"Arrange whatever pieces come your way" - Virginia Woolf
Besides being a wife, mom, and grandmother, I have had a lot of non-artsy jobs in my life. Starting with working as a care aide in a seniors’ home, a hospital unit and medical-records clerk, school teacher, medical transcriptionist, freelance writer and book author, art was never in my wheelhouse.
Then, some years ago, I saw some beautiful pencil illustrations and got the idea I’d like to learn to draw. Gifts of drawing pencils, watercolor paints, and a sketchbook, along with the request to review a book on Bible art journalling sparked and fed my new interest. I eventually joined Instagram and a whole new world of artists and what they could create opened up to me.
Books and videos became my teachers. Big influences were Jenna Rainey’s book Everyday Watercolor and Samantha Dion Baker’s book Draw Your Day. I took the challenge to create art every day and slowly grew more confident. I am currently enrolled in Billy Showell’s School of Botanical Art where I’m honing my preferred style of realism.
Two quotes are especially meaningful to me.
About art:
“Anything can be drawn and it becomes beautiful once it’s on the page” - Samantha Dion Baker from Draw Your Day.
About life (and the fact that I believe none of my [or your] journey is happenstance but all a beautifully planned destiny):
“We have become His poetry, a re-created people that will fulfill the destiny He has given each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny and the good works we would do to fulfill it” - Ephesians 2:10 - The Bible (Passion Translation).
