Poetry Friday -- Hello, Sketchbook! Let's Get Reacquainted!

I got my sketchbook out for the first time in 3 years, and look what I found:

We call them "glads"

because they are;

because they make us so.

They show us

process and stages.

They teach us vulnerability --

reaching, bending, falling

with the weight of what they've become.

And yet,

they are beautiful.

They are glads.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2012

How do I sketch heat?

   oppressive heat

   blanketing heat

How do I sketch a hawk?

   flap, glide, soar

   scree

How do I sketch the trees?

   so many shades of green

   holding still as the storm builds

The sky is easy: violet.

   darkening

   darkening

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2012

Today I made this:

Because of this book (thank you, Amy LV)...

...and because this other book has inspired me to doodle with wild abandon and much happiness...

...and because of this blog post (thank you Kimberley Moran)...

...which has this video embedded (scrub to 1:30 if you just want the Black-Eyed Susan lesson)...


Life is good.
Happy Friday.
Happy Poetry.
Happy Doodling.


Carol has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Carol's Corner.

The July-December roundup schedule is in our sidebar, the code is in the files at the Kidlitosphere Yahoo group, and everything's set and ready to go (and January-June is archived) at Kidlitosphere Central. Let me know if you want me to send you your very own copy of the code. (marylee DOT hahn AT gmail etc etc).

The Doodle Revolution

The Doodle Revolution
by Sunni Brown (her "Doodlers, unite!" TED talk is here)
Penguin, 2014
review copy from the public library

You could probably read/skim this book at five different times in your life and get five different personal life lessons from it. My big take-away this time around is that doodling is not bad. Doodling is a way to think and learn:

I want to teach my students some doodling tools so that we can doodlearn (yes, I just made that word up!) together.

But what this book gave me for right now (for today and this week and the rest of the summer) was a reminder that I don't have to wait until I'm an amazing artist to have fun with doodling. I learned to doodle new, more expressive stick figures, and use eye positions, noses, mouths and eyebrows to create a variety of more emotive faces:

And I returned to my TED challenge and illustrated notetaking by opening the TED app on my phone, scanning the featured talks, finding one with NOTICE in the title (my One Little Word for 2015) and received this excellent message from the universe:

Tony Fadell: "The first secret of design is...noticing"

Teachers Write! Summer Camp with Kate Messner

I've been dipping in and out of Teachers Write! for the past few weeks, using the prompts and taking the challenges as my schedule would allow.

Now that I've got a clear stretch of time to dig back into my own reading and writing life, I'm looking forward to getting more involved with the community of writers that have gathered at Kate's virtual summer camp.

And how lucky was I, that the day I got back to being more scheduled with my writing and more dedicated to my participation in Teachers Write!, the mini-lesson was given by Ruth McNally Barshaw, author/illustrator of the Ellie McDoodle books! I LOVE Ellie McDoodle!

Ruth's mini-lesson? Sketch before writing. Sketch during writing. Sketch to understand your writing (character, setting, plot -- with storyboarding).

Down to the basement I went, and look what I found waiting for me in one of the tubs stacked on the bonus desk down there:

I knew my colored pencils were there, but I forgot about the virtually unused sketch book (it's been almost 10 years since I sketched and wrote in it!!), the water colors, and the water color colored pencils that can be brushed and blended with water.

I used my camera as my digital "sketch book" when I took my walk this morning, then sat on the front porch in the shade of the oak tree,

writing and sketching from the shots I took...and from the meanderings of my brain.

There are bits and pieces of a poem-to-be about our big front yard oak tree on this page of doodling in words and images.

It made me unbelievably happy to reconnect to my artistic self in my writing process. Thank you, Kate. And thank you, Ruth!