our circle. Being the shy, retiring type I got to act out the part of a hungry dog..... and Teresa was a great sport about being the T-bone steak (it’s hard to explain!) At least I didn’t have to bite the other dog’s butt like in the cartoon panel one of our members drew! Many of the stories ended up involving food or being hungry, so I don’t think that Teresa and I were the only ones to skip lunch!


The last session of the day was the Art Director’s Panel which ended up being SO much more nerve-wracking than I’d dreamed! Back in December, they’d asked attendees to submit images for a panel, but I thought the members would just pull out images to match their points about key elements of children’s book illustration (ie. strong characters, good composition, use of colour etc.) As the panel started, the first 3 images from one illustrator came up and they began to talk about consistency of style etc., reviewing the 3 images as a whole. My stomach sank somewhere under the table to my toes. I thought about the variety in the 3 pictures I had submitted and just dreaded what they might say if my work suddenly appeared on the screen.

Anyone who has ever read “Steering by Starlight” by Martha Beck can appreciate how my inner lizard was having a TOTAL MELTDOWN!! I actually own a Webkinz Gecko that I can “Sneaky” who I can usually pat when I get these sneak panic attacks... but she was all the way back in my hotel room!



Two hours of angst, but all in vain. Thankfully (or should I feel disappointed) none of my images appeared on the screen to be critiqued. When the session was over, Teresa and I met up with Paul to go in search of some much needed FOOD! Then it was back up to the hotel to wait until we were allowed to go into view all of the portfolios once the Art Directors were finished looking at them. The lighting was much better than during the portfolio exhibition in LA this summer and there were less people allowed in to see the work (just the illustrators themselves instead of everyone) but I still found it VERY confusing. I wish that each Art Director or publisher that attended the SCBWI portfolio review had been given a pile of coloured sticky notes or tabs and been asked to stick one on any image in an illustrator’s portfolio that they found particularly strong. This would certainly give us more feedback!! I also found a huge discrepancy in the number of images in the portfolios. This summer, I kept hearing that you should only put in your 5 to 10 strongest images.... but some of the binders there had between a dozen and 25 pictures each!! I looked as if I just didn’t draw much instead of the fact that I really took the time to edit my selections...

As an illustrator, the most valuable thing that anyone can share with me, beyond their own journey or experience, is feedback and guidance on what works or what doesn’t and where to go from here. Hopefully, there will be more of that tomorrow.

OK... my head really, really hurts... but only because I think I’ve learned way too much to process tonight. I didn’t sleep much last night, but I know that I will sleep well in a very short while...

WE MADE IT (JUST)!

I am typing this from the relative comfort of our hotel room as the hustle and bustle of downtown Manhattan drift up from below in a symphony of honks and sirens.

The snowstorm that wreaked havoc across the Eastern United States and Central Canada on Tuesday and Wednesday reached Moncton late yesterday afternoon. When Nick checked my flight status before supper, he discovered that Air Canada had “proactively” canceled the flights out of Montreal that night and hence also canceled my early morning flight to Montreal the next morning!

A long wait on the toll free number confirmed that Paul Burns and I had already been rebooked on a 12:40 flight to Montreal Thursday, continuing on to New York and arriving in LaGuardia just before supper time. Later than our original booking, but at least getting us there before the Intensive workshops that we’d signed up for all day Friday. I called Teresa Wentzler to let her know that we had been rebooked and she was able to arrange a later flight time due to the weather advisories in her own area, guaranteeing that she wouldn’t be left in the wilds of New York without us for too long. I asked about the other flight to New York via Halifax, but she told me to wait until the morning to see what the weather was like.

Nick and I got the girls up to Mom and John’s house, finished packing for my trip and his meeting the next day in Fredericton, then went to bed as the snowflakes swirled madly outside. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong with flying through Montreal later in the day, but I chalked it up to nerves and tried to get to sleep. Around 2 am, the sound of ice pellets and sleet hitting the window woke me up. Sure enough, the dire predictions of a transition to ice rain had come true. Resisting the urge to get up and prowl around the house for chocolate, I made myself go back to sleep by counting dragons chasing sheep.

At 6 am, we woke to the news that schools throughout the province were closed for the day. Since the police were advising people to stay off the roads as much as possible, Nick decided to teleconference for his meeting instead of driving 2 hours each way to Fredericton and back in one day. The morning news mentioned the fact that most early morning flights out of Moncton had already been canceled, but that airports were hoping to get things moving again as quickly as possible.

