Back In The Groove

After a long pause, I've made my way back to my blog with hopes that I'll find some of the people who used to visit way back in 2014. I've lost contact with so many good people -- I'd love you to join me again on my adventures.

This being 2017, a lot has gone past which may never get recorded, but a lot of cool things have happened, such as moving to Belize, building and moving into my earthbag house, painting murals of ancient Mayan art and a life-size jaguar on its walls, and dipping deeply into the lives of my Belizean neighbors here in western Belize, a few miles from the Guatemalan border and ten miles on a rocky, rocky road south of Benque Viejo del Carmen in an intentional neighborhood called Better In Belize.

my house in Oregon, now sold to other artists

In my old life, in southern Oregon, I was a wildlife illustrator, writing and illustrating nature books for kids (you can get a glimpse of them here), making art for interpretive signs on forest trails and for nature centers, teaching drawing and painting workshops, and other stuff. 

I also did a lot of sketch/journaling not only the amazing natural habitat around my house in a douglas fir/madrone/ponderosa pine forest, but for several years I also traveled to a different tropical place to experience the wonders of nature there, too.  Then I scanned in my sketches and notes to create downloadable how-to sketchbooks for people wanting to create their own.

Casa de la Tierra -- my house

Actually, you can find out about a lot of that stuff by reading the older posts. Enjoy! I myself can really get lost in them -- they're so old, it's almost like reading about someone else.
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That's me, sitting on my veranda

So here I am, living in the rainforest in Belize in an earthbag house.  The weather here in the Maya Mountain foothills is very gentle as a rule, with daytime temperatures ranging from 65° to 85° and night-time temperatures never getting below about 55°. The weather is divided into rainy and dry seasons, which means it is a great place to experience a multitude of fascinating creatures all year round.  

Mayan ball player

It's taken me a couple of years to get everything sorted out, what with building then furnishing the house on a budget, painting those murals, and most recently, creating a little Belize-style hideaway for an even more intense experience in the jungle, with more subjects to sketch and journal about.

I have been trying to make myself a part of the Belizean community by learning Spanish well enough to talk to neighbors who don't have English, then by becoming a go-to resource by creating a Wi-fi hot spot for neighborhood folks who have cellphones but no signal, and for kids needing a place to study with access to the internet and also occasional printouts of items from the web. It's been a real change for me, this hermit who used to live in the woods and see another human maybe once a week.....and I'm loving it.

Jaguar painting on my house wall

As well, I deliver cokes and chips to the Belizean construction crew building houses here six days/week. I've made some good friends among them
But I am not surrounded by a...well, a support group of people who enjoy investigating nature through art and writing, desire to be artists, or even have any particular interest in what I am doing. 

  Giant Red-winged Grasshopper

As a result I've pretty much stopped working on my sketch/journaling, much to my dismay.  It's a brick wall I can't seem to get over or around, so I'm thinking that rejoining my blog again will help me find a community of people who love nature and art as I do, or at least will appreciate or be interested in what I'm working on and will let me know. This grasshopper was the last sketch I produced, around the time I stopped blogging in 2014.

Why should you come back to visit this blog?

Micasa, my Belizean-style hideaway in the woods

I'm planning: 

• a step-by-step tutorial on how I painted the murals on my house walls
• an overview of details of  building and furnishing an earthbag house
• to share my sketch/journaling 
• to show how my Belizean hideaway in the jungle was built
• to share the joy as I bring solar lights to my neighbors' houses and 
• to answer any questions you might have about the flying leap I took to transport myself from 20 wooded acres and a lovely little house in Oregon, USA to .9 acres and an off-the-grid earthbag house in an ecovillage in Belize. 

I hope to see you soon. Please come and leave a message?  Introduce yourself and let's have a conversation!

renie