This is the time of year where the ‘to do’ list gets mighty long as there are a lot of things to do outdoors to prepare for winter.  While the squirrels rushed around gathering nuts, I’ve been assembling entryway covers, installing carpets on the stairs, putting away lawn furniture and setting up the place where my snowblower lives during winter.  There’s been a bunch of leaf raking mixed in for flavor.  Oh how I long for the days of living in Arizona where preparation for winter means locating the one sweater that you own, just in case.

little girl, quickly drawn from a Steven Reddy sketch, I think.

I’ve also spent the last couple days with the snowblower torn apart like a big puzzle and went on a quest for a replacement part.  And because of this I’ve been a bit ‘down’ because I haven’t been able to draw.  But I sat down at my desk yesterday morning, knowing I was going to rectify that because I had a museum trip planned, so my mind was on this ‘didn’t draw’ fact.

And I looked at my desk, which was covered with papers.  The papers were covered with little drawings and parts of drawings.  They were done during this period of time when I ‘didn’t have time to draw.’  I thought I’d share them with you.  These were all done quickly while following my Facebook groups and in some cases reflect sketches done by others.  I often like to ‘feel’ what it’s like to draw like other people draw.  Mostly I was surprised at how much I’d drawn while thinking I was missing it completely.  All these little offerings find their way to the wastebasket eventually but they’re very much a part of my training, my learning.

Started as a test of bristol board, this became catch-all doodle sheet

Some sort of experiment in high contrast with a dash of gray ink testing for good measure

Just a couple pointy devices that were sitting on my desk. Not sure of the goal here.

I won’t bore you with any more of these but there were eleven of these little scraps of paper (from a Rhodia dot-pad) that got cleaned off my desk yesterday.  Eleven clusters of little drawings I did when I didn’t have time to draw.  What do you do?