Positively Biding My Time

Waiting can be be stressful and boring, but I decided to bide my time in a positive way.  A common occurrence at the beginning of July is to cut our hay crop.  Since we live on a small acreage and we have a limited budget, we don't have any fancy equipment to cut our hay.  We have to rely on a near by farmer to cut it for us. We are at the mercy of the farmer and his schedule.  Once the hay is cut, the wait is always stressful!  Will it rain?  Will the bales turn moldy?  Will the hay be baled before it dries out too much and then will have little nutrition for the horses?  We just about lost the crop to rain and a long wait.  My husband figured the bales were ruined, but after re-examining them decided that they may be okay. So the next step is to gather the square bales from the field and stack them in the barn for safe keeping.  We tried to beat the hot temperatures, but had had been up late the night before and slept in.  After mentally preparing ourselves, we rolled slowly out of bed and set out.  We revved up our old but faithful 1976 Chevy Olympic farm truck, also known as the meat wagon, pulled open the vents, cranked down the windows, jacked up the Saturday morning country music countdown and defined our roles.  I would be the driver, with the company of our dog Lucky, and Jeff and Bryan would do the hard labour.  After making a few rounds around the field and  sweat rolling down all of our backs, man the cab is like a sauna, hay sticking to our arms, the fully loaded truck bed needed to be emptied with a short drive to the barn to unload.  I maneuver the truck backwards to the barn door and then sit and wait or refill the water jug, while the guys grunt and unload the bales. I've helped with the unloading before, itch, scratch, sneeze, ooooh my back, so I let the guys do the lifting.   I brought to take my new art journal with me. So my challenge was to fill the inside cover of my new art journal with doodles.  We have a horse plaque on the outside of the barn, so I gave myself a second challenge of drawing the horse by looking in the truck's side mirror and flipping the image on my page. Gulp!
Here is a close up...

Detail Page 1



The guys are pretty fast at unloading so after four or five trips to the field and barn, I didn't have enough time to finish, the two pages, so I worked on them while waiting at the Summer Games practices and waiting for the the house to cool last night.  I at first used only fine tipped black markers, but decided to add colour.  I tried to use watercolour paint, but that was a bust, the paper got really soggy, grrr, the paper is supposed to be good for watercolour paint.  Maybe it is only the inside cover that isn't...we will see.... Anyway, I resorted to using pencil crayons and a pen that has white paint and tried to repair the watercolour mess.  Oh well, the purpose of my blog is focus on my art journey!

I also decided to try fantasy! What could the dragonfly's wings look like in a different world?  What colour would I make my horse if I had a choice? Blue is my favourite colour, so blue had to be part of the drawings! 

I realize that not everything will be great and may be simply a learning experience, so I am going to share this with you anyways.  Here is the second page in detail...





Waiting can be boring, but now that I carry my art journal with me everywhere, I use the time positively to test out new art tools and techniques and ideas.

By the way, it looks like our horses will be able to enjoy the hay bales after all!  Phew!

The art is "soul property" of Renee Dowling.