30 Day Drawing Challenge Day 30!!!- Destinesia: New Definition and It’s CURE

30 Day Drawing Challenge Day 30- Our Final Day!

Poppies are everywhere in the Spring in Europe.  I found a portion of some lyrics by Robert Burns about poppies that spoke to me on many levels.  I included them in the background of my sketch. ” Pleasures are like poppies spread,  you seize the flower it’s bloom is shed. Or like a snowfalls in the river, a moment white then melts forever.”  How beautiful is that?!!!  Ahhhh….

We have reached the end of our 30 Day Drawing Challenge.  30 days of drawing.  Wow!  What a great journey it’s been to even write these lessons for you, and I hope it’s been a pleasure for you to participate. Congratulations on arriving at the finish line!!!  You’ve made a huge commitment, and given yourself a gift for a lifetime.  Reach around and pat yourself on the back.  

When I see you next, I can’t wait to give you a hug and share your reactions to these lessons in class.  Yesterday while you were drawing flowers, I spent a long day driving home from my painting sabbatical in Florida.  While there, I was pursuing a personal commitment to complete as many paintings as I could.  My goal was 30 Paintings, 30 Blogs in 30 Days, and I am happy to say that with a lot of hard work, and after today’s blog, I will have done it.  Yay for all of us!  

A new lesson for my upcoming EAT PAINT COOK Tour. Can’t wait to teach this and other art lessons in Tuscany! “Tuscany’s Emerald City- San Gimignano” ©Rebecca Zdybel

Today’s challenge- Fighting “Destinesia” or The Secret to Remembering Your Travels

I stumbled across a new word the other day that got me excited- “Destinesia”. You’ll find it in the Urban dictionary, describing the phenomenon of going somewhere and forgetting why you went there in the first place.  Thankfully, that isn’t much of a problem for me. However, I needed a way to describe another frequently experienced phenomenon for which I did not have a good word.  Destinesia seemed the perfect word. So, So, I humbly submit this alternative definition for Destinesia: 

Destinesia:

• Going someplace and not remembering much about it. 
•  Difficulty remembering where you’ve been…

If you travel, you can probably relate.  You go to a town, you see the local church or the center of town, you walk around, stop and shop, have a snack or a meal, and go on to the next place.  Then you go home, and you can’t remember the name, or anything more specific about the place.  You look at photos and think…hmmm.  Where was that?  

My sweet traveling companion- Maggie <3 We had so much fun in Greece!

For a time, this phenomenon became a discouragement to traveling for me.  I got tired and bored of seeing new places and not feeling like they moved me or impacted me very much.  

Then I discovered ART focused travel and everything changed!  Now I can’t get enough of going new places, drinking them into my soul and my memory banks by recording them with drawings and paintings.  

Parthenon- Athens, Greece  ©Rebecca Zdybel

Siena Rooftops 1 and 2 ©Rebecca Zdybel

The buzz of this kind of travel has become so euphoric that I have determined to spend 6 weeks traveling this autumn.  It’s scary and exciting all at the same time!  I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to experience this kind of adventure and can’t wait to record the journey artistically.  The quiet little corners, the sounds, the smells, the encounters with people, all lead to beautiful mental vignettes for me as I draw and paint them.  They’ve also resulted in some sentimental art journals that I love to share.  In this modern era, we all over-document our lives with photos.  Creating these art journals has shown me time and again how sketches are so much more personal, and people enjoy sharing them with me. Nobody wants to look at my photo albums, but they actually enjoy seeing the art journals. These sketches tell a different story than a photograph ever could.  There is real joy for me in seeing the reaction of others, and sharing the stories attached to the sketches.  I predict you might have the same experience if art journaling became part of our travel routine. 

I’d like you to experience this for yourself.  If you cannot travel with me, then you can at least record a place you’ve visited and connect with that place again, even now… 

The idyllic courtyard at beautiful La Finca Del Niño in Spain Gateway to Heaven ©Rebecca Zdybel

So here is your Drawing Challenge for Today:  Fight Destinesia and DRAW a place you have visited

• Think of a place you’ve visited and loved.  Go back through your photos, or go to Google Images and search for images of that place. (If you missed Day 28’s lesson on how to do this here is the link: How to use Google Images)
• Take that image and draw it using one of the many different approaches to sketching you’ve learned during this challenge.  Here’s a short list of ideas for techniques (all of them are associated with lessons from this 30 Day Challenge): 

• Draw with a water soluble marker (e.g. Elegant Writer or Tombow)
• Do a continuous line contour drawing of your subject 
• Draw your photo reference upside down
• Draw the negative spaces within and around the positive shapes in your photo
• Vignette your subject 
• Add words to tell a little story about why that place has meaning for you
• Frame your subject with lines or words
• Create a toned ground and sketch your subject on that surface
• Add shadows to create linkage between multiple subjects
• Add watercolor to your sketch 
• Create a Zentangle within your sketch

This list could go on and on… You can use any of my ideas or think about coming up with YOUR OWN approach to the subject.  I’ve given you wings, now it’s time to FLY!!

If you feel the wind beneath your wings and like the idea of an ADVENTURE with ART as a FOCUS, I encourage you to come with me to TUSCANY.  My next big adventure will include my EAT PAINT COOK Tour of Tuscany Oct 3-10, 2015.  I have a really nice group of people assembling around this trip, and we look forward to incredible food, scenery, art lessons, and cooking classes, capped off with live music in the evenings.  You can see my brochure here on my website: EAT PAINT COOK Tour of Tuscany- Click this link

New Classes Begin: 

Watercolor Wednesdays 1-4PM Begin again on June 10
Saturday Sessions 1-4  will begin June 13 
(Reserve your seat in advance for all classes, please)
Be sure to check my calendar on the website for any changes in schedule. Contact me for more info: Rebecca@rebeccazartist.com

My website will be changing platforms soon:  If you are a current subscriber a notification will soon arrive in your inbox and ask you to confirm your subscription again.  Just click that confirmation and you will continue to receive updates to this blog directly to your email inbox.  You can become a subscriber by entering your email into the box along the right edge of my homepage (in desktop view).  If you are a mobile subscriber, you may need to go to desktop view to see it.  If you’d like to subscribe and have not been able to do so, please email me and I will send you a link.   My email address is rebecca@rebeccazartist.com.  

I have lots of new ideas and lessons I plan to share.  I also will be traveling extensively during September and October and will be blogging about my adventures and my art along the way.  If you subscribe today you’ll be kept up to date and share the all the fun. I hope you do! <3 

This scene was just down the street from my hotel in Toulouse. Bienvenue à Toulouse ©Rebecca Zdybel

These Banana trees were everywhere in Spain. Banana Beach  ©Rebecca Zdybel