I had a long commute to work today as a passenger. I was tired of the radio, and watching other cars, go by. I looked in my handbag to see what I could find, so that I wouldn’t fall asleep! I’m not usually my best with sleep lines on my face from odd head positions while napping with no pillow.

Rummaging through my big tote bag yielded a Christmas catalog, a six-inch ruler, scissors, a couple of pieces of watercolor paper, my KOI pocket field sketch box with water brush, a glue stick, micro-pen, and a graphite pencil.  I knew today was the only time I was going to have a small chunk of time to do an illustration for the prompt for Illustration Friday, the word for this week is “hatch”.

Honestly, with the holidays around the corner, and everywhere you look you see festive houses, streets and stores, the festivity has a way of imprinting itself on your mind! And the IF prompt, for me anyway, only flashed pictures of eggs, hatchback cars and spring.

So here it is, an illustration for “Hatch”!

I hope that everyone’s creativity and ideas hatch into some wonderful real life scenarios for 2010.

Peace to you all.

This is the first thought I had when I read the prompt for this week. I do not have time to add color, but I think the general idea is there and I needed a gentle way back.

When I was a new Mom, I often wondered who’s craving was bigger? Mine to give milk or my babies to receive. I think it was a mutuality that turned to love.

It brings a whole new meaning to the question, Is it better to give or receive?

I’m happy to be back after a much needed break!

Peace to you all as you give and receive this week.

There is nothing like sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth, it’s gentle creaking, and a breezy spring air flows in your window, gently lifting the curtains in your baby’s room.

The curtains lightly swinging in the breeze, and that sweet smell of a brand new baby filling the room.

Now that’s an easy, breezy beautiful moment.

When my babies were tiny babies, I often wondered, as I stood at their cribs watching them sleep, catching glimpses of adorable smiles, “what are they dreaming…”

To the joy of sweet baby dreams…Peace.

(This was art created with many, many glazes of watercolor, the butterflies were separately drawn, painted and cutout, collage onto the artwork and then sealed with a gloss medium.)

I live in the richest country in the world, so when I travel, I always take the road less travelled and it brings me close to the pulse of any city or town I visit in the world.

When I originally saw this child, I thought he was a “forgotten baby”. This little one was having a bath in a wooden pail in the alley way of his makeshift house. He could barely fit in the pail and he was quite dirty. There was no door on his home and he was just sitting in the pail, soaking. I heard people laughing and talking from inside his home. I sat next to a pile of trash across from his home and sketched him. The image was hastily done with colors added on the plane home.

As I sat there, I thought about how, in America we are told never to leave children in pails, unattended, since they may drown. This was not the USA and it is quite common to bathe children in what’s available in other countries and it’s not because of lack of care.

I’ve found that different rules apply for children based on location, politics, culture, parenting and economics. Not all that is forgotten is lost, sometimes it’s a matter of a different view.

Peace to all and set a time aside to remember!

You ever wake up from a nap, with your ribbons wrinkled and undone? Your hair is a mess and your face wrinkled from sleeping? Your undershirt full of wrinkles and too big? Your neck is sweaty from all the wrinkles around it? Even your ankles have wrinkles, too?

Well, then you know how this little one feels? Just plain wrinkly! I feel just like she does, but oh I’m not so little or as cute!

(This was snatched from a page in my sketch book)

Say yes to the wrinkles in your life!

Aren’t blankies the best?!

I was sitting in a restaurant a couple of years ago and I saw this woman with a giant blanket tied around her, the whole time she was waiting for her take-out order, this little head kept popping out of the blanket! It was a must sketch!

My favorite blanket of all times was the little ragged blanket my teenage daughter use to carry around for the first (5) years of her life, that I’m sad to say dwindled away to nothing! She, of course, would never let me post it on the web! Geez! teenagers!