Art Coffee Break: Hokusai’s Method

Initial thoughts are that this is a wonderful book, certainly worth the price.

My deeper thoughts: This book made me think quite a bit about how we talk to people in the present and in the future about how to make art.

When I think about most art history that I read, I find it’s uncommon to locate anecdotes that discuss directly how the artist created their work. An offhand example - in reading two books about John Singer Sargent this year in 2025, I can estimate that only ten or so paragraphs were dedicated to how he worked. How did he hold his brushes? I found out eventually (he kept many brushes in one hand to select from, he hovered with his brush over the canvas for quite some time before making a mark) but it did take me a while. I waded through 1000+ pages about his family, how much money he made, his friends, drama that happened, what he ate for dinner and his eating style, and critical receptions before finding those five or six total pages about how he worked.

Hokusai’s Method is the opposite of that. This book shows directly how Hokusai worked on his art, and how he suggests different audiences of readers to work on their art. I was oddly shocked to see that this book contains pages where Hokusai shows readers how to hold a brush. Hokusai drew a picture of a hand holding a brush and how to make marks with that particular hold. It sounds like the simplest thing on the planet, but I can’t think of any other art book that shows this that I’ve seen. Usually there are countless watercolor swatches and step-by-step instructions, but it’s been very rare for me personally to see any image of any hand, ever. Even on instagram, I don’t often see artist hands in tutorial posts. I usually just see the brush. It struck me as I was reading this book that much of the art instruction that I’ve encountered is a little bit like watching a soccer game where all you see is the ball, and maybe for a split second moment, a shoe or two kicking it along.

In addition to the revolution of depicting a hand holding a brush, I have to appreciate Hokusai’s ability to angle himself towards the appropriate audience. The anthology kicks off with a whole volume dedicated to showing children how to draw simple scenes and animals by utilizing Kanji mnemonics that they’d already be learning how to write. Later on, there’s more advanced how-tos for older artists. But I also get the feeling he wouldn’t begrudge a 9 year-old of trying out the more difficult tutorials.

So, what we have here is a manual, a series of manuals about making art, dancing, different styles of art, all highly attuned to their audiences of various ages and pursuits. I had to think as I was reviewing the dance manuals that the depicted dances could have easily been lost to time without such clear illustrations.

If these are the gifts of infinite value that illustration gives to all of us in the future, why do people * still * pooh-pooh illustration so very much?

There’s certainly a part of human nature that loves mystery. It’s mysterious and alluring when an artist pops off dozens of paintings that look realistic and that speak to our soul. We love the forgotten, forbidden temple, because it contains puzzles, traps, and treasure.

Maybe, just maybe, illustration is seen as threatening to some of that mystery. It’s the path through the temple. Maybe it’s a little threatening to know John Singer Sargent’s exact workflow, because we’d rather keep experiencing mysterious awe, rather than see him as, you know, just a dude.

But I think both can co-exist at the same time. We can have Hokusai’s Method, and his drawings about how to draw a cat, and the cat can still speak directly to our souls 200+ years later. We can totally have Hokusai’s iconic wave and his illustration of a dancing guy with a beer belly at the same time. For that reason, this is the most enlightening art book I’ve held in my hands for a while.

Flower Paintings late 2024 early 2025

I’ve had fun lately with painting some still life flowers, usually flowers I get from Whole Foods or Costco.

I usually arrange a couple stems on the default flowers that I get and then take a source photo and work from that. A couple of time, I’ve painted the flowers from life.

I also tried painting the flowers on wood, the two paintings immediately above are on gessoed wood surfaces. With the heavy impasto texture of the paint, the surface didn’t matter an extreme amount.

My most recent flower project has been using leftover paint from larger flower pieces to make tiny flower pieces, like these 4 x 4 in canvases. I call these “Fantasy Flowers” because they don’t really exist, the flowers are sort of based on real arrangements, but they don’t represent actual blooms.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed working with flowers, both the still life arrangements and Fantasy Flowers, and I plan to do much more work with them in the future.

Hidden Iterations

I tend to make drawings of the same topic that interests me over and over. I think you could call it “working in series” or “iterating” but I never really thought about it until lately. A lot of artists do this, as far as I know, but maybe we don’t post a lot about it these days because it might seem a little boring and repetitive.

Topic: Mog’s Treehouse or Pinnacle Rocks from Final Fantasy IX

Something about this area in Final Fantasy IX pulls me in. Maybe it’s partly the activity that takes place here. I call this area “Mog’s Treehouse” but it’s truly called Pinnacle Rocks in the game. Here, players are supposed to assemble the order of a story or legend, and Garnet’s retelling of the story slightly changes the dialogue.

I think what also drew me to this scene is that I remember it being printed in a magazine somewhere, a few months before ever playing the game. I thought about the scene over and over and I imagined what it would be like to play the game. I had a lot of feelings about not being able to wait for the game to come out.

What I wanted to take from making this scene over and over was the feeling of creating a rare world, where you can imagine that the moogles definitely live in the tree, and that someone carved the windows from the bulges in the giant tree. It’s a little hard to see how big the tree really is at first, but if you look for a couple seconds, the scale of the tree comes alive.