The little niggling feeling was back in the pit of my stomach. What if a plane never arrived from Montreal to pick us up? I grabbed my fluffy housecoat and raced downstairs to get the laptop out of the bag and bring it upstairs to bed. WiFi means being able to check the status of other flights from beneath the warmth of your duvet! Nick helped me find out if the flight from Halifax to Moncton was still flying and it was. I called Paul and asked him if he was game to try getting to the airport for 8 am instead of noon to see if we could jump on the flight to Halifax since there would be a plane to get on!! He agreed and since school had been canceled, he even coaxed his teenage son to drive us both to the airport!

We arrived and managed to get seats on the flight to Halifax then on to LaGuardia, but the agent also left us on the flight to Montreal just in case. After going through security, we discovered that the Continental flight from 6 am was still grounded and the runway closed! Checking the monitors, we discovered that the flight from Halifax was only 15 minutes late coming in and the hearty Dash 8 landed with no problems at all. Before we knew it, we were boarded and on our way... only to discover that the high winds made for some pretty rough turbulence going up and coming down.

Once we landed in Halifax and got off the plane, we cleared US Customs to discover that the flight to LaGuardia was delayed until 1:10 because the plane had yet to arrive from the backlog in Montreal and Boston. I was able to get a hold of Teresa on her cell phone to let her know about our change in plans. We would now be arriving 45 minutes ahead of her into New York instead of an hour behind. Paul and I ordered lunch and bided our time until we boarded the flight. Once I got on the plane and had time to catch up on the day’s events in my journal, I realized how tired I was. The adrenaline was wearing off now that I knew we would indeed reach New York safely in time for the Friday events.

Guess what we discovered as we stepped off the plane into the terminal and checked the monitors?? The flight from Montreal to LaGuardia got canceled due to mechanical difficulties with the aircraft!!! I could have been stranded in Montreal right now or forced to fly to Toronto before going on to NY.

Always listen to the little niggling feelings....

OK. I’ve been writing this blog on and off between angsting over the order of my images in my portfolio, trying to find a place to make one colour photocopy, writing my story for the graphic novel workshop tomorrow. We’ve gawked at Grand Central Station and the Chrysler building and acted like total tourists in this amazing city.

Time to go to bed... I don’t think I can sleep due to terror/excitement, but I should probably try.

SURFACING...

I have no idea where the month of January went!

Actually, that’s not quite true. 5 days were spent as a substitute teacher in the schools, 2 days in Fredericton with the Writers In the Schools Program, 2 days of a whirlwind visit with my Dad and Barb here for a visit, several days trying to beat my head against my computer when it stopped being able to make readable .pdf files for some reason and the rest of the time I was frantically getting ready for the SCBWI conference in New York City this weekend.



I’ve been busy...



quite busy...


OK... really, really busy!

So here I am with the portfolio mostly ready to go (I have to decide which of 2 books I am going to put them in), my promotional stuff is ready at the printer for Nick to pick up on the way home, my new website DragonDoodles.ca is ready to go...

...and I have just found out that there is the potential for a huge snowstorm to hit tomorrow through Thursday morning (when I am supposed to fly out)! The urge to scream or eat chocolate is pretty strong!!

Since I cannot control Mother Nature, I have decided to concentrate on the things that I CAN control:

I can make a packing list so that I don’t forget anything important.

I can celebrate the fact that I have new work to show off once I arrive there safely.

I can think about the great travel stories I may have to tell other attendees.

I can decide which art supplies pack well, just in case I get stuck in an airport longer than I had planned.

I can blog from wherever I get stuck since I HAVE to take the new laptop with me for one of the workshops (which reminds me... I need to install Photoshop Elements on it before I go!)

I can write a story to go with the 2 polar bear illustrations I had such fun creating for my portfolio.

I can bring along some graph paper and design something new in cross stitch.

I can bring along the pair of socks I need to finish knitting.

and if worst comes to worst...

I can always break down and buy a tiny bit of chocolate somewhere along the way!

Time to Breathe... Time to Rest... Time to Gather and Time to Dream...

I can’t believe how fast the Fall slipped into Winter and into Christmas! There is a lull now after the presents are opened before the chaos of a family gathering and feast for me to slip down to the keyboard and write my first entry since November.

