Introducing My New Blog--Vickie's Sketchbook

You may wonder why I'm creating a new blog since Vickie Henderson Art is already an art and sketching blog.  My answer, there's more to share.  There's more to tell about the heart of sketching, why I love it, what it teaches me and what makes this intimate interaction with nature so peaceful, satisfying and healing.

All of that seemed enough of a variation on what I present here to launch a new blog.  Here I blog about nature, the discoveries I experience through my camera's lens and how it all comes together to inspire art.

In Vickie's Sketchbook, a companion to this blog, I'll share more about making art from the inside out, that interaction with the heart that eventually allows the artist to pour all that is seen and felt onto paper.  This isn't easy, by the way.  Our heart's are shy.  We often doubt ourselves and think we can't do it.  In fact, I have yet to sit down in a "public" place and sketch nature in my sketchbook.  Horror of horrors that someone might think I'm an artist and look over my shoulder!

Yes, I'm still shy, despite what it may seem. We all have hurdles to cross.  Some cross them younger, some cross them later in life.  But the hurdles are the same.  In the past five years, I've piloted an ultralight (with a reassuring instructor), crawled around in the three-foot confines of a muddy cave, driven alone cross-country to participate in a wilderness writing retreat, all of them new and challenging experiences.  And so you might ask, what's the big deal about sketching out in nature?  I don't know.  I'll let you know when I understand it!

Visit Vickie's Sketchbook from time to time and see what's happening!

Coming up next on this blog:  the Limpkin I promised weeks ago!

Red-shouldered Hawk Territory--V

I am having to shift creative focus, from wildlife viewing and sketching, to sending out submission letters for my novel. Why spend all that time writing it, if I don't pursue publication, right? I've always planned to do that. I simply needed to hold it for a while, the way you hold an infant close to you when its newly born. I am a writer as well as an artist. And though every publisher will tell you that more than one focus scatters your interest, it can't be helped. There is truth in this. Dividing your time is a challenge. But now that I have discovered who I am, I refuse to go forward leaving either behind. And so there is this dance, this back and forth journey, both creative endeavors, both requiring deep commitment, both rewarding in and of themselves. The hawks. Yes, I visited them yesterday. Neither of the adults were around and as I ventured into the nest yard, I felt its emptiness, as though no one were home. But knowing this was probably my last opportunity to see the juvenile, I stayed the duration of four hours and visited the gardens and sketched while waiting. In time, a juvenile began calling in the nest area. I saw him in flight several times, though when he perched, I could never locate him through the leaves. He returned to the nest area, flying within it from perch to perch, then exceeded its boundaries to cross the road and travel to neighboring areas, noted both visually and by the distance and direction of his solicitous calls. Though he is seen from time to time by the residents, it has become less and less likely that I will see the hawk family. And so, I will now devote my hawk watching time to using the inspiration they've given me to finish my sketchbook and select some favorite images to paint, all of which I will share with you as they are completed.In the meantime, I want to introduce you to several other Red-shouldered hawk lovers and observers that I have met along the way. This has been another amazing part of the journey, the connection that blogging has given me to others who have enjoyed similar experiences and captured these in their own unique ways.

Leonard is a professor and journalist in Marietta, GA. You must visit his video and though the outcome of his story is uncertain at this time, mobbing is a turnabout reality for hawks, one in which nature provides for the predated as well as, the predator.

Mary Howell Cromer lives in LeGrange, KY. She launched her blog, Red-shouldered Hawks of Tingsgrove this week to display her journal and photos of the Red-shouldered hawks that she has spent hours observing the past several years. She has experienced both happy and sad endings, as well, and given aid to the parents a time or two. Don't miss her fun images of the juveniles.

And Jay at Down to Earth, created a wonderful diary post about her experiences with Red-shouldered hawks living in and around her property in eastern North Carolina. Visit her beautiful images, including a juvenile visiting the bird bath.

And last, but certainly not least, you must visit Larry Jordan's Red-shouldered hawks at Birder's Report for a northern California look at this beautiful species. To see my entire series of posts on this family of Red-shouldered hawks, click this link. The above images were taken at various times during my observations. The sketch is of the female with prey brought to her by the male. The second image is the male taking the remains of the female's meal to another perch to eat. The dragonfly is a ballerina ! a very small male Blue dasher. The perched hawk image is the male; the hawk in flight, one of the adults.