As a watercolor artwork it definitely takes some thought as to the layers.

Balogar

Balogar, the Runeblade, is an optional boss in Octopath Traveler I. Something about drawing Balogar kind of kicks my butt - he’s like drawing a gnarled piece of wood, trying to get every line right, and one missed line nudges everything out of order. I use him as a warmup drawing when I’m out and about to get my brain working. And frankly, I often get him wrong, I mess up his leg or foot, or his helmet.

I like Balogar too because he’s a good excuse to use the hot pink color in the Sakura Koi CAC watercolor set, as he’s surrounded by hot pink flames.

I felt Balogar in the game was kind of a funny boss because, well, he’s truly flaming pink, and he would instantly drop my whole party so many times that it was comical. I had to follow a really bizarre strategy to beat him. It’s true that sometimes in RPGs you can just grind up some levels and beat everything on sheer force, but this didn’t seem to be true in this case. So, I appreciated the puzzle of Balogar too.

Akihabara Stairwells

When I went to Akihabara in 2019 I took photos of the stairwells at some of the pop culture, comics, and figurine stores. But I never published the photos, so I’m finally catching up now.

I found the stairwells to be dizzying in a couple ways - first there was just so.much.stuff. to look at. Colors, shapes. Also I’d never seen or heard of most of what was going on, except the stairwell in a retro game store. But even then there were some mysteries.

What I got from most of Akihabara was a use-every-square-inch aesthetic. Every surface is maxed out with images. Almost nothing was left white or blank.

It’s also interesting to me to see what was promoted outside or in the front of each stores and what was promoted in the stairwells. At the time, a game called BanG Dream! Girls Band Party was being promoted everywhere outside each store, it was on posters in windows and on kiosks. I imagined that someday, years from now, it might have a poster on one of these stairwell walls, like the walls of history of pop culture and anime.

Interiors in Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

I’ve been loving this new Zelda game on the Nintendo Switch. The puzzles are wonderful, and it’s often a very funny game. All of the interior spaces are well thought-out and believable to me. I took a few screen captures from the beginning of my game to share here.

First of all in the image above, I noticed the sheer number of rugs in the space. The rugs and their different sizes and colors led me to believe that a unique individual has made their home here, possibly over many years. I’m also in love with the kitchen space in this environment and the vanity.

There are many more spaces with similar motifs in different color schemes. Some of the rugs and objects look similarly patterned as in other scenes but they are still unique. The rolled mats in the scene above added a lot of texture and dimension to the sense of space for me.

I liked the space above because it seemed like a cozy study to me. The lantern on the desk with the papers on the wall and the open book spoke to me.

I liked how different cities had different design feels, like the image below where there is only dark hardwood, no rugs. The wooden planks each seem to be a bit unique. There are splits and grooves in different places in each floorboard.

Too, I like how every little home has a unique plant. When I look back through the screen captures in this post, each place has a unique plant - there is one cactus that seems to show up twice but that’s it. The standby Zelda ceramic pots are the only thing that seem to be mass-produced in this game, something I have never thought about before in all the Zelda I’ve ever played.

These rooms definitely made me stop and appreciate them, so much that I figured I might as well post about them. Like most videogame players, I often fly through areas very quickly so I can get to the next thing or the next area. But I liked pausing for a bit in this game to notice what was around in each place. It seems to me that a lot of thought went into it all.

Blue monochrome game drawings

I had fun with an exercise in limits lately. Utilizing a Caran D’Ache Museum blue watercolor pencil and Traveler’s Notebook watercolor paper, I copied a few scenes from some video games that I like as well as some concept art drawings.

The above is a copy of a drawn map of the first age encountered in Myst, it’s a motif I return to often and enjoy. I did another copy of a sketch of a different area from the Myst series below.

I made a couple versions of the piece above, which is a copy of a pencil drawing of concept art for one of the Breath of Fire games. I liked how this village looked very lived-in, I believed every bit of it because of the details in the original drawing. It was fun to map out the roofs and trees. I found it easy to imagine characters moving throughout this environment and making discoveries.

For my last two drawings, I rendered some scenes from Final Fantasy IX. I like these two scenes, which feature an inn (above) and a shop (below) because of their believability factor. There are many decorative and utilitarian objects scattered across both scenes, like framed art and containers, and also loveable elements like splintering floorboards and worn rugs.

While drawing these scenes, I noticed more about these scenes than I ever had before while playing the games. It felt like I got to know every brick and branch personally. I felt like each artist who originally worked on each scene definitely breathed life and atmosphere into each environment. I also had to appreciate the energy that went into each artwork - at some points I admit I gave up on drawing every little thing.

It was cool to work with just one color for these, by limiting myself, I had to pay attention to the content, shapes, and values within each artwork rather than colors. I’ll be sure to continue in this vein with future work.

5 Years of using a Hobonichi Techo journal

When I first bought a Hobonichi Techo in 2019, it was partially because of the covers. The cover I wanted featured scenes from Earthbound or Mother 3, all of which were so colorful and full of life for me that I had to get it.

