Trees!

Time spent with pen and ink in the woods is time well spent!  Sketching may have been my first real love among my mediums. I still remember the feel of a ballpoint ink pen as it slid along the surface of rough paper. I was very young, sitting at a tiny child's desk in front of a north window in my grandmother's kitchen.  I didn't get to use ink pens yet at home, but here I had an old check box filled with pens, pencils - even a red one and a white one, and an old dark metal pair of small scissors, which were very heavy in my small hand.  I was not yet in kindergarten, and yet these memories are so vivid.  I even remember the cedar smell of those pencils, and the rich, waxy smell of a small collection of crayons.  The paper at Grandma's house was a yellowed Big Chief tablet, with a deep red cover picturing the profile of a Chief and headdress.  I thought that was very cool, studying the lines of that image, unlike anything I had seen before.  I remember those lines in black, like an ink drawing, without additional color.  Abs the paper smelled like the antique desk it was kept in!  It's funny what one remembers from those early years. Painting number 3833 in 3833 days.