The 100 Ladies Project

It has been over a year since I have drawn one of my Ladies. I did not think I could ever draw one again. I knew, if I did, it would be hard to get going, it would be all messy and cattywompus, and lopsidedish, as the Ladies surely always are. I was terrified. But Tallulah was insistent, she being the ringleader of them all. I think she has been poking and prodding me for some time but I had a few other things going on. And then I realized that returning to my Ladies is exactly what I needed to do so I started again today, and I did make a mess, and it was cattywompus and all the rest, but there she is, she’s back, it was time. You can’t keep a good Lady down.

When I started The 100 Ladies Project in 2013 it was after a lifetime of wanting to draw but being afraid. I had been humiliated in the 2nd grade by a nun who laughed at my drawing and tore it up in front of the class because I had colored the grass pink and the tree trunks orange and the leaves purple and the sky yellow. She scoffed and told me I would never be an artist. I froze and never tried to draw anything ever again. Until 2013.

I had no art training, I had no clue how to do anything — I wanted to draw women that looked real, but I could only draw lopsided Ladies with their own unique personalities — and I had no clue how to use the art materials or what to call the processes I was making up along the way. I started with pastels, moved to watercolors, tried acrylics, and settled back in to using a black pen and watercolors with maybe a little pastel thrown in and I even used wild looking fingernail polish from the Dollar Store at one point but that was really more in my acrylic phase. And my Ladies came with their own stories. And when I drew a Lady and wrote her story I was healing another part of myself and people loved them. I got more response to my funky little Ladies than anything I had ever done in my life but then the fire happened and I stopped. A year later I started again, and then stopped. I have started and stopped several times and though I fall away they always call me back. The most insistent of the lot has always been Tallulah who was supposed to have had her own book. It was to be a book about Tallulah and her little pug Georgia. The thing is that I had their story in my heart but I became very afraid because, well, I feel silly saying this but since I really don’t know how to draw I’ve just pretty much drawn the heads. You can see why from some of the funky pictures I did in late 2014 and 2015…

The thing is I had a lot of fun playing with them but finally what in the world was I going to do with them? I couldn’t draw them consistently enough to do a book and illustrate it even though I kind of fell in love with them. I put them on products at Society 6 and people actually bought some of them, but I just didn’t know what else to do. I am particularly in love with the little pug, Georgia, because she was based on my own little Delilah. You can see Delilah in the front of the picture looking up at the camera in the picture of my 3 pugs on the top right side of this page. Tallulah and Georgia were Delilah and I, kinda sorta, and we had a story to tell, about a woman writer living alone with her pugs, afraid to go out in the world but leading a colorful life of her own creation in her own little cottage, and of course pug rescue was part of the story. (I have adopted 11 pugs in as many years, am devoted to them, and to the wonderful pug rescue, Mid-Atlantic Pug Rescue, where they came from.) This was to be a picture book/story for adults, but kids might like it too. I still feel wistful about doing that book but I just can’t figure out how. I even made up a little mock cover for it.

But, finally, I put Tallulah and Georgia’s story away. It kind of broke my heart. I did go on to draw a lot of other ladies. I did 30 day drawing challenges 4 months in a row in Oct./Nov./Dec. 2016 and Jan. 2017 drawing a Lady and writing her story every day and I had a ball doing it but in the end I just didn’t know what to do with these gals. I haven’t drawn one since, until today, and when I started drawing I thought it would be a random Lady but Georgia popped up. She’s a hot mess but she’s there. I think she’s trying to tell me something.

What I know is this, I have not been happier in a very long time than when I am drawing one of my Ladies. I think they matter. But if you are a self-taught artist who really doesn’t know what she’s doing but just does it anyway, come what may, and you mostly just feel like a kid playing in the sandbox making mud pies with the subsequent attending mess, can you ever hope to DO anything with it all? I’ve never been able to figure out what or how so I have always, eventually, petered out, but they just keep coming back, Tallulah most of all.

I don’t know why I started again, I don’t know why she came back, I’ve no clue what to do with her, or any of the Ladies, and I’m not going to put any pressure on them to BE something but they are an insistent lot and they just keep coming back and I’m trying to figure out if it all means something and what I should do. For now I’m just going to play. I’m going to draw my Ladies however messy and cattywompus they might be, and Georgia and Tallulah will surely be in the mix, and I guess I’ll see what happens, but one thing I know for sure is that it is all too joyful a process NOT to do it.

You should see my studio. I have kid’s watercolor sets and my much loved Derwent Inktense Blocks and jars of paint brushes and a big jar of water and all kinds of books and such all around me. I am in the middle of a happy mess here and I don’t know what to do with it all but I think my future is in the mix somewhere. And I have recently had requests for me to reopen a project I did in 2014 that resulted in a very dear circle of women that just closed at the end of December. It was called “The Spontaneous Art & Life Project & Women’s Circle.” I created fun funky eBooks every month and had a ball but it was too soon after the fire and I was too lost and unsure of myself to continue on. I don’t know if this project will resurface but I loved it and adored the women who were part of the circle. I think it was my happiest work ever. There’s something to think about perhaps.

Right now my own little Delilah pug, Georgia’s counterpart, is snoring loudly beside me. It’s time to stop here. But I might draw a Lady, just for fun. Yes, I think I’ll do just that…