I never played Earthbound on SNES when it came out - I never had an SNES. The game represented a fun-looking train that had flown by my town of personal cultural influences. I heard it in the distance, I saw the steam emerging from it, but I never caught the train.

I did end up buying an N64 with my allowance and chore savings, and I was waiting for Earthbound 64. It looked cool! Yet it never came out. I forgot about it a bit, and ended up playing mostly Star Fox and Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Eventually, something like 20 years later, I found a way to play Earthbound on the SNES classic. I loved it. It was so weird, I couldn’t get enough. Eventually I looked online for shirts or stationery - or something - that would be a cool way to remember Earthbound.

What I happened across were the Hobonichi Techo journal covers. I haven’t been consistently a planner or journal person, but I figured, “Why not?” And also “Why not buy the journal and the cover?”

I ended up … actually using the journal, which surprised me, and I bought them year after year. I found myself looking forward to October or November so I could order a new Techo and have it ready for January 1.

Each Techo comes with a pen themed for the year, and a small surprise trinket, and there are also brochure-like inserts with comics or stories on them.

As my life shifted, I found the way that I use the Techo shifting as well. From 2019-2022 I largely used the Techo to keep track of books I read and meetings I was attending, sometimes marathon events and training runs. After my baby was born in 2022, I ran out of even more time, and I’ve shifted my Techo practice to feature mostly washi tape stickers and pictures that I printed out with a thermanote thermal printer.

Time has gone by so fast that I realized all of a sudden while writing this blog that it’s truly been more like 6 years of using the Techo, as I have one for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and I’m about to crack open my 2025 Techo and put it in its cover.

So, what about this journal made it work for me? I don’t know exactly. I’d say it’s a mix of the Techo’s size and the feel of the paper, and how each day is marked by icons for lunch and dinner. I like how each page is a day and how there are key lunar cycle days printed on pages. I appreciate the quotes at the bottom of each day page. I draw very little in it and I mostly write or use stickers, yet I liked how watercolors look in it.

While browsing the Techo website, I noticed that there is a 5-year version of this journal, in addition to the 1-year version which I’ve been using. I’m not sure if I’m ready to get the 5-year Techo - in the spring of 2020 (cursed year), I dropped my 2020 Techo on the floor of my Jeep and wasn’t able to find it for a while. I ordered another 2020 journal and eventually found the journal that I’d lost, so I had an extra journal for a while. Ultimately, I guess that year did sort of feel like two years in many ways. So who knows if I’m ready for the 5-year. The idea of losing it or something makes me want to keep to the 1-year journals.

But we will see! It’s aspirational for me to have lots of journals that adequately track my journey through time. Those two words, journal and journey, are related for me - a journal isn’t necessarily about progress, yet it’s about going somewhere.

Voyage Denver Interview

I’ve got a brand new interview out! Check it out here

I enjoyed this interview quite a bit, it was a good chance to talk about more of what I’ve been reading lately and other influences.

Shinjuku Night Watercolors

In 2019 I arrived in Tokyo on a spring night in March at about 5 pm, just enough time to metro to my air bnb and go to sleep. On the second night, I checked out Shinjuku and wandered around taking photos of streets at night. I’ve gone back through my photos to make watercolors of these photos.

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I made a couple passes at this street with a big pink light, both in real life and in my drawings. I went down this street a couple times. The tall neon pink light says something with “ladies” at the end. So I can only partially guess what it was advertising, but it attracted me as a set of colors. A good excuse to use the hot pink color in the Sakura Koi CAC set.

It was fun to get down how tall and narrow everything felt, especially in the Traveler’s Notebook watercolor paper, which is tall and narrow.

An Audience of One - Srinivas Rao with Robin Dellabough

I really like this book. The book focuses on the value of making art for art’s sake, and not worrying about brand, metrics, marketing, or What People Will Think.

Some of the tactics and topics in this book I’d already heard about or read, some I had never heard about. One tip I picked up from this book was changing my phone to grayscale to make it less interesting, or less addicting. I’ll probably change my phone back to color as soon as I have a few photos to take, but I love tapping it and seeing it look boring as hell, almost like a graveyard of little square apps made of different shades of marble or granite. Instagram is a lot less appealing to tap on when it is gray. I love Instagram but it’s good to tone it down while painting or making work.

This book is from 2018. I love reading and I’d estimate I usually read about 50-70 books a year. Given this volume, I’ve noticed some feelings I have that have emerged about particular books written in a particular time. Almost all nonfiction business books or culture-angled books written between 2010 and 2020 have a cast of rapidly-formed nostalgia for me. There’s a lot of hope and competitive edges talked about in these books. There are sophisticated problems and crises in these books, like how to deal with a dinner guest who doesn’t say the right thing, how to eat the right combination of foods to make perfect proteins, etc, etc. Unfortunately, my ability to resonate with much of this kind of writing went out the window for me in 2020.

Is that okay? Overall what I’ve learned from no longer being able to resonate with books about dinner party antics is that you never know what kind of history your future readers will be living through.