Almost every waking moment since Retreat has been filled with teaching, drawing, painting, volleyball tournaments, School District Championships (Erin’s team won!!), baking, Christmas pageant rehearsals and much more. I have taught or been a Visiting Illustrator through the Writers in the Schools Program every day that I have not booked myself off the system to paint, averaging 3 days a week or more! This went a long way to helping our family’s bottom line, especially in these uncertain economic times. My girls have learned how to get home and get settled into their homework for the first half an hour after school before I get home from supply teaching at the high school where Erin will head next fall. It has a school day that is an hour longer than theirs, but the bus ride home from school takes at least half an hour. They are growing up SO fast... It astounds me that they will be 14 and 10 next April!



After a fall of weekend travels to tournaments, the Provincial 15 and under Volleyball season wrapped up on the same weekend as a book signing and our church Christmas pageant. Life was a wee bit chaotic for 48 hours. Erin’s team finished in 5th place overall despite a good win/loss ratio because of the points scored against them. She enjoyed playing with the girls from last year’s team who moved up to the older division, but she is also thrilled that she can play another year in the 14 and under league that begins in January. The loss at the provincial level was more than offset by winning the School District championships as the captain of her team. This is the first time that her school has ever won a trophy and banner for girl’s Volleyball!

School wrapped up for the Christmas holidays after two FABULOUS report cards. We spent a week or so doing all the baking for the church baskets and teacher gifts. Can you see my dining room table at all under the cookies?? I do tend to go a bit overboard...



Last Saturday, Erin decided that she needed to spend some of her hard earned baby sitting money at the mall. She and two other friends roamed on their own for a few hours while Nick, Bethany and I searched for the last of the things on our lists, then her friends came home for a sleep over and gingerbread house decorating party. I think the house turned out better than last year’s with the extra creative input. It also helped to have extra bodies to nibble the candy leftovers!



Today will be a day of long distance phone calls to far-flung family and gathering with those who are near. Nick can’t wait to play his lego Batman on the Wii with the girls and I am looking forward to lots of long soaks in the tub with all the wonderful spa stuff that my family bought for me.

The holiday vacation is also a wonderful break for me because I can’t get any calls to supply teach! This lets me focus on spending time with my family and immersing myself in getting my portfolio ready for the SCBWI conference at the end of January in New York City. I have been rediscovering how much I like watercolours with a piece called “Raining Cats and Dogs”. I am just building up the shadows in the raincoats before adding the colour after masking all the areas off that I needed to keep white with frisket. It is SUCH fun to play with!! I am hoping to have 4 strong pieces ready that none of the Art Directors saw this summer in L.A. Anything more than that will be gravy.



So to those of you who have been checking this blog for updates and then e-mailing to see if I am OK... I am doing fine... more than FINE! I hope that all of you can find moments of peace and tranquility during the chaos of the Holiday Season... to reflect upon the year that was and dream about the year to come... then take the first steps out to make some of those dreams a reality!

To those who are traveling at this time of year, may your journeys be safe ones!

Of Accomplishments and Dreams...

I am literally counting the hours.

Tomorrow night, I abandon my family and beg my husband to drive my mother and I almost 40 minutes away from our city to a wonderful haven known as Camp Wildwood for an AWESOME cross stitch retreat! For almost 48 hours, I will be free from e-mail, phone, children and husband. Yes, I will be sleeping in my sleeping bag on a mattress on the floor (because the bunk beds are just too SHORT for me!) but someone else will be doing all the cooking and dishes. If I want to sit and stitch or knit or draw until midnight... I can! If I want to take a nap or go for a walk in the middle of the afternoon... I can!

Can you see why I am counting down the hours until I leave?

I used to lie to my youngest daughter every time I went to retreat. She would tell me how much she was going to miss me... and I would tell her “ I will miss you too!”. Now that she is older, I can be honest with her. I explain that Mommy will be much happier and much more relaxed after an event like this than if I didn’t go! Since the girls have Monday and Tuesday off from school, I will still have time to play with them and get stuff done here at home. I can truly skip off with minimal guilt this year! I probably need it even more this year because of all the supply work that I am getting. I have worked or taught outside the home every day this week. Great for the budget... not so great for getting ready for the SCBWI conference that I just registered for today in New York City at the end of January. I need to have 5 or 6 new pieces in my portfolio for that show so that they see change and growth since this summer in LA.

