Doggone it!  It has been nothing but dogs, dogs, dogs, of late around my studio.  Even this past Friday, August 26, was National Dog Day.  Founded by animal advocate Colleen Paige, it is meant to encourage rescue adoptions and acknowledge the services canines provide.  She picked that date because it was the day her family adopted her first dog when she was 10 years old.

While it is no longer officially the dog days of summer, it feels like it.  As I type this the heat index for the area is over 100 F with 57% humidity.  Step outside and your glasses fog up.  The dog days refers to the sultry part of the Northern hemisphere Summer from July 3 through August 11. The name alludes to the time when Sirius, the dog star, rises at the same time as the sun.  Definitions of the period state that it is often marked by lethargy or inactivity, but I wouldn't know about that.

I have been doggedly pursuing the look of a canine character for an upcoming children's book.  I have been drawing nothing but dogs, dogs, and more dogs. I am dog-tired.  Can you really tire of dogs?  Since someone recently coughed up something onto the carpeting, perhaps. 

It has been raining cats and dogs around here too.  I never liked the explanation of animals sliding off a thatched roof in a rainstorm for the origin of the saying. Instead, the Library of Congress offers this explanation: "Odin, the Norse god of storms, was often pictured with dogs and wolves, which were symbols of wind. Witches, who supposedly rode their brooms during storms, were often pictured with black cats, which became signs of heavy rain for sailors.  Therefore, “raining cats and dogs” may refer to a storm with wind (dogs) and heavy rain (cats)."  Let's stick with that.

I am often asked if I use a computer to draw.  The answer is yes and no.  I use a combination but I am doing all the drawing. The illustration above may help show the different styles.  Most of my illustrations are the combination shown in the middle.

It can be a dog-eat-dog world in freelancing and sometimes I feel like I am dog paddling the distance.  Then, after a late night work session, I turn my chair around to find a pile of treats and stuffed toys left for me by a four-legged fairy.  Shakespeare used the word dog-hearted to mean cruel.   He got that so wrong.

Charleston, SC

I have been doing more traveling than drawing of late.  Our most recent sojourn was again to a coast but this time we drove East to Charleston, SC.  While the city was new to me, it is very old (at least by American standards).  Founded in 1670, it was originally named Charles Town in honor of King Charles II of England.  When I think of Charleston, I am most reminded of the Civil War, however, Charleston saw more than one battle during the American Revolution.

The city has a rich and often dark history of war, pirates, slavery, earthquakes and hurricanes. It is also a place of rebellion and rebirth.  If you are interested in exploring a piece of this history check out The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, a novel based on the lives of true Charleston natives Sarah and Angelina Grimke.  Their childhood urban plantation home still stands today.

What drew us to Charleston was family.  Not one of us lives there, it was simply a gathering place for a family spread far and wide.  While I could have explored much more of the area and never tired, sometimes sitting on a porch with loved ones you rarely see is enough.  

Memorial Day. It is a day of remembrance of our fallen soldiers.  It began after the Civil War as Decoration Day when graves of Union and Confederate soldiers were adorned to honor their sacrifice. In the 1960s it officially became the national holiday we know today. It now honors all Americans that have died while in military service. It should not be confused with Veterans Day but often is. 

At times I have spent Memorial Day riding the rural roads of Missouri. From the back of our bike I have seen many small Ozark graveyards ablaze with red, white and blue floral arrangements. I wondered how old those graves were and who were the adorners. 

As a child, I watched an older couple walk out onto a bridge and toss a wreath into the river below. I asked my mother why and learned that their son had been killed at sea many years prior. That ceremony was their special yearly remembrance of him. Being a child, I had so hoped that wreath could somehow find its way to their son. I still do. 

Memorial Day. There are some things we should never forget. 

A peek at design submissions. The beautiful floral linocut design is by Kim Bene.

Not long ago, friend and fellow artist Kim Bene turned me on to the magazine UPPERCASE.  The tagline for the magazine is "for the creative and curious" and I must say that describes it well. Based in Calagary, Canada,  publisher/editor/designer Janine Vangool produces a beautiful quarterly magazine highlighting graphic design, illustration, crafting and more.

UPPERCASE recently held a bookmark design challenge and now features the submissions on their website here.  The designs are available for download including those by Kim and me. The April/May/June edition of UPPERCASE is for sale and a few bookmarks with the winning designs have been tucked within. While, alas, my design was not chosen, it was a fun exercise.