Given my inability to resonate with a lot of books written from 2010-2020, books that I used to love and tell my friends about, I really liked this book. While reading this book in 2024, I felt that maybe my brain was coming back from its crisis-management state that it morphed into during the COVID crisis. It wasn’t all COVID’s fault, I personally made my brain even more intensely involved in risk-consideration by having a baby in 2022.

Maybe of all things, life-or-death situations take us back to the mission of making art for arts’ sake. Who cares about likes and subscribes and engagement when you have death to avoid and a bundle of joy to protect and cherish?

Overall I needed much of the message in this book right now in 2024. It’s fine to make art for art’s sake, and not so it becomes a viral reel. It’s fine to post a picture of an unhashtagable tree that nobody cares about. I’m currently building an email newsletter list, and I watch my website analytics pretty closely. I think for Rao’s message in this book, it’s not ‘bad’ to do any of this, just to not let it drive or manage the core of your work as an artist. So, I had to ask myself after reading this book - am I letting my marketing tasks dictate how I create work?

I think that how it works for me right now is I make a mix of types of work, I often make series of art that I know will sell or have sold in the past. I also make art that I know nobody will buy or even ‘get’. Or maybe one or two people will get it, but you see what I’m saying.

The artist who makes art for arts sake, whose ethos Rao opens with, is David Bowie. Before picking up this book off the shelf, I had just been thinking about David Bowie’s last album, Blackstar, and the phenomenally weird music video he put out with it, which I personally loved and completely didn’t understand. I did some thinking and I realized I love a lot of art like this, where I don’t get it at all to begin with, but I kind of stick with it and draw out my own sensibilities over time. If I feel really lost I might read an artist interview about whatever I’m confused about.

I think that confused or unknowing feeling is good. Sometimes as an artist, I’ve caused that feeling, and people tell me about.

Sometimes I will be sitting at my art booth at a First Friday in Boulder and someone will pick up one of my prints and ask me what it means, or what it is. There isn’t any answer, or there are a lot of answers. We live in a time where a lot of visual work comes with pithy messages or placards - Tiktoks are like comic strips where the punchline is spelled out as clear as day. Hallmark cards say the right thing for us. Nobody looks at visual content like this and asks what it means. Clarity of meaning is not a morally or aesthetically ‘bad’ thing, and I truly can’t blame anyone for doubling down on clarity or clarity-seeking right now, or in difficult moments. Personally? I often enjoy the fall into the arms of clarity. In the future, 500 years from now, someone may pick up a gnarled piece of wood, dust it off, and read: “Live Laugh Love” and then they may ask what it means, but we all know what that means today.

Eventually, though, I realized that the What Does it Mean Visitor is the kindred soul of myself, when I was sitting in my Austin apartment watching the David Bowie Blackstar video. The Visitor is a sign that, despite all modern distractions and our tendencies to self-edit, we may have made art for art’s sake.

American Flannel - Steven Kurutz

I had a very Colorado thing happen to me when I ordered this book. I was super excited to read it and it arrived in my mailbox at about 5 or 6 pm. I bundled up and put my poodle, Geddy, on his leash for a short outdoor trip, where both of us crossed over ice and snow, only to find that my mailbox on this particular day had completely frozen shut and there was no way I could open it. I trudged back inside, I was really bummed about my mailbox, and it struck me how much I was looking forward to reading this book. I ended up getting my mailbox open the next day - which brought some sunlight and a few more degrees of melting - and then I read this book in about a day and a half. I could barely put it down.

I loved the stories in this book and I couldn’t get enough. Some of the facts in the book are a combination of staggering, tragic, and embarassing to Americans like me. I had to empathize with the towns that were built around fabrics, textiles, and textile products where the entire town was deserted after a process or product being outsourced. In this book, there are towns where suddenly, thousands of people who had textile jobs no longer have those jobs, and it’s truly overnight in some cases. This won’t be a spoiler for anyone who has lived this sort of experience. For me personally? It reminded me quite a bit of the mining industry being halted in Leadville in the 1980s. One day, everyone had jobs. The next day, no one did.

What happens after the mass textile layoffs is the underdog/comeback story part of this book which I won’t go into too deeply so I won’t spoil it. The author follows three or four mavericks who are dedicated to making different kinds of textiles in America once more, after it’s become so lucrative to outsource that it’s almost foolish to not. Socks, flannel, and hoodies are all included in textiles/garments that almost become lost arts for the United States. I loved every storyline in this book, and each person the author follows stands out to me as an admirable character. The story I liked the most was about the sock-maker in Alabama.

If you walk into Melanzana’s outdoor apparel shop in Leadville, it’s easy to get swept up in the newest season’s colors of hoodies. Personally, my brain starts spinning up with considerations about which hoodies or dresses I am going to buy, because there are limits to how many you can buy each year. Yet, what’s always impressed me most about Melanzana is that as a customer, you can see the sewing operations happening right behind the check-out desk. There are uncountable rows of sewing machines and usually sewers at work. It doesn’t get more local than that! A part of me yearns for a tour of the sewing area, yet another part wants to accept the mystery. I personally don’t always do great artwork if someone is watching me or standing behind me. So, I try to not stare too hard.

