I have a lot of crafty things at home. The hardest part of packing is deciding which of those crafty things I'm going to bring. I almost always have knitting with me and a couple of crochet hooks (although I don't think I've ever crocheted on the road). After the Learn to Draw class I took last fall I've also started carrying my little watercolour set and some drawing pencils. I didn't draw anything on my December road trip though.

I made myself a hand made notebook thinking this would help inspire me. I wrote some notes in it but haven't really been inspired to open it (or carry it around in my shoulder bag for that matter). About half the book is filled with fantastic background pages that I made in an art class several years ago. I thought the colours and shapes and textures would be inspiration to fill up the pages. Most of the time I end up looking for a blank page so that I don't wreck my pretty background. This isn't quite what I had in mind when I made and packed the book.

When my sweetie bought a little sketch book earlier this week I got motivated to buy one too. I felt a little silly seeing as I already had a perfectly good sketch book with me. But I'd made the purchase so I decided to force myself to start using it. My first sketch was a failed bird. My second sketch was a failed flower. But my third sketch was a bit of a success:

It's based on a photograph that I took at lookout point over the dam at Zealandia. I did a couple more sketches and promptly ran out of photos that I wanted to copy. So I decided to carry my sketch book around with me and draw a pencil sketch at each each meal. It's been two meals and I'm now avoiding supper, so we'll see how long this lasts. In the mean time this is last night's supper:

And this is today's brunch:

In both of the meal sketches I came home and added the colour afterwards. If you've been to Ernesto's in Wellington you'll know there's a lot of detail missing from the front of Scopa's including two more posts with street names and road signs. That was one of the lessons I learned in the class last year: draw what's important, not every single detail that you can see.

Enough with the procrastination. It's time to get a little bit creative and find something to eat.