Up, Up And Away For My Beautiful Friend Joan

My friend Joan Brugh (r) took that photo of me (l) ages ago prior
to the only ride I've taken in a hot air balloon.

By DEB SAINE

Sept. 6, 2018

im2insaine@mac.com

Man (or woman) makes plans and the gods laugh, right?

Well, the plan for this post had been to tell you the story about my friendship with Joan Brugh. She died at the age of 44 in March 1991. The cause? A recurrence of breast cancer. She was an amazing person and we had shared a love of hot air balloons, racquetball and laughter.

But right now, I'm exhausted. It's been a particularly long day, I've got a headache and I just don't have it in me emotionally to write that story. So for now, I'm going to share the slideshow I'd already pieced together and dedicate it to the memory of a true friend who continues to be missed all these years later.

I'll save our story for another day ... unless, of course, the gods once again have other plans ... 

Sunny Days Filled With Sunflowers

Watercolor by Deb Saine

By  DEB SAINE

Sept. 5, 2018

im2insaine@mac.com

Among the dream subjects I've wanted to photograph over the years, the top two had been hot air balloons and sunflowers. 

The photographs in this slide show were taken a couple of years ago near my hometown of Peru, IN. It was July of 2015, I believe, when a friend posted a couple of shots on Facebook that she'd taken in a local field of sunflowers that had grown in instead of the usual crops of either soybeans or corn. 

I messaged her as soon as I saw her post to find out exactly where she'd taken her photos. As soon as she gave me two locations, I grabbed my two digital 35 mm cameras and headed for my SUV. The trip to Peru took about 20 minutes.

As soon as I saw the first field, I was ecstatic. I think I spent at least an hour wandering that field and snapping away before going to take more photographs at the second field. I can't tell you how thrilled I was after I got home and uploaded all the shots. Among the many upsides of having digital cameras the number of photographs I can take without worrying about what shots turned out and how much film I may have wasted.

You can see for yourself what the outcome of my photo op with one of Mother Nature's greatest gifts:

With Books, 'You Can Learn How To Do Anything'

And these aren't even all the titles!

By DEB SAINE

Sept. 4, 2018
im2insaine@mac.com

 I laughed out loud the other day while I was listening to Tara Roskell's January podcast interview with art journalist Megan Jeffery after the topic turned to research.

"Once you start researching something you're passionate about," Jeffery said, "it's like, 'And now, I must research many things about this.'"

The Connecticut-based illustrator was speaking with Roskell for an episode of @KickInTheCreatives. And the reason I laughed about what Jeffery said was because I do the same thing. You could say I'm something of a research addict.

Mom is the primary reason I became a relentless researcher. She believed to her very core that if you could read, you could learn how to do anything, including laundry. I was 12 or 13 and we were living in an apartment with a communal washer and dryer.

When I said that I had "absolutely no idea" how to "do a load of laundry," she didn't hesitate to say "just read the back of the box of detergent and it'll tell you how." I already was an avid reader with a healthy appetite for ordering too many titles from Scholastic Books and the Literary Guild's book-of-the-month club for kids. After she gave me that bit of advice, it became part of my argument with her whenever I begged her to buy me yet another book.

"Mom," I'd say, "you were the one who said reading could teach me how to do anything!"

I also was a natural. My reading and vocabulary scores on achievement tests in elementary school were consistently in the upper 90th percentile as was my ability to comprehend reference materials. As a senior, I was fortunate to have been a student of my high school's best English teacher. It was under his instructions that I learned how to use the library and its resources to dig deep into a subject.

Mom's philosophy and Mr. Fox's tutelage about research have proven to be invaluable throughout my life from helping me with writing essays and theme papers in college to researching topics for interviews and writing feature articles as a reporter.

I'm naturally curious and I love to learn how to do new things. I think I died and went to heaven when Google and Amazon became regular parts of my life. With Google, it was like I was on a never-ending scavenger hunt with clues popping up in real time that sent me places around the globe in search of information.

Add being bipolar and a bibliophile to the mixture of research addiction and natural curiosity and there you have it: owning more art books than I truly need. Like Jeffery's, once I become passionate about something, I must research many things about that topic whether it's how to draw or create an art journal, make a sculpture using recyclables or delving into the use of watercolors or acrylics or colored pencils. I do the same when I find out about a new artist whose work I like.

The books pictured here are the ones
I used for creating the drawings I've included
that were done sometime between 2010-2012

And on a side-note, I ordered two of the three books Jeffery mentions during her interview: the Kindle version of "Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice" and a used paperback edition of "Year of the Doodle" by Dawn Sokol.

Here are a few creations I learned how to do using various books and/or web sites:

A Pinterest pin led me
to an artist's web site
where I found step-by-step instructions.

These art journal pages were
created using prompts from a
web site challenge I stumbled across
a few years ago. 

I used a book titled, "Draw Lab,"
to create the three drawings posted above.