But I have to stare a little bit. I have to admire everything clothing-wise that’s made in the USA. American Flannel only made the enterprise of making quality, local clothing more admirable to me. I think at this point in time, there’s a solid popular understanding of the perils of fast fashion, for customers, for workers, and for the environment. The book does address the difficulty of affording clothing that isn’t fast fashion or from overseas, both for families and for businesses. Fortunately, this book considers the marvelous, championing steps that are taken to make quality and affordable clothing in the USA. I had a sigh of relief over this, thank god it wasn’t about $300 jeans, or even $100 jeans.

All in all, I felt like after reading this book, I knew each person and place, and maybe I even kind of knew the sewing machines. It’s like the sewing-floor tour I’ve always wanted.

The Leadville Irish Miners’ Memorial

The Leadville Irish Miners’ Memorial is a thoughtful place. To get to the memorial, I drove past the familiar gateway to the graveyard and kept driving a bit further than I’d ever been before. I went on a summer day and was the only visitor I saw.

There are a few placards to read and study before walking up the memorial path. The placards tell a tale of squalid living and working conditions endured by the Irish immigrant miners, and an uprising against the mining industry and the then-governor of Colorado.

I love reading, and I love writing, but reading and writing only does so much for me. That’s probably why I’m also an artist. Some things are so big that they need to be expressed in multiple formats for any justice to be done. In turn, things like this are best learned about through different senses. The placards at this memorial, to me, are like reading a book, I sort of get it, it flashes by in my head. The facts and figures all make technical sense. But there’s something missing.

The missing piece is filled in by the memorial itself. This is where the history of the Irish Miners really connected in my head.

To see the memorial, you walk up a spiraling path which is lined with native plants and mining artifacts. What the artifacts are, is not always clear - to me at least. The process of walking the spiral reminded me a lot of walking through remote forests near Leadville. Sometimes, I come across some sort of artifact or rusted metal, where it’s clear that it’s a mining relic, but I have no idea what it is.

After spiraling upwards very slowly, like on a zen path, you see a statue surrounded by clear glass panels.

The bright glass panels contain columns of names of miners and family members who passed away, including their age or estimated age. It’s heartbreaking to see how young people were, including stillborn children with the same last name.

Having lived in Washington D.C. for a couple years and living amongst many memorials and museums, the memorial that this recalls the most for me has to be Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial.

Seeing the names on the glass panels was very moving to me. There’s something about seeing names on a wall that puts the facts and figures into perspective. The names being on glass is deeply symbolic. You can look right through glass, if you want. You can also look right through the death and destruction that mining can bring to a community.

Overall I was glad to see a memorial like this. It’s an important place to visit in Leadville, even if it’s not centrally located in town itself. Leadville’s mining history has plenty of facets - some facets are bright, and some of them flash darkly. I personally have been like many others who get swept up by the romance of Leadville’s history, and I admit that I have focused on the more glamorous side of things. I love to read about colorful characters in Leadville’s history such as Horace Tabor, Molly Brown, and that one time that somehow, Oscar Wilde ended up in town. And who wouldn’t be fascinated by the Ice Palace? There’s the fun of Leadville’s Boom Days celebration where everyone dresses up in 1880s fashion, there’s burro racing, festival booths, Wild West re-enactments, and plenty of gorgeous horses trotting down Harrison Avenue. There’s mining drilling competitions, and I have several memories of a Boom Days booth where I could “pan for gold” as a kid. Of course mining isn’t all fun and games, and recent memory serves to this fact as well - anyone who can remember the molybdenum mine closing in the 1980s can remember some lean and mean times.

And so, the dark and light facets of Leadville’s mining history are further clarified in this memorial. In addition to Boom Days, the Mining Museum, the Mineral Belt Trail, and many other sights to see around town, this brilliant memorial shows us the somber side of Leadville’s mining history.

In so many Western movies, the first scene shows a newcomer in town. We see man in a cowboy hat getting off a train, or a lone mounted figure riding down a dusty main street. Usually in the movies, you get the feeling that the newcomer has some sort of opportunity in town, or that they want to be there. The Leadville Irish Miners’ memorial is a thoughtful place to honor and learn about an entire class of people who certainly didn’t want to be in Leadville, as so many of them were pretty much much forced to be there. They were brutally oppressed, desperate workers who worked in devastating conditions, all of whom turned out the memorable wealth of the land for the low wage of a few dollars per day before dying very young.

I will return to this memorial frequently, and I still have to see it at night when light shines through the glass.

Elevate and Dominate - Deion Sanders

I can’t say I know a lot about football or baseball, if anything I know more about basketball than both games. I did love going to the occasional CU Football game as a student. Something about being in the crowd and seeing the athletes on the field was way more immersive and magnetizing than watching football on television. In a way, the game came alive for me when I went to my first CU football game. It all made sense, why people loved it so much.

One day last year, I had some time off and my mom was looking after my baby. I drove down to Pearl Street, parked, and walked around a bit. I was able to go into the Boulder Bookstore, where I walked up the stairs and bought the Deion Sanders book right away.