I chose a magpie for my design for not only their beauty but in Native American folklore the magpie is considered a friend and helper. Wearing a magpie feather is a sign of fearlessness by some tribes as the bird is bold, showing little fear. Magpies will often cache food they have found so they can later retrieve it.  Here I imagined my fearless magpie flying off with a new treasure.

Books give us the wings of imagination.  Fly on.

Natural shells found on the Florida Gulf Coast

Our drive down to the Gulf Coast was uneventful, which in February is a lucky occurrence.  It was a good start to our getaway.  By uneventful I am referring to weather not the scenery, for albeit Winter, I was still awed by the rolling hills of Tennessee and the towering pines of Georgia.  The vacation for me, however, began at the first Florida welcome center with its free citrus juice and glorious sunshine.  A few miles further, it was impossible to not sing while crossing the Suwannee River with its Spanish moss dripping from the cypress into the water below.  I have done this drive several times and it never loses its charm.

We veered off the interstate near Lake City to meander "Old Florida" back roads as we headed toward the Crystal River area.  It was at this time the Avett Brothers sang out from our playlist, "No need to keep stressing from our everyday life on our minds, we have got to leave all that behind."   Their song At The Beach continues with "I have worries to give to the sea."  Amen, Brothers.

Three Sisters Spring with manatees on right

Three Sisters Spring was our second Florida stop.  At times three hundred manatees have gathered in the warm waters.  The day we visited there were perhaps around twenty.  But we were lucky as the number of human visitors was down too from the rush they had in recent weeks due to some national television coverage.

We continued South to our ultimate resting place on the beach. The sun was a fiery orange ball when it fell in the gulf that evening.  By contrast the following morning was a soft pink and blue dream.  Daily I was charmed by pelicans, osprey, herons and other shore birds, dolphins, crabs, abundant shells and the happy faces of passing beach walkers.  Rough surf one night produced treasures in the sand the following morning.  Some were delightful, some were devilish.  Yet with all the inspiration surrounding me and the ideas that were ignited, I refused to divert my eyes to a sketch book and pencil for fear of missing something.

So there are no illustrations to post, only memories and a few photos.  I gathered ideas for the future and cast the past into the sea because I just had to leave all that behind.

Nature is glorious.  Revel and renew yourself in it.

Valentine's Day has grown to celebrate more than just romantic love.  It has become a day to celebrate love in general.  But what is its origin?

The feast of St. Valentine was first established in 496 by Pope Gelasius I.  There is more than one Catholic saint that bears the name Valentine so a true identity is unknown but it is believed that February 14 is the date of a martyrdom.  St. Valentine, however, has been associated with love only since the Middle Ages.  It is in English poet Geoffry Chaucer's (1343-1400) poem Parlement of Fowles that we find a reference to love and St. Valentine.

During the Middle Ages it was believed that birds paired in mid-February.  Within the Chaucer poem the narrator dreams of three tercel (male) eagles that wish for the hand (or talon) of a formel (female) eagle. The three tercels make their case before the goddess of Nature.  Birds of the lower estates begin to protest and launch into a parliamentary debate.

(The Goddess) Nature...began to speak in a gentle voice: "Birds, take heed of what I say; and for your welfare and to further your needs I will hasten as fast as I can speak. You well know how on Saint Valentine's day, by my statute and through my ordinance, you come to choose your mates, as I prick you with sweet pain, and then fly on your way. But I may not, to win this entire world, depart from my just order, that he who is most worthy shall begin.

Nature ends the debate by allowing the formel free will in the decision.  None of the tercels win, however, for Nature also grants the formel's request to put off her decision for another year.  (Female birds of prey often become sexually mature at one year of age, males only at two years.)  Nature does allow the other birds to pair off.  

And when this work was all brought to an end, Nature gave every bird his mate by just accord, and they went their way. Ah, Lord! The bliss and joy that they made! For each of them took the other in his wings, and wound their necks about each other, ever thanking the noble goddess of nature.

And then the birds sang.

"Saint Valentine, throned aloft,
Thus little birds sing for your sake:
Welcome, summer, with sunshine soft,
The winter's tempest you will shake!

Good cause have they to glad them oft,
His own true-love each bird will take;
Blithe may they sing when they awake,
Welcome, summer, with sunshine soft,
The winter's tempest you will break,
And drive away the long nights black!"

This is only a portion of a translation of the poem.  If you are interested in reading Parlement of Fowles in its entirety, you can find it here (or the translation here). 

It is fitting that the true origin of St. Valentine, and the enduring holiday, are a mystery.  After all, we can say the same of love itself.

Wishing all, a loving Valentine's Day.  Hugs all around.