"Drawing With Imagination"
(see above and below)

"Drawing What You See"
(above and below)

And then the next five were inspired
using books about cartooning and caricatures, circa 2010-2012.

    

When Words Fail, Art Can Pick Up The Slack

"It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing
incessantly, that one fine day you discover, to your
surprise, that you have rendered something in its true color."
-Dutch-French Painter Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)

By DEB SAINE

Sept. 3, 2018

im2insaine@mac.com

I'm not sure exactly how old I was — nine, maybe 10 — when Mom asked me if I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. After I told her I wanted to be a writer, she laughed and said, "Oh, Debbie, you'll never make any money."  

She'd been right about that the same way she would be right about so many other things over the decades to come. But what she failed to understand then was that being a writer was what would make me feel whole, make me feel complete. Writing was something I did well and that would eventually give my life a sense of purpose.

Two years after that conversation, life threw me what felt like nine-innings worth of curve balls. My parents divorced, Mom and I moved out of the neighborhood and into a two-bedroom apartment and I started junior high as a seventh-grader.

As if adjusting to life in a new home, a new neighborhood swarming with mostly retirees and a new school environment weren't difficult enough, I also had to deal with the man I fluctuated between referring to as The Sperm Donor and Big Daddy Dirt Pile. To my classmates, he was Mr. Saine, the vice principal. To me, he was a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic that I wanted nothing to do with.

That also became the same year I learned what a valuable tool writing could be in helping me to survive. One of my teachers realized how much I was struggling and threw me a lifeline by suggesting journaling as a way to work through what was going on inside my head and my heart and just maybe help me to make sense of what was happening around me.

I also fell in love with creating art that year. Art class was a requirement and it proved to be a subject that allowed me to get lost in whatever I was making without having to think or worry about anything else.

Fast forward to 1988, 10 years after graduating high school and picking up college degrees in English and journalism, and my life centered around words. There were no paints, no drawing pencils, no blank sheets of paper begging to be covered in colors. I had started working at a small-town daily newspaper about 15 miles west of where I'd grown up and life became all about the writing.

I loved my job. Eventually I moved from writing obits and filing clips to writing features and turning out a weekly column. I was good at what I did. But I couldn't have picked a worse profession. The newspaper industry back then was fast-paced and deadline-oriented. I was a recovering alcoholic who eventually was diagnosed with manic-depression.

Getting up and going to work became more and more difficult. The stress was taking its toll and exacerbating my mental illness. Almost 18 years after my hiring, I was fired. And I was devastated. Who was I if not a reporter? What was I if not a writer?

Depression took hold and pushed me into a deep, dark hole that would swallow me up for about four years. Writing no longer provided any solace and so I stopped putting pen to paper as well as sitting in front of a blank computer screen and clacking away on a keyboard forming sentences.

At some point, I remembered how easy it was to get so absorbed in creating something with my hands that my brain would shut up and leave me alone. Drawing has never drained me emotionally the way that writing can.

Somewhere among my gazillion books was one titled "Draw Squad" by Mark Kistler. The target audience? Three- to eight-year olds. The goal? To teach kids how to draw using challenges that were right up my alley: fun and imaginative and nowhere near realistic. Kistler, a cartoonist, illustrator and art educator, knows how to relate to kids.

And so that's what I did. I worked my way through Kistler's book and filled sketchbook after sketchbook with the challenges. Here are a few of them that I've held onto:

The Postcard Project Of 2017

By DEB SAINE

Sept. 2, 2018
im2insaine@mac.com

Trying to come up with an art project last summer, I stumbled across a couple of long-forgotten pads of blank watercolor postcards. The find sparked an idea.

I decided that it would be fun to secretly create personalized postcards to mail to some of my friends as a surprise. After making an initial list, I tried tracking down addresses. Now, you'd think by doing some investigoogling, the task would have been easy and cheap, right? 

Wrong!

Maybe a few years ago, the answer would've been, "You bet!" The same companies that once provided free telephone books to local residents began to provide the same information free of charge on the World Wide Web. But gradually, those companies and others like them figured out ways to cash in online. Information that once was readily available on the Internet at no charge to users suddenly required a credit card number to obtain. And turning to that once reliable resource known as a telephone book has become a waste of time.

So after making my way through an old-fashioned address book, I returned to the Internet. But this time, I used Facebook. Here's what I wrote on my status:

"hey, friends! i'm having a tough time tracking down addresses for an on-going art project, and was hoping you all could help me out — if we're fb friends and you're interested, send me an im with your address and you might just get a surprise in the mail ...! :0)"

That posted on June 29. And the response was amazing and so rewarding! So amazing that I spent almost every day during the next two months working on postcard-sized watercolors and then mailing them out. On Aug. 24 that same summer, I finally was able to write: "i am so excited to announce that postcard project 2017 has come to its conclusion!! i finished the final one this morning and then put sealant on the last 17 postcards and let them dry — once i put a coat of modge podge on each one, i'll be putting them in the mailbox!!"