What stood out to me most in reading this book was something that a lot of people probably already knew - that Deion Sanders is kind of a sports shapeshifter, he’s a multi talent and executed on his ability in both football and baseball, when everyone said he couldn’t do this, or they said it was impossible to do both sports at all. Let alone how excellent Deion ends up being at both. It was really interesting to read about how many people were critical about him for playing a football game and then getting on a plane and playing a baseball game the next day. There were so many people saying “You can’t do that.” I was probably too young and also too absorbed in other mainstream sports news to realize this is what happened during the time. So, I’m glad he talks about it in this book.

There are moments of loneliness in this book too, I admit it’s not easy to read some of Sanders’ mid-career struggles with mental health. It’s good to see him transcend these moments. It’s a little like reading the lessons learned on the other side of a crisis, and I’m sure that’s what it actually is.

I won’t spoil or repeat the exact anecdote, but my favorite part of this book is the anecdote that mentions Reggie White. To me, the book was worth reading for just those couple paragraphs. For some reason, I really needed to hear the message in that specific part.

All in all I loved this book - Deion Sanders is a unique athlete to learn about off the field and in book form, too. I follow him on Instagram and I love seeing his small paragraphs of advice or thoughts each day, and I’m glad to find an extension of his words in this book. He’s done a lot and he’s been through a lot, and it’s great to see how his presence has touched Boulder in a positive way. Part of why I had to buy the book is the background behind Deion Sanders on the cover - it’s the golden foothills where I often hike. The cover of this book made me feel like I’m in the right universe. I never expected someone like Deion Sanders to be coaching at Boulder - it feels like Justin Timberlake showing up to my high school musical. Yet somehow, here we are with the stars aligned, and the image we have are those golden foothills behind Deion Sanders’ smiling face.

Art Coffee Break: The Triumph of Genius over Envy - Eugène Delacroix

I love a good allegory. It’s a way to say things that can’t be said. More often than not, allegory is not a way to say anything new, but it’s a way to say something that’s eternal. It’s the “It is known” of art, yet it’s still a secret club. And there are so many ways to execute on it.

In this allegorical Delacroix sketch “The Triumph of Genius over Envy,” Genius is the man in the center who is moving towards the left side of the sketch. The woman in the far left is Fame (Source). The younger character in the foreground with the club is supposed to be Heroic Virtue (Same source).

Let’s talk about Envy in this sketch. Rather than a singular entity, it’s a whole system of creatures - Envy is represented by two dogs tearing at the robes of Genius, as well as a fallen, spiny, dark humanoid figure, who is also tearing at the robes of Genius.

There’s also an airborne contingent of Envy, two snake-eyed flying creatures, where one is reaching out, and one has a dagger-like weapon. Whether the creatures of Envy are reaching our their claws for Genius, or they already have a fistful of the robes of Genius, there’s certainly a lot of them, and they either want to have a hold on him, or they have a slipping grasp.

There’s more to Envy that Delacroix had planned, like these two outlined figures below. One has the look of a humanoid salamander with a huge tail. Another couple figures similar to this one are supine in the background.

Envy crawls, it bites, it flies. It has reserve forces waiting in the wings, or the background. It’s both a beatdown and a teardown that Genius is transcending.

There’s a slight incline that Genius is treading up, he is going upwards towards Fame, while Envy is pulling down.

Who, or what, is Genius in this sketch? We can’t quite make out the face. Is he looking forward? Is he looking backwards? Down? 

Delacroix seemed to be in the middle of deciding this. If the youth with the club is already looking backwards, maybe his ultimate decision would have been to have Genius looking ahead, to finish out a triangle of gazes that happen on the upper left of the sketch. Fame’s head is tilted slightly down so that her face is pointed at Heroic Virtue. Heroic Virtue is looking back, towards Envy, but also supporting Genius. Genius is undefined. Aside from the outlined salamander people, Genius’s face is the most unfinished, mysterious aspect of the sketch.

I had to notice that Heroic Virtue isn’t raising the club at Envy. The club is a supportive weapon instead, a proverbial Big Stick. I get the idea that it isn’t Heroism’s job to defeat Envy for Genius. Envy also doesn’t look terribly injured or beaten back. Genius just has to plod out of it all, somehow.

Unlike Genius, we seem to know Fame very well. She’s clearly defined. Her clothes and body are easy to see, and Heroism is also very definite. Both Fame and Heroism have symbols on their heads, Heroism has laurels, and Fame seems to have a circlet of faintly outlined stars.

Similarly, the sprawled aspect of Envy is super defined, down to the muscles and tail.

What I also found interesting here is that Genius is almost stripped naked by Envy. Fame has plenty of clothes on, and Heroic Virtue is shirtless but looks pretty tidy. Meanwhile, Genius looks like he is about to lose his last ragged robes to Envy, perhaps the very moment he falls into Fame’s arms. The right hand of the spined aspect of Envy seems to be resting on some of Genius’s torn clothes.

I’m only a little sad that this sketch never became a painting - because it’s such a good sketch. It could have been its own form of Liberty Leading the People. As a sketch, the understated parts of it give a proper amount of power to the abstract concepts of Genius and Envy. Unlike Liberty Leading the People, where the French flag is highly visible, there probably wouldn’t be any contemporary references in a painting like this, unless they were hidden. This wouldn’t have been an allegorical painting about a nation or governance, but it would have still been about a battle and a clear triumph.

