drawing from life

How a dinner with friends became an impromptu art class for Indiana...

(Push play above to listen to Rory read this blog post)

Back in Tennessee, there’s a picture hanging in the hall just outside Indy’s bedroom. A drawing of her holding a camera, hand sketched by our dear friend Isaac French.

On one of our trips here to Texas this past Fall, he gave it to her, and to us, as a gift that we will always treasure. A beautiful moment in time captured beautifully.

Isaac and his wife Helen and their two little boys live here at Homestead, just a half-mile or so from the little place where we’re living. And last night, they invited us over for a wonderful dinner, celebrating their oldest Lucas’s 3rd birthday.

We shared a wonderful meal together and talked for a long time about marriage and kids and their recent mission trip to Chihuahua, Mexico and afterwards, Isaac and I and our older kids made our way out to ‘The Nook’, an incredible office space that Isaac designed and built a couple of years ago on the other side of their backyard.

While we were there, Indy noticed a a few other recent sketches that he’d done.

Some people just have a gift. And some people have many, many gifts. I would say that Isaac falls in the latter category. He is a true artist in a dozen different formats, especially nature.

Like myself, Isaac does many things, including writing Field Notes, a Substack publication like this one. He also designs and creates beautiful things in nature, like the Nook and Live Oak Lake and teaches others how to turn their creative passion into reality.

He and his nine siblings, and his parents (and grandparents) have been creating beautiful spaces for decades. Transforming empty rooms, old houses, run-down buildings, farms, train cars, and even small towns into incredible, inspiring, living works of art. He, and they, have a way of bringing life to art, and art to life.

Isaac also knows that gifts are just that, blessings from God. Meant to be given away, and a blessing to others whenever possible, and so he looks for every opportunity he is given to gift his gift to someone else.

And so the next thing I knew, Isaac was giving Indiana an impromptu drawing lesson.

He showed her some animals pictures on his iPad and had her pick her favorite out (she chose a floppy-eared bunny), and then showed her how she, if she squinted her eyes, could see the picture in its simplest form. From there, he explained how to take what you see and begin to softly rough-out an outline.

And then add in a few more details.

And some shadows and texture.

While little Lucas and I watched, he walked her through how to see something and bring it to life in a completely different way.

Pretty soon, the art pencils were in her hand and he was encouraging her to add her own touches and vision to what he had begun.

Lucas kept Indy laughing while she worked and made it even more fun.

The drawing class only lasted a short time, but the impact of it will remain long into the future. As Isaac shared his process with her, I could see Indy having some ‘aha’ moments. Excited to come home and practice sketching on her own.

Before long, the Mom’s were at the door and we were all walking back across the yard for dessert and more conversation, before calling it a night.

Isaac sent the drawing home with Indy, and even more than that, the inspiration for her to want to draw more. And for me, to draw even more from life than I do now.

PS: I’ve been working on a really neat, longer video story about another project that Isaac is part of, that I’m hoping to finish and share in the next few days.

If you’d like to learn more about Isaac and follow along with his writing and their story, you can subscribe to his newsletter here.

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