A Dubsea date with HM

With about a half hour after picking HM up from school, on our way to pick up E, I had just enough time for this quick sketch at one of my favorite coffee shops in our neighborhood. Right after leaving the house, I ran back into my studio to grab my pens and travel watercolors — remembering I had a free coffee waiting for me with my filled up punch card. HM loves using my Sharpies. We sketched and munched on some of my chocolate chip cookies — also grabbed just before walking out the door. Perfect.

Makes a family happy!

I could go on and on, but this sums it up. Michael working hard again after a year of being a stay-at-home-super-dad (which is harder?!). Employment! Happiness! Lightness! We love seeing him in this 6 days a week. We love stocking up on sandwich stuff and apples for his daily lunch. Go Michael! Go USPS! Oh...and that little blurb in there is from one of our new favorite songs from the Backyardigans.

On our way to Westcrest Park

I loved seeing HM in all her pink surrounded by these flowers on the way to Westcrest Park last week. I knew I wanted to paint it later.

At first, I was going to do a quick sketch — not get all fussy. The detail-loving part of me couldn’t resist trying to get it right. Usually I sketch with a pen. This time, I used a pencil and erased and erased until it was the best I could get {even though the perspective is a little different than the photo below}.

The drawing sat around for a week. I couldn’t decide if I should use black pen or not — partly because my pen was low and I didn’t want to make a trip to Daniel Smith, and partly because I wanted to keep the softness without all the black lines running through the painting. Finally I decided to go with just the pencil and gouache — only adding a bit of fine black lines at the end for some pop here and there.

I was delighted when, upon adding the stitching on the coat, HM said, “That’s beautiful, Mommy! I love those dots you added!” So observant. She even let me add orange and yellow to her pink leggings.

Instant Chocolate Pudding

The highlight of my day. Taking a lunch break with HM and whipping up this instant chocolate pudding. First time I have ever made instant pudding! I am a from-scratch sort of baker/sweets maker. I promised her before bed last night that I would bring home a treat from the store, and had been craving chocolate pudding {also a first for me}. With the first bite, I exclaimed, "It's like eating a bismark doughnut without the doughnut!" {I have also been craving a chocolate covered bismark — or is what I am thinking really a Bavarian Crème? — from Top Pot for a few weeks}. The creamy, chocolately goodness coupled with the Trader Joes's packaging was enough to inspire a quick sketch before getting back to my real work. Limited myself to only red and black Uniball Vision fine point pens — to keep it simple.

At the last minute, I was going to add some brown for the pudding, but Michael said not to — that it would retain its White Stripes look as-is. Good point.

The joy of being a 16 month old boy.


All the things Ezra gets excited about. Crazy about birds, dogs, balls and eating — eating all the time. It's all about being outside — going to the door and hanging on the doorknob until we set him free. Just running up and down the sidewalk with a stick brings him so much delight.

About the sketch of E — I don't know why it took  me so long to think to draw from a photo instead of a live model! It's impossible to get the kids to hold still long enough to sketch them. I could start over as much as I needed to, working from some pics on my phone. I have a hard time drawing kids. I still need quite a bit of work on this (particlarly the faces), but thought I would post anyway. He's come a long way from this post — only 2.5 months old!

HM gave me some tips and showed by example how to better draw her brother (along with practicing her lowercase "i"s).