It is hard to believe that one week of June is already done. I did manage to get small drawings done, and am surprised at how hard it was to do. Now I can really appreciate those people who do a painting a day, for 100 days or a year. I have been putting them on flickr in a set called June 2011 drawings.

The one I like the best is the charcoal sketch of the old creamer. I used pen for the others, and put a little colour into a couple. Making the time has been the challenge. The garden takes a lot of time but now I finally have it all in and it is primarily maintenance now. So I am hoping that I can put aside more time each day for drawing.

What I might have to do is schedule a specific time each day. Make an appointment with myself. It looks like we have a week of good weather coming up, so I can sit outside and put some things up to work from in natural light. I really do need the practice of working from life.

So, looking forward to week number two and see what I can accomplish. I will take my inspiration from the blog 'Drawings from Nature'. Milly (Eileen Postlethwaite) has been posting weekly drawings of her beach finds. I love them. I also envy her living beside the sea. Maybe I can walk around here and see what I can find. I did find a huge bug yesterday. But I let it go (it was very smelly). I will see what I can find.

Summer seems to be winding down fairly quickly, after almost continuous rain since May (thunder and rain right now as I sit here typing). Now that all the 'must dos' are nearly done, I am getting back to some sketching and painting.

I have started doing some pen and ink sketches of seed pods and dried plants, just to get going again. Here is a dried rudbeckia from the garden. I coloured it a bit with watercolours - those haven't been out for a while!

I also started a new oil painting yesterday, a little still life with my favourite fruits and a little silver jug which must have been a creamer at a Sheraton hotel at one time. After putting the brushes down for four months, I was wondering how rusty I'd be, but it wasn't too bad. This is the 'underpainting', that is, the main shapes and colours blocked in. I'll finish it in a few days. Tomorrow is one more commitment, and then I can start getting back into the routine.

This year I will have two full days I can dedicate to painting - Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have moved my piano lesson to Wednesdays, so that gives me no commitments on those two days now. I am looking forward to having that time to focus on painting. That is particularly in light of having my own show at Circle Park in October. I'd like to have a few new pieces to put in for that.

I am hoping that we will have a reasonable autumn as it hasn't really been possible to sit outside to paint - too much rain and damp. And I don't like being outside in thunderstorms, of which there have been many.

Well, back to some sketching and planning. And watching the rain sheet down once again.