Give yourself the Gift of Time

"In order to hear your calling and answer it, you must generously give yourself the gift of time. It's not how fast you make your dream come true, but how steadily you pursue it."
- Sarah Ban Breathnach

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!



This was my sixth painting I did yesterday, for various reasons. I normally do two or three a day anyway, but yesterday the Universe played in my favour. It rained virtually the whole day, keeping me from pursuing my normal activities like gardening, taking a walk on our smallholding, generally just checking on everything and finding subjects to sketch and the electricity was off the whole afternoon, leaving me computer-less and not spending so much time on-line! Sitting at my studio window, which was the only source of light, I relaxed, determined not to get het up by the situation

These are small studies (10" x 7") done on Arches 300gsm watercolour paper (from my imagination and no sketching beforehand) and this particular one was inspired by all the rain we are having - my lawn is totally water-logged, as I discovered when I went outside to do a quick check on my new baby chicks, sinking ankle-deep into pools of water. They were fine, Mother Bobby had led them into the newly built chicken coup (next on the sketching list) and they were happily nestling under her feathers.