Patterns

Overhead at Ancient Faith Women's Conference, a couple of months ago. The words stuck with me.

Christmas comes once more

Most of my recent sketching has been in five minutes grabbed here and there.


Culver's often has a few fun seasonal decorations.
We spent time in a waiting room with three themed Christmas trees, each with a colorful topper: a snowman, a star, a crown.

Christmas mantel

I think I've sketched part of this mantel each of the past four or five Advent seasons. This time, I layered pastel pencil over parts of the drawing.

Master Penman

Today I got to meet Jake Weidmann (artist and Master Penman) and see his work at the Ohio Pen Show. His craftsmanship is amazing. Watch this (Youtube) video for glimpses of it.

I love his rendition of C. S. Lewis & the Untamed Lion.
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Creators of the Apple Pencil and the ProCreate app consulted with Weidmann during their development, and made modifications based on his input. You may have seen his drawings in an Apple store, during a promotion.

Further viewing: Goulet Guest: Brian Goulet, of Goulet Pens, interviews Weidmann at the DC Pen Show, 2017.

What the eldils had told [Ransom] about the possibility of such discovery he had received, while they were with him, almost without wonder. In their eyes, the normal Tellurian modes of being—engendering and birth and death and decay—which are to us the framework of thought, were no less wonderful than the countless other patterns of being which were continually present to their unsleeping minds. To those high creatures whose activity builds what we call Nature, nothing is “natural.” From their station, the essential arbitrariness (so to call it) of every actual creation is ceaselessly visible; for them there are no basic assumptions: all springs with the willful beauty of a jest or a tune from that miraculous moment of self-limitation, wherein the Infinite, rejecting a myriad possibilities, throws out of Himself the positive and elected invention.

—C.S. Lewis, writing in That Hideous Strength, 1945

Homeward bound

Virginia rest stop, morning view on road home

Our trip was quick, and I didn't sketch as much of the architecture and landscape as I expected, since we were usually moving. The beautiful brick structures of the Virginia rest stops, geometric and symmetrical, made a striking impression. After we toured Monticello, I could see the influence, and wondered how much of the style is found throughout Virginia, and how much of it was due to Thomas Jefferson's designs of his home and the University of Virginia buildings
The last drawing was done in the early misty morning, from the window of a hotel in northwestern Virginia. A pale periwinkle bank of clouds roughly paralleled the profile of the mountain range.
I was surprised by the wide variety of people, geography, and patterns of settlement in the state. The government of such a diverse land and population must face sobering challenges.
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I used colored pencil over a few areas of the watercolor in these drawings.

One short flight for man

View from the Black Pelican restaurant---sand and sea

We recently took a short trip to the mid-Atlantic coast, making pilgrimage to the North Carolina shore where Ohio’s Wright brothers performed their famous experiments. We lunched at the Black Pelican, formerly the Kitty Hawk lifesaving station, weather bureau, and telegraph office, from where Orville sent his historic telegram, December 17, 1903:

"SUCCESS FOUR FLIGHTS THURSDAY MORNING ALL AGAINST TWENTY ONE MILE WIND STARTED FROM LEVEL WITH ENGINE POWER ALONE AVERAGE SPEED THROUGH AIR THIRTY ONE MILES LONGEST 57 SECONDS INFORM PRESS HOME CHRISTMAS. OREVELLE WRIGHT"

Wright Brothers Memorial, Kill Devil Hill, NC

After lunch, we visited the Wright Brothers Memorial, where the brothers conducted their first flights. The little dots at the base of the monument are people. My husband walked to the top and said it was much larger than it appeared from below. A lifesize model of the glider rested near the parking lot. (The little gumby in the foreground is a water fountain.)

The brothers had a single-minded focus, the command of a wide range of relevant practical knowledge, and a willingness to toil in relative obscurity that would be rare to find in a person today.