Instead of giving in to panic... I turn to my knitting and stitching. Knitters and stitchers know that you have to just work on the piece one stitch at a time.

LOOK!! I finally finished that second pair of socks! Aren’t they COOL???!! This is all your fault, Barb!



With volleyball season underway, we spent last Saturday in Fredericton at a 15 and under Provincial Volleyball tournament with Erin. Smart, multitasking mother and illustrator that I am, I had already arranged a book signing at the Fredericton Chapters bookstore with the author of Owen and the Dinosaur, Paul Burns. I watched Erin’s first set of games and then snuck off for 2 hours to peddle our books. They sold very well!



On the way down in the car, I decided to start an Irish Moss pattern scarf. The texture of the wool and colour shading lent itself well to this motif. I was fine in the car and during the second set of games that I watched when I returned to the tournament... but then our team made it to the semifinals. Since I knit by feel, I can watch the game and knit at the same time... but I found that I was looking down to often to see which row I was on to keep the pattern working properly! So this scarf got stuffed down into my “Knitting Bag of Holding” (yes, I did play a LOT of D&D!) and out came another tempting colour and new needles for a second scarf to knit in “plain old knitting”. Love the colour!



I also learned that you can actually knit TWO socks at once!! I bought some wonderful sock yarn at the Purple Purl in Toronto and started to work on two socks from the same ball so that my tension would stay the same for both socks. I did promise myself that 2008 would be the year that I learned to knit socks and I am well on my way to being totally addicted.



Of course I did buy a new knitting project to take up to the retreat.... but you will have to wait until the next blog entry to find out what could tempt me away from my sock quest!

Recharging Batteries...

If it hadn’t been for the CreativFestival and all the wonderful memories of last weekend, I doubt that I would have found the strength to get through this week. That... and having my sock to work on at the hospital helped.

Bethany is getting used to having the splint on her arm. It still hurts quite a bit and she found it hard to sit on the sidelines on Thursday when the rest of her class went swimming. Every grade 4 class in our school district gets 5 weeks of swimming as an extra gym event once during the year and Bethany will have to miss the last 2 sessions due to having her splint on her arm. At least we were able to remove it to bathe and wash her hair yesterday, but it felt very fragile to her and she was glad to have the support of the splint back on as soon as she was dry.

One of the girls on Erin’s team lost her father suddenly this week and so we had another visitation and funeral to go to. This has been the second girl close to her in age to lose a father figure in the past 5 weeks. She has been shaken by this since she can imagine all too well how she would feel if it were HER Dad. She’s kept a close eye on Nick during the week and keeps telling him to take care of himself.

Another young boy here in Moncton that used to attend Nick’s school decided to end his own life and that caused ripples for Nick to deal with among the staff who had taught him in the years just before Nick became Principal.

There were some bright moments as well. I spoke in the next community over from ours during a Writers In The Schools program and head off down to Riverside-Albert to speak to another Elementary school tomorrow. I love visiting with children and helping them understand what an illustrator does. They also get to “boss my hands around” as we draw a monster or silly picture together, which is always great fun.

Friday night, our family went to “Boo At The Zoo” put on by the Magnetic Hill Zoo as a fundraiser. They convert the zoo into haunted sketches with a fireworks show and almost a hundred volunteers. It was cold and crisp, but you could see so many stars in the sky as we waited in line with some of our best friends. I wore a long blond wig, a blue dress, a tiara and a huge wand... yes, I was the Size Fairy! Wearing my 3 inch heels, I got asked if I was on stilts a few times until they saw Nick dressed up as a huge pirate. Our best friend Karen dressed up as Jack Sparrow and had the walk and mannerisms down to a T! When one haunted house part got scary, she even pranced away like Jack causing the security guards to bust a gut!

It was wonderful to have all the great memories from the CreativFestival to savour though. Meals with good friends, pajama kit packing parties, getting the giggles in the dark, crying at a beautiful story from one of the class attendees that made the trials and tribulations of being a designer all feel worth it, sharing new projects with old friends, finding new craft supplies to fondle and inspire me and wandering the streets of a huge city then having the fun of flying back to the one that has truly become my home.

I just can’t wait for that “FALL BACK” hour of extra sleep next weekend!!