I had the final tally at one point, but misplaced the list months ago. Fortunately, I kept track of the majority of the postcards as I went along by taking photographs of the finished products. I was able to create collages of the various postcards using an app on my iPhone:

Testing ... 4, 3, 2, 1 ...

original artwork by deb saine

By Deb Saine 

 Sept. 1, 2018

im2insaine@mac.com

Theme song from, "Mr. Ed,"which aired from 1961-1966

"Well, Wilbur, now what?"

That was my first thought after fiddle-farting around for who knows how long trying to remember how to navigate this blog that I've neglected for almost four years.

Then I wondered exactly how many of the people who read this post will be left scratching their head and wondering, "Wilbur? Who's Wilbur? Is he any relation to that lost Waldo fella?" Probably quite a few would be my guess. I had an epiphany the other day that reminded me that the majority of my points of reference will be lost on the many generations that have followed my own generation of Baby Boomers.

So, I'd tell those clueless young people, "Wilbur was Mister Ed's 'hapless owner' and Mister Ed was Wilbur's talking horse." I'd also throw in a few pop culture freebies like how the show aired in black and white, that the technique used to make the horse appear to be talking hadn't been computer generation and tv viewers actually had to manually change channels because tv remotes didn't exist. Oh, and the number of channels to choose from? There had been just three networks available in the states: NBC, CBS and ABC.

"Mister Ed" had been one of my favorite television shows when I was a kid growing up in the '60s. Not only do I remember the words to the simple theme song almost 60 years later (watch the youtube video provided above), I also remember — and still use — the catch-phrase, "Well, Wilbur ..."

I've been thinking about doing some kind of writing again for quite some time while procrastinating as always. But now, now I have a reason to pull up this ancient blog and do some updating because I've been issued — and have accepted — a challenge.

I recently joined a closed group on Facebook called, "Kick In The Creatives" (KITC) via https://kickinthecreatives.com. The site itself is designed for all types of creatives who can jump right in at any time to begin participating. There are a variety of challenges to choose from that are changed on a monthly basis and designed to help a person develop a habit of creating something on a daily basis. And the Facebook group is a place where folks can post their work and be encouraged by its members along with co-creators and page administrators Tara Roskell and Sandra Busby.

One of September's challenges is, "September Blogfest." This challenge is for people who: a. always have wanted to create a blog but never gotten around to it; or b. have created a blog that's either been neglected or become stagnant. The goal is to create a new post on a daily basis throughout the calendar year's ninth month.

A firm believer that life often provides me with what I need when I need it but don't always know that I need it until I find it, Kick In The Creatives is a good example. And I have artist Tommy Kane (http://tommykaneillustration.com/) to thank.

I had been unfamiliar with the artist whose work I had stumbled across shortly after his recent book, "An Excuse to Draw," had been published. I'm always on the lookout for my next read and there was a review of the book on one of the sites I frequent that review and preview recent publications.

Kane's drawing style reminded me of Danny Gregory, another author illustrator who, as it turns out, happens to be a friend of Gregory's. Inspired by Kane's work, I had decided to invest in his second book and add it to a collection that already includes books by Gregory. I also did some "investigoogling" (thank you, author-extraordinaire Karin Slaughter!) and immediately created a Pinterest board for Kane's illustrations.

The book ended up being a triple bonus for me.

The first bonus comes in Kane's introduction. He writes about watching the documentary, "Tyson," which begins with a close-up of the former boxer's face as Tyson describes being bullied as a child. "The words coming out of (Tyson's) mouth were really that of (Tyson) as a scared six-year-old boy's," Kane writes. "Watching (Tyson) like this, I began to shake myself. I had suddenly recognized that face on the TV screen choking to get the words out. It was not the face of Mike I was seeing, it was my own."

Kane explains that like Tyson, fear has been a driving force throughout his life, a life that he says has been saved by art. I can relate to Kane because, like him, I struggle with mental illness — bipolar disorder ii, which means I tend to gravitate toward the depressive side of the spectrum.

And, most importantly, like Kane, my life has been saved, in part, by art.

Kane later describes in the book's introduction his"debilitating, panic attack, social anxiety fear."

"The kind of fear," he explains, "that creates depression and ruins people's lives. As I get older, it affects me in a million ways. It prevents me from having relationships, losing friendships, concerns my family ... The way that boxing saves Mike Tyson's life, art saves my life."

I couldn't have written that paragraph any better than Kane.

The second bonus had been finding Kane on Instagram and seeing Danny Gregory listed as one of the account's Kane follows. And it was Gregory's Instagram account that directed me to Kick In The Creatives, that third bonus I mentioned earlier in the post.

And so, with today's flip of the calendar, my first full month with KITC comes to an end. To give you an idea of how productive those 31 days were, I've created a slide show to share some of my work. The link can be found here: https://youtu.be/mgXz62A9hW4 ...

If you got this far, thanks for reading! I look forward to posting not only this month but in the months to come after this one!