Saturday, June 4, 2011

Sketching with Mom

I went sketching with Mom recently - the first time she's tried drawing from life in several years, I think. It was fun. We went to Pittsboro, near where she lives, and drew the co-op market. The periodic cicadas were making their weird alien sound in the wooded areas around us, rising and falling in volume. And a mockingbird sang with all his might in a tree beside us as we sketched, changing his tune to so many different things that sometimes we both burst out laughing at the contrasts.

Then we had about 20 minutes left for one more short sketch, so we went to a graveyard in Pittsboro's center, where flags were already installed for Memorial Day, and we spotted a stone angel on a tombstone. We sketched the angel (the sun was getting quite hot by the time I finished - the view I wanted did not allow a seat in the shade). The little girl remembered on the stone below this little sculpture did not reach her ninth birthday. The little angel is heart wrenching. Pencil in my large moleskine.

I would like to do this again with Mom soon.

1 comment:

susan said...

It's wonderful you got to spend some time with your mother doing something creative. My mother was the only parent who came to stay with us when we lived in our communal house in Vancouver, BC. She enjoyed getting involved in most of the arts and crafts we were exploring and surprised herself at how versatile she actually was.

Your drawing of the figure on the headstone is very nice. It's very sad when children die.. or any of us for that matter. It's a good thing I'm not an atheist even though I don't do organized religion.