This weekend I am excited about my favorite day of the year - the first day of Spring. I love everything about starting over, and planting seeds for new things. SO sweet . . .

 

But something else really exciting happened this weekend also.

 

Caroline Askoy has returned from her Winter hiatus and is publishing her wonderful “Crayons” blog again.

All artwork in this post was created by Caroline Askoy as a part of her “Crayons” blog, and is protected by her copyright and used with her permission.

We have just recently been talking here about the challenges of creating and keeping up with a blog, and about how it can help us in our endeavors to do something artistic everyday.

 

Well Caroline writes and illustrates an entire story each week for her blog, and works on it in one way or another every day. Talk about challenging!

 

She first must find a story in the happenings and activities of her week. Then she spends a couple of days on the drawings - trying to illustrate the story with as few of them and as few words as possible. A couple more days of inking and coloring and she’s done.

 

Then she pushes the Publish button and begins all over again - looking for the next story.

 

She says each story can take 10 hours or more all told. She carries a little Moleskine sketchbook around with her all week to record ideas and sketches of what she sees. Originally, she did her drawings with Bic Pens and Crayons (hence the name of her blog), but when the scanner got too waxy, she switched to colored pencils and then to better drawing pens.

 

Last September, Caroline decided she needed a break, and closed the Book of Crayons for awhile. Now she is back and her fans are thrilled.

 

But enough from me - I will let her tell you her stories:

 

 

Since there is just one story so far, be sure to go back to the Archives - there were 47 stories in 2008 and 30 in 2007.