It’s an important and curious message. Why does Genius have to triumph over Envy, instead of something like Stupidity or Boredom or Distraction? Maybe there’s something of envy in all of those, and more. Striding, unseeable Genius is undeniably torn up by the forces of Envy, but eventually it triumphs.

Medium Moment: My Favorite Watercolor Papers

I learned early on in my deep dive into watercolors that not all papers are created equal. It’s good that I learned this. I suspect that, for some people, they never learn this lesson and they may give up on watercolor after using disappointing paper. For some blessed people, maybe it doesn’t matter. For me it did, here’s what I ended up liking the most.

Traveler’s Notebook No. 27 Watercolor Paper

For an off-white paper that shows blended colors well and is fun to draw on, with little tooth or little exaggerated texture, Traveler’s Notebook 027 Watercolor Paper is my favorite.

I realized as I was writing this blog that I don’t even know if Traveler’s Notebook 027 Watercolor Paper is hot press or cold press. I poked around a bit on the Traveler’s Company website and I couldn’t find an answer to this. Being someone who usually likes cold press papers, I would think it’s cold press but I don’t know for sure. I thought about why hot or cold isn’t listed in the product information, and maybe it’s simply not important to most Traveler’s Company customers in this case. I will admit that when papers say they are acid-free, my mind kind of skips over that, I take that as a given and not much of a feature that I need to see on paper. Maybe there’s a lesson in this, there’s no need to resist trying something that’s a bit mysterious, or something with selling points that aren’t even close to the typical bullets listed on a product page.

Strathmore Watercolor Postcards

This paper has a good texture and size. I found myself enjoying drawing animals on this paper. It’s small and low-risk to use, I made a couple ‘dud’ watercolors and I didn’t feel like it was the end of the world. It’s a great paper for warming up, and also for finished pieces. With all of the pieces I finished, I didn’t want to actually put them in the mail without an envelope first!

Fabriano Artistico Enhanced Watercolor Block - Extra White Cold Press - 100% Cotton

This Fabriano cotton paper is the best paper I’ve ever used for anything, ever. It made everything turn out perfect. If anything didn’t look good, it’s because of my own mistakes, not because of the paper or paints or supplies. This paper has a medium-high level of texture, which I think turns out beautifully.

The only thing wrong with this paper is that after using it, other papers can seem a little like a disappointment. I get over this feeling eventually, but it really is noticeable after using this paper.

How I found my forever paper(s):

What’s worked for me best is combining and trying different types of paper, and even drawing or watercoloring on one type while I’m waiting for another to dry. It’s a good way to observe differences. Here’s a day where I was working on the Fabriano cotton paper and also a Traveler’s Notebook page:

And Oops I did it again -

Sometimes, just going off of branding and price has led to good discoveries for me with paper. After looking at four or five local art stores, I couldn’t find the Fabriano cotton paper at a single one. I had no idea what the actual texture was like until I ordered it online. I took a risk in this case since it is expensive paper.

For me, I don’t exactly have paints that are “too good to use” which is a false artistic limiter anyways. The “too good to use” trap is like having lipstick or perfume that’s too good to wear, and so you never wear it, and it sits in a drawer for years on end, then becomes unusable.

While I try to stay away from “Too good to use,” I admit that I rank qualities in my head, and I prioritize what to use based on my budget and existing supplies that I have on hand. I’m more severe about paper than I am about paint - I don’t limit myself so much with the paint that I use, but I do find myself coming up with schedules and budgets for paper.

Here is my general thinking: The Traveler’s Notebook No. 27 paper is good enough for everyday use, the Fabriano cotton paper is what I reserve for commissions or something special. The Strathmore paper is in-between. It’s probably too nice to actually send the resulting watercolors in the mail, even with the best mail carriers on the planet … I probably don’t want to drop the watercolors into a mailbox and have them shuffled across state lines and dropped into other mailboxes.

Here’s how much I treasure the Fabriano paper: if I start a watercolor and make a mistake on this paper, one that can’t be ‘saved,’ I don’t throw the paper away. I put it in a paper recycling bin that I keep, and I eventually blend it into pulp and recast it as a new peice of paper using a deckle and a screen. Even if the recast paper has a tiny bit of color on it from the failed drawing, like blue or red, it usually fades out and I have a new piece of paper again, which I can try to use for crafting/collage or other pursuits. I have no problem saying I am very, very precious about this paper. Because it’s precious to me.

So there you go, these are my favorite papers for watercolor at the moment in 2024. How I really feel about paper is that it shouldn’t be forgotten, and that it should also be the first consideration for watercolor. I’ve had many people approach me over the years as I’m drawing or watercoloring, and ask me what pen I am using. I’m really flattered and I’m also kind of a direct person - if someone asks me a question, I will answer it for ten minutes if you want. I will tell you all about the pen, where I got it, how much it was, and my entire life story and where I went to art school etc etc. As a curious person, I know it can be hard sometimes to approach a stranger and ask them a question, too. With questions, I think the hope is that the answer will give the asker the most impactful takeaway. For the most impactful takeaway, I wish more people asked me about the paper.

