My sketches of our trip were done in our moving motor home to Silverton Colorado Early Sept, 2008.  Top left is Elbert driving, and my son inlaw Cory sitting in the passengers seat.  Top right is my husband sitting outside our trailor, visiting after a full day of jeeping!  Below left, Brooke, my daughter sitting across from me in the motor home, and lower right drawing is of my  husband relaxing in his easy chair listening to the Republican Convention after we got home from our trip. Bottom right is Molly, my chi dog sitting in Elbert's lap!  I start off with a conte stick and softly make some gestural lines.  Then I go back with a selective palette of prisma color pencils, and work on light to dark values according to a light source. I study my subject matter and think about what are the little marks that will resemble that object or person, etc.  It is a gradual process, and overlapping of color pencil.  Glazing is used to only selective areas that are highlighted... Each sketch took me around an hour  to do.  Sometimes when sketching on location you have the worst conditions to deal with!  The sketches below were done when the motor home was moving, some of my pencils fell off the couch, and Molly kept crawling into my lap competing with my drawing.  At one time I started to get a little motion sick!  It was still worth the journal entries of this experience.

      

LIFE JOURNALS 

I remember as a small child that if I was provided with  pencil, or crayon, and paper of any kind, I became obssesed with "Doodling".  I remember teachers in grade school getting onto me because I turned in math, or spelling assigments with doodles along the sides of my Big Chief tablet papers! 
Doodling seemed to sooth, entertain, inspire, or amuse me!  It became my way of expressing my feelings hidden away in the margins of my teenage diary, or on a church program during a boring serman!  It became a part of what I was. Good, or bad it helped me express myself when I was too shy to share verbally my frustrations, dreams, and desires, etc. 
It was a great outlet for creativity!  I loved to draw ribbons, and like a game I decide what directions to ripple the ribbon, then put the shading as it went under, over parts of itself. 
I was the only one to judge how it looked!  If it was not pleasing I would go over into another corner of the paper and start maybe a dinosaur that had all kinds of spots that would be varied by light to dark markings.  I was the judge of the outcome.  It needed to be interesting, and pleasant only to me.... I never did drawings, doodles in the beginning to please anyone.  It was done because my left hand is addicted to mark making, and my eyes are constantly looking for some kind of visual satisfaction.                               

                 

I feel that trying to stress the importance of keeping a Journal to my Drawing students is hard if they have never felt what I have as mentioned above.  This is why I am writing about my "Life Journals".

                  
This is a ink drawing of my bedroom          1970's Grandma's House            
 back in 1975!  I was lying in Bed!                                                                         

  

   
Back in early 2001 my husband got a new job in Dallas Texas.  Our kids still needed to finish school and
I needed to also sale the house.  My husband had to live in our travel trailor in a trailor park in Dallas.
I visited off and on and would be bored waiting for him to get off work, so I would sketch inside and outside the 
trailor.  This is what I saw in front of me!   

                                 
These sketches were done when my sister and I went to Belguim, Paris France, and Brussels in 2005.  We traveled by train, and bus.  When there we would walk everywhere. We had backpacks to carry anything we needed in this 10 day journey.  I had 2 pencils, 1 conte, 1 black pen, and a very small journal book to keep my load light.   When Rhonda and I ate and drank wine under the umbrellas was when I would sketch.  The sketch on the far right is done with a conte stick.

         

 I was demonstrating the method used to draw what I see in a stillife arrangement. 
The bones were drawn with a conte stick looking at the real skeleton positioned laying down on a table in front of us.
My daughter is in basketball and these are pictures of two of her teammates.  I had to ask Brooke to bring her uniform home and did some research on aireal views of bodies. (must understand what goes on in FORSHORTENING from an unusual view).  Below was drawing from an actual model in a workshop situation.