The Beauty of Change

This palo verde is in Arizona. It’s been trimmed, and it’s bare.

When I arrived in Wisconsin, the trees were leafing out. Seeing big-leaved trees again was great, they had just started to unfold and fill the trees. By the time I went home three days later, the trees had come into their shapes.

Change. We hate the idea, but we live it every day. The trees changed every day I was there. They were changing when I watched and when I didn’t.

Evolution is not something limited to ten thousand years ago. Evolution happens every day. We adapt, we behave a new way, it works, we keep doing it. We’ve changed.

Leaves are starting to push out, dark and fresh green.

Adapting is the stepping stone to flexibility. Flexibility is the doorway to creativity. We explore, we create, we invent, and we grow. Creative evolution. We change without really noticing it, just notice that our art is getting easier. More satisfying. More natural. Until we have fully leafed out and ideas come to rest in the shadow we cast on the earth.

Tree in progress to becoming.

–Quinn McDonald is an artist who writes and teaches what she knows. It changes from year to year.

Book Review: True Nature by Barbara Bash

Day 11: Several people have noticed there dreams becoming more colorful and memorable. Have you noticed a change? Tomorrow we’ll talk about setting a ritual and intention for your journaling. What’s this sentence doing here?

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Nature journals make me swoon with joy. I know they aren’t wildly popular, and I don’t care. I collect them, I make them, I love them. They capture the essence of life and time in one book. For me, it’s what art journaling is about.

Cover of True Nature by Barbara Bash

I also admire artists who create from the heart. Creating from the heart is the bravest work, because you have to trust yourself. Listen to your intuition. Choose with your soul. That’s a big risk. Particularly in a world of commerce and retail therapy, many artists feel pressure to make creative decisions through their bank account. “How much can I cut back and still have enough quality to sell well?” It’s a real question asked by many artists. It’s a realistic question to ask.

Loose wash drawing on pg. 45 in the "Summer" section

And then there are the artists who say, “I have a question in my heart that needs answering. That’s where I’ll be for the next while. Working. Making meaning.”

From the "Autumn" section. Bash asks, "Where does pressure come from?"

Barbara Bash has done both a nature journal and a work of the heart. She kept a nature journal for a year while doing a series of solitary, contemplative retreats. Her watercolors, pen and ink drawings and meditations are gathered in her book, True Nature. It’s a book of inspiration, of small, measured steps, of awe and wonder.

Bash's calligraphy, emphasizing her heart-felt questions of meditation.

It’s hand-written, with quotes and thoughts scattered throughout. Bash “enters the drawing world of endless time and curiosity” and, with meditation, “everything becomes worthy of study and affection.”

This gentle book would make a lovely gift for a meditator, an artist, a writer, or a naturalist. Almost everyone on your gift list. It’s a holding book, a page-turning book, not for the e-reader.  Oh, and don’t forget a copy for your bedside table.

–Quinn McDonald is a naturalist and the author of Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art. The book is available on Quinn’s website with a code for free shipping. The code will expire in 10 days, so don’t wait.

Art-Science, Solstice, and Journaling

My first serious after-college job as as a biology teacher. I was a geeky kid, and I still love science. A little science makes for a lot of understanding. It makes me sad when I hear people trashing science knowledge as being impractical. It was knowledge of science that made me aware last January, that the downpour we were having would

1. cause the pool to overflow if it continued for half an hour.

2. I could not bail water out of the pool fast enough to prevent it from overflowing.

3 The backflush hose we had needed to be a larger diameter if I were going to use the backflush to get water out of the pool.

Sun position (top) from June to September, 2010

Perfectly understandable then, that science becomes a part of my raw art journal. Seed pods,  fruit ripening, hummingbird nests all become sketches in the journal. Along with the dates. One of my journals shows what happens in the nature area of my city-set house each month, creating a seasonal calendar.

It’s September, and we are nearing the solstice. Common knowledge says the sun rises in the East. Mostly true, but the sun swings North and South, hitting exactly East only on Spring and Fall solstice. Why do you care? You might not. I do, because my bedroom windows face East, and there is a time of year I need to pull the blinds if I don’t want the sun in my eyes at dawn, and a time of year I don’t touch the blind because the sun doesn’t come near the window. And even if it’s not a practical application, I love knowing that the sunrise is in a slightly different place every day. And it explains the I-95 freeway exit in Northern Maryland called “Northeast Rising Sun” They must have settled that town in summer.

The further north you live, the bigger the swing. People on the Equator don’t get any swing at all–which is how come the weather doesn’t change a lot at the Equator.

And that explains the page spread in my journal. I stand at the same spot on my patio, and mark where the sun is several times a season. It’s moving South faster now, and will continue till the end of December. But for right now, I know that when the sun rises behind a certain palm tree, we won’t have any more 110 degree days.

--Quinn McDonald is curious about the natural world and believes there are a lot of answers if we want to learn them.

My Father’s Art Journal

My father's art journal, made before 1937.

My father was an immigrant to America. Shy and studious, married with two sons, he came to America with little except his family, his talent as a research physiologist, an ability to draw, and a few boxes of possessions. He was middle-aged, and starting over. He had been respected as a physician and researcher, an intellectual living in a European capital. When he came to this country, his work was needed in the early American space exploration program. He  was sent to Randolph Air Force base, in rural Texas. San Antonio was 20 miles away in those days, and my father didn’t own a car. The family lived in a farming community close to the base. He commuted by bicycle. He was a stranger in a strange land. Within a year after arriving, he and my mother had their third child and first American family member.

My father was a naturalist—he taught me about constellations and weather, birds and plants. He created a set of nature sketches in a journal. It was an art journal, but completely different from the art journals of today.

Crab, pencil on paper, c. 1950 © Quinn McDonald, 2010

My father’s journal survived the war and was in his box of important possessions. The cover shows signs of being handmade. The paper looks like pastel paper, thick but brittle now–it’s more than 80 years old.

The art he created was spare sketches of the insects, reptiles, plants and wonders of his new world. There are a few images of the past, too–a parakeet that didn’t survive the war, a son who did. The pictures were done in pencil or colored pencil. If there is writing on a page, it is a date or an identifying Latin name. My father was a man of few words, but his journal speaks volumes to me. He’s been dead for almost 30 years, and every time I look at the images he drew, I smile at the love of nature he passed on to me.

Texas horned-toad, pencil on paper, 1948. © Quinn McDonald, 2010

Parakeet, colored pencil on paper, 1937 © Quinn McDonald, 2010

--Quinn McDonald is an artist who is writing a book for people who want to keep an art journal but don’t know how to draw. You don’t have to know, you just have to want to live fully. It will be published by North Light Books in the summer of 2011.