Maybe paper gets forgotten next to shiny new paints, or we forget about it compared to a person’s talent. Or, it simply doesn’t have the best marketing. Either way I hope to keep shouting my paper discoveries from the mountaintops, because I think it’s the fastest way to up the watercolor game at every level. If a person is a beginner, or even advanced, paper is a maximizing force.

TLDR Paper List:

1. Fabriano Artistico Enhanced Watercolor Block - Extra White Cold Press - 100% Cotton

2. Traveler’s Notebook 027 Watercolor Paper

3. Strathmore Watercolor Postcards
   
   

TLDR How to Find A Forever Paper(s)

1. Try different types of paper and compare them next to each other. Truly put one watercolor next to another. I’m a cold-press person. You might not be!

2. Compare quality and costs.

3. Remember, nothing is “Too good to use”

I tried John Howard Sanden’s Portraits from Life in 29 Steps

I first happened across John Howard Sanden’s work and writing in the book “Painting the Head in Oil” which I found at Art Parts in Boulder. I flipped through the book and I liked the images and paintings, I thought they were really good. I also noticed that there were paint smudges in the book, which meant to me that someone else had actually painted while using the book, or they had it open while painting.

So, when I saw yet another John Howard Sanden book about portraits, I had to get it.

I found it to be really funny that there are exactly 29 steps. I feel like Sanden isn’t lying to us by saying it’s as easy as 1-2-3 or even 10 steps. He also didn’t round up all the way to 30 steps. There are exactly 29 steps. Without spoiling the book or committing some copyright error, I won’t go into the exact 29 Steps too deeply. TLDR; the steps worked well for me and here is how.

The steps involve a basic sketch in a neutral tone of paint, and taking your time to get the sketch right. Areas like the top of the head, the sides of the entire head and hair, and where the chin ends, are marked off and divided in a neutral hue or beige. There’s a mapping of ‘landmarks’ and dark areas of the face. Then it seems to go into undertones, making vast areas of the face very dark, even for a light-toned white person, and then pulling out the mid tones and highlights or light areas at the end.

There’s also a specific order to how you work the areas of the face. I wouldn’t say starting at the top or bottom matters so much, but what Sanden has done is that he makes it so you only touch one part of the face once with one layer or tone. So you aren’t going back and forth between the forehead and cheeks six or seven times. You make one layer or pass at the forehead, cheeks, and chin, and then you make the second pass at the forehead, cheeks, and chin. The goal seems to be to reduce the number of times you could possibly be working with a single tone on a certain area. For the mission of finishing a painting in a couple hours, this works well.

Even though there are 29 steps, and that may sound like an high amount of steps, under this system, each part of the face is only going to be worked on a limited number of times. There’s also a useful ordering of laying down darks and lights, and when to do that. This reduces the chance of the painting being overworked, and the colors or hues being over mixed and dulled.

Sanden mentions pretty early in the book that making a full pencil sketch isn’t too useful, in his opinion, because it just gets covered anyways. I found this to be pretty true as I followed the 29 steps, which never involve a pencil or full under sketch. I’ve certainly made pencil sketches underneath my paintings before, and they either haven’t turned out as good as the 29 steps painting, or, the sketch got covered right away.

What I found interesting about the 29 steps is that the initial neutral lines and the mapping of ‘landmarks’ was the hardest part, or, it felt the most brain-intensive to me. Since I seemed to get those right, the rest of the painting didn’t feel like my mind was churning through as much. I wouldn’t say the painting was ‘easy’ after setting down the neutral lines, but I would say it was ‘straightforward’. Figuring out the rest of the painting was more linear after those first 6-10 steps.

I certainly have more work to do before I reach Sanden’s level (don’t a lot of us?) what I will say about this painting is I was really happy with it. I feel it captured the photo of me that I worked from in the best way. There’s something about painting too, painting as an enterprise, that has opportunity that photographs don’t have. Painting has the opportunity of showing hidden spirits. That’s what I think I got out of this painting and this exercise as a whole.

I ‘discovered’ John Howard Sanden’s work only this year, and I was sad to read that he passed away in 2022. John Howard Sanden is an interesting writer to read. He gets impatient with what seem to be painting trends that people are following at the time of his writing. I can only really guess at that, but that’s my guess. It’s very funny and entertaining to read. He also had or has his own proprietary set of paints. It can be a little bit of legwork to mix paints that match the paints in his set, but I will say it’s worth it. I’m sure the set is still available somewhere, maybe on eBay at this time. On John Howard Sanden’s website, the area to order the paint set mentions that the creation of the set is in a kind of flux. I can only imagine, with his relatively recent passing and such a huge legacy to manage, there must be a lot up in the air.

In the book there are a couple images of John Howard Sanden teaching and painting. He taught at the art student’s league and had a couple incredible home studios. It seems like he was at home with dozens of people watching him paint, which I find impressive. He painted random people who would volunteer for his workshops, and he would also paint people like bishops and United States Presidents. I found this to be even more impressive, because he captures everyone from every walