Good morning and Merry Christmas!

If you’re finding you have a spare bit of time after the morning chaos is finished and while your Christmas dinner is cooking, here’s an idea.

Think of an artist whose mark-making you really admire. This could be anyone from DaVinci to Rembrandt to a contemporary artist. Pull out your sketchbook and an image of one of their drawings, and simply learn from them.

Look beyond the entire image to the individual marks themselves. Were they slow and methodical, or quick flicks (you learned about this in the exercise on page 31 in “Look at That!”). Tempo matters, trust me!

Now, see if you can learn something about the tempo they might have used by trying to copy their mark-making. Guess what tempo they had while drawing that particular line, while creating those brush strokes. It’s fun, and it can help you to draw/paint much more quickly when you have less time to think.

Charlie Mackesy’s very popular book, “The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse” moved me to happy tears this holiday season, thanks to my dear friends Sandy and Nancy. It’s simply beautiful in so many ways. Here’s this morning’s doodle inspired by his magical shorthand style.

Learning is endless joy, don’t you think?

** Special Treat from now until tomorrow night **

I lowered the price of the ebook to a mere $1.99 on Amazon, starting Dec 23rd, and have decide to extend it through Dec 26th 9pm EST. In case you didn’t know, you can actually gift ebooks to your friends (quite amazing I think…) Here’s the link.

May all the people we love discover this new way to access a moment of calm and joy in the new year!