Little Life Records

In Santa Fe, Lee Kellogg draws, writes, pastes, paints, and records her life events every day of the year.  You can find her at Guadalupe's Fun Rubber Stamps.

365 Days of Little Life Records

 As one teacher of this art says, the aim of "Pocket Sketching" is to record what you think you see -- not what a photo records; photos record essentially what you see, but not your thoughts or the significance of an event.  Rather, making these drawings, writing quotes on or around them, sticking in related bits with a roller-glue, as well as modifying the "view" -- adding in or editing out things -- reveals the significance(s) of a moment.

A nice thing about it, you can use merely a few colored pencils or a compact water-color set, or a pencil, pen, crayon and draw on the spot.  I use a unlined Molskine for these records.

Surprise Lake (Eagle's Nest Wilderness)

The "Surprise" is the Herd of Mosquitoes
(Mosquito is scale in relation to the tent.)

In the color pencil drawing above, the size of the mosquito drives the sense of things as they felt.  Other things are left out: the bear-proof food canister, packs, rock, additional trees, and logs.  The photo of the scene, below, records things as they were.

In the Photo (not the Drawing): Bear Canister, Packs, Log, Rock,
Additional Trees, Someone in the Tent Hiding from Mosquitoes

The memory is created by the "representations" of objects -- their size and placement for conveying their significance.  (Surprise Lake was a horrible place to camp in summer, by the way.  Go higher if you are in the Eagle's Nest area and haven't over-filled your pack.  Apparently there was an anvil in my mine....)

Hummingbirds Play Bluegrass?

It's More Than Objects
The above drawing was from Snowmass's New Belgium "Ranger Station," and bluegrass was on the radio.  While talking to the bar-keep, Mike, about the flowers in the mountains that year and the numbers of hummingbirds, the joke started that hummingbirds prefer bluegrass (played left-handed, apparently).  That picture sprang from the banter.

So I like to think of these journals as partially a record of social interactions: life is about people, after all.  The drawing below of a woman and her three very cute kids at Keystone was one I drew (quickly!) as they colored their own pictures over their lunch -- during which time their crayons literally melted in the sun.  We talked and laughed for a bit, and I cut the picture from my book and gave it to them as a remembrance of their day.

Each Person Has Identifying Elements -- Pink Shorts, Red Hood, Sunglasses, Orange Shirt

Obviously, the point isn't realism but the family having their lunch and fun coloring -- and then sort of "painting" with melted crayons and laughing about it.

Mort Homme, France 2014

In France, 2014 -- the year for the centenary of the beginning of WWI -- three of us wandered one of the worst places during the war, one I had been to many times before but had never recorded: Mort Homme.  We walked in those fields that were once traced with deep trench lines and dugouts, where you may find shell fragments, shrapnel balls, bullets, buttons, fuse caps, barbed wire, unexploded shells and grenades, and, yes, human bones. It's a sombre memory, but again -- it's about something significant, something historical, something immediate with those soldiers....

And there are Blackie and Coco, rabbits extraordinaire.  They breached their cozy confines late one night in Grindelwald, Switzerland when they dug beneath the fence and escaped.  The grass is always greener....

And so next morning the chalet proprietors, Robert and Monika, had to round them up with help of neighbors.  When I heard this story, I told Robert and Monica that I had seen the rabbits at an establishment nearby, a little worse for wear, taking a night cap the evening of their escape.

Translation: "I intend to disappear tonight.  Are you with me?"

Life Hooks
Entries also have life hooks: quotes that we take into ourselves.  When again visiting Thiepval [Link] and this time drawing the scene, I remembered a poignant line from Eliot that he wrote about the people crossing London Bridge; his line starkly applies to this place that I had visited many times: "I had not thought death had undone so many."

Thiepval: Graves before the Memorial to the Nearly 73,000 Missing

And then there's more common -- and happier -- stuff, like baseball.

Rooting for the Chicago Cubs?!
It's OK: Anyone Could Have a Bad Century

A photograph would, of course, show the above game in the correct proportions, along with providing details of the fans, score board, adverts, etc.  Obviously -- no enormous Cubs sticker hanging in mid air.  But the drawing carries the feeling of the day along the third-base line -- with Lackey pitching a win.

And at a local brasserie, I did a quick colored-pencil drawing of a cork (pun?) -- the Mersoleil.  The proprietor (someone much sommelier than I) later wanted a painting of a different cork to remember a long-ago special event.  That resulted in a water color (Hermitage) done at home.

Sommelier Than Whom?

And other events...and memories....

Summit of Buffalo Mt.: Head of the Greeting Party

Spitfire Vb

Enduro World Series 2017
Snowmass/Aspen

The above image was of a sport I knew nothing about until a "younger-old-friend" visited me while I was in Snowmass.  The Enduro was on, and having ridden in such events, he served as an excellent sports guide.  I met two fairly wonderful riders from different countries during this event.  One is the very sporty Rachel Pageau, from Quebec City, but I can't read the signature of the other rider, sorry to say.  One thing is certain: they go fast.  Dangerously so.

Glue-ins and "Tangles"
My wife keeps her journal with what I find to be absolutely captivating and memorable drawings, quotes, and pasted-in bits.

 

Reims et Paris: Un Part du Cette Voyage

The leaf, the train, and card from the restaurant are stuck in by a little roller-glue for crafts (acid-free roller glue protects photos, paper, and organic bits). She adds written text along the drawings and items.

London: Various Bits with the Brits

The designs she draws around other sections are from Marie Browning's "Zentangle" ideas in her book Time to Tangle with Colors.  Sometimes my wife will simply put quotes into a "tangle" and glue nothing in:

A "Tangle" Around a Quotation

These are happy designs, and the colors, fading from green to blue, accent the designs.  Then the symbol of eternity corresponds to the quotation -- "And eternity is merely that: a moment in time, standing still, shaping all the rest of time."  It's amazing what can be glued in.  After a hike near the Maroon Bells, she glued in a rock from Buckskin Pass:

What Are the Rockies without a Rock?!

True: these little books will likely be tossed some day.  But the quiet moments drawing, reflecting, and looking back into them are worth the 10-20 minutes creating the little records of life.