Hello Animal Fans!
HAPPY JUNE! Welcome to the second Paper.Ink.Paws. blog. I hope you are all having a great time with your critter-pals. It’s been wonderful hiking deeper into mountains for our hikes with Oliver. Though we always love our Bonneville Shoreline Trail romps with our favorite pals too. It is very green up on the BST now, such a fleeting time for our foothills. Quite Glorious. Soon it will evolve into a lovely analogous dry and warm color palette. The kind that is hard to see a rattlesnake in. Uh oh, time for that snake aversion training. Now that things are opening up post-COVID (carefully of course) I am hoping to start visiting shelters soon. I can’t wait to start my endeavor of creative response to critters! You’ll be the first to hear about it.
In the meantime, I’ll share with you my earliest known drawing that my parents saved from my young exploratory artistic days. On a recent visit back home, my mom gave me a piece of paper with pencil lines scribbled all over it. I have no recollection of this image. However, located in the upper left corner in my dad’s handwriting it clearly states, Sandy, 4 years. Mom said in a quiet tone as she handed it to me, “I’m so sorry honey, I felt so bad when I saw this. You must have been sad when you made this drawing back then.” (Or you might be thinking right now that maybe little Sandy was perhaps a tad angry considering the obvious velocity of the drawn lines) I exclaimed, “Why would you be sorry? I LOVE this, it’s fantastic!” she asked “WHY?” I practically screamed with joy. “BECAUSE IT’S A DOG!!!” She replied with a “huh” of disbelief type of sound. I showed her the dog’s ears, how his head is turned to the side, but you can see his two dark little eyes and nose. His feet are moving, swishing his rather long fur coat! I am not certain my mom ever actually “saw” the dog but, HOLY COW, I love this drawing. It inspires me to attempt a series of drawings and prints based on this early artifact. It has several of my favorite artistic strategies; mark making, minimal palette and dog. Sometimes that is all it takes, a few of my favorite things (and yes, I am humming an old tune now) … Time to trot off to my studio and MAKE MORE MARKS.
HAPPY TRAILS with HAPPY TAILS!
Sandy & Oliver