The haiku was written for Haiku my Heart Friday, and if you want to
see more photos and read more haiku, I recommend you hop on over
to Rebecca’s blog to find the list of participants.

By the way: you are very welcome to join the ‘Haiku my Heart’ group
if you like – and if you don’t know what haiku is exactly, you might want
to read this post in which I explain about the ‘rules’ of writing haiku.

So – why do I show you my old, worn out shoes today?
Well, it started with Tammy…

Tammy of Daisy Yellow wrote a blogpost about ‘EDM’ (which stands for
‘Every day Matters’.) I’ll try to make this short: EDM challenges is all about
drawing something every day. You can find the info on Danny Gregory’s blog
and he published a list of subjects to draw here.

Now I have been thinking of picking up drawing and even made several starts
– you may remember these sketches – but I was not able to hold on to drawing
for long let alone make it a habit, mostly because I didn’t know WHAT to draw.
Finding a subject cost me too much energy and so I let go easily.

But now, with a list of subjects at my hand, I decided to take it more seriously
and work my way through the list. See if my drawing skills are still there
because I sure did my portion of drawing in the days when I was in art school.
I was curious to see how rusty my skills would be when I would start drawing
the real stuff: subjects. How would I do?
Would I still be able to get the proportions right?
What about textures?
Shading?
It has been 25 years…

First challenge on the list was – you guessed it:

EDM #1 Draw a Shoe
(click to enlarge)

Well, that was a surprise!
My skills came back pretty easy and I’m quite proud and satisfied
with this first attempt after all these years.

Of course I wrote some text with the drawing… the shoe looked too pitiful
standing alone and lost on the page without any words to comfort him (her?)
Here’s the translation:

These are my Portuguese shoes. They don’t look much like shoes anymore
because they are completely worn out. They stand at the back door for
ten years now, ready to be used to walk into the garden or a trip to the barn
to get food out of the freezer. Even Nout, with his big feet, makes good use
of this ‘system’. The shoes were quite expensive, but given the lifetime they
were well worth it. Even now they are not completely worn away,
not even at the heel.

I might not be able to draw every day, but I certainly want to continue
drawing as I find it very relaxing and fun to do!

I have lots and lots of art journal pages that I made in the past weeks and
was not able to post yet – it’s amazing how much I got done in the week that
I was without my computer, but I won’t publish them all at once. For today
I choose to show you the latest spreads in the Chronicles Art Journal.

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 26

(Size: 24,5 x 49 cm – 9.65 x 14.86 inch)

The Chronicles of Marit – Week 27

(Size: 24,5 x 49 cm – 9.65 x 14.86 inch)

… and I’ll leave you with some random things I want to point out to you:

• I slowly get the hang of ‘tweeting’ and start to enjoy writing messages
  by using only 140 characters… I’m not a ‘bulk tweeter’ yet, but if you
  like, you can follow me here

• It may seem quiet around FEATURING magazine but I can assure
  you that there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes’.
  Issue #2 will probably see the light in August and next issue will
  again be packed with inspiring artists (I’m sure some will blow
  your mind, as they did mine!) and interesting articles.
  Keep an eye on FEATURING’s website, facebook, twitter
  or subscribe to the newsletter to stay informed.
  Issue #1 is still available in the web store
  

• Quirky Dutch Summer – my series of inspirational posts – is half way
  and lots of beautiful art – made by the participants – can be found in
  the Quirky Flickr Group. QDS posts go online every Tuesday and I
  have something (uhhmmm, someONE) very special for you next
  week… you wait and see!

• Seth from The Altered Page hosted the annual event ‘Buried Treasure‘.
  I participated and dug up an old, but very dear and close to me, post
  from 2 years ago. I re-posted it yesterday. Find it here.

That’s all dear ones..
enjoy your weekend.
Draw a shoe!

See ya next week!