The Two-fold Inspiration of Blogging

In my first of two anniversary posts, this being the second, I wrote about the stage that blogging offers us and how its benefits resonate in our daily lives. The inspiration found in blogging works in much the same way. It comes as a natural outcrop of creating. The more we create, the more we are stimulated to create and the more easily new ideas flow.

I take photographs. I look at them on the computer and I see more than I saw before. The images bring me closer to the subject. I learn and want to share. And because I have a stage, I am inspired to do just that. Changes in awareness and confidence are a natural result of that creating. So the next time I write a blog post, send out queries for a book, tell a story to my neighbor or embark on a new endeavor, newly honed skills emerge from my creative library and add sparkle to what I do, often without me even noticing.And that brings me to the second aspect of blogging inspiration, my fellow bloggers. Creating stimulates more creating. And seeing what others have created pumps you with new ideas, encourages by example, and gets your creative juices flowing even more.So, by way of celebration, I want to name and thank three fellow bloggers who have particularly inspired me during this past year. Julie Zicklefoose, who freely uses her inner world to infuse humor and depth into stories that leap right into our hearts. Toni Kelly, whose generous sharing of sketchbook designs and studies stir the urge in each of us to get busy with our own. Debbie Kaspari, whose amazing documentation of field observations and sketching makes us all want to get out there and brave the unknown.

And to each of you, readers and fellow bloggers, a special thanks for being part of this blogging community and making this a fun first year. A parting note about shyness: Passion, determination, practice--whether experienced individually or in combination--all trump shyness.

Photos from top to bottom: A Carolina wren begging to be painted; tufted titmous; American goldfinch; pine siskins on a crooked birdbath (I think I'm celebrating my birdbath too); golden-crowned kinglet sketch.

Celebrating One Year of Blogging

It was one year ago in January that I created my blog and published my first post.
And as our calendars flip over to February, it’s clear that the date itself, January 13, wasn’t particularly remarkable for me. But knowing the anniversary was passing caused me to look back and reflect. And as I did, I was reminded of how simply it began, as a desire to display photographs and art and write about nature. And I see what it has now become, an interactive community of mutual sharing, learning, mentoring and inspiration.

And so to celebrate my first year, I want to highlight for you, in this post and the next, two aspects of blogging that have become particularly important to me and inseparable--the stage and the inspiration it provides.
The stage of course is the blogging platform, a place to "perform", to publish your writing, your photographs, your artistic endeavors, whatever they may be, to an audience that remains largely anonymous but that can span the globe. It makes the sage advice, “You make your stage. The audience is waiting”, spring vividly to life.Every stage we create has something to give us. We step forward, find our courage. We practice and make our mistakes. We change and we get stronger, not just on the blogging stage, but in every aspect of our lives. We learn as we create and we learn as we experience the stage, whether it's this stage or any other we have selected.I was recently talking with a friend who is a published author and artist, and said, “I haven’t done one thing toward publishing my novel. It just sits there along with the writer’s market books that are stacked on my buffet and I do nothing.”
“Well, why not? Why aren't you getting it out there?” he asked.
“Umm…avoidance, I think. I’m shy.”
“You’re shy? What do you mean you’re shy? I’ve never seen that in you.” We stared at each other. I finally spoke.
“I don’t look shy. It’s what we sometimes call counter-phobic in the mental health field. Everything I love requires that I be on stage. So I push myself out there until I make it look easy, but it’s really not.”
And that is one of the many ways this stage has become important to me—practice. We create, we let the world see what we have to say and then we’re stimulated to create again by the very stage we dance on. It’s an energy that feeds itself. We get some feedback and we have some control. But most of all, the more we practice the more courage we have to say what it is we have to say and to show the world who we are through our passions and creations.
Next post: The inspiration in blogging

Photos from top to bottom: Greater sandhill cranes at Bosque del Apache (more in an upcoming post); Golden-crowned kinglet in watercolor (also upcoming); possible female rufous or broad-winged hummingbird in New Mexico; a stack of writer's market books; me (right) with Natalie Goldberg (2008), who doesn't like photos, but isn't shy about her teachings; writing and hiking buddies in the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico (2008).