Not that I post with any kind of regularity or schedule, but here I am on a Tuesday. I’ve enrolled in a five session course on portraits with acrylics and the first session went pretty well. The advantage of acrylics is the drying time and how it’s much easier to take it home to continue work on it. Compared to pastels where the work has to be carefully transported, acrylics are easy. I’m enjoying these courses which are in series of five sessions each time focusing on a particular medium as I feel like I want to understand how different mediums work.

I do enjoy portraits a lot and I want to try and see what different things I can do with it once I get the basics down.

When I was a young girl, my mother once showed my notebook of writings to the daughter of a friend of hers. I think my Mom was proud that I was writing, but I was quite embarassed because her friend’s daughter was (at that time) already playing the violin for a big orchestra. I was like: Eh…Mom. Why?

But instead of dismissing my work, this young woman looked at it carefully, then she said something to me which I’ve carried around much like a puzzle that I keep trying to unfold.

“An artist,” she said. “Can see beyond the leaf.”

I never got around to asking her what she meant because soon after that this violinist went abroad to play with other orchestras and our paths never crossed again.

I think of her words every now and then, though.

Today, those words came bubbling up again and I thought of the following reply:

“Beyond the leaf is a world (maybe more than one)

Lives are lived. Not all are told or written down in story.

Not one is insignificant.“

To you who read these words, may you be surprised by small moments of daily joy. Thank you for stopping by.

Here’s one of my favorite exercises from this week. On a background of sennelier soft pastel, an impression of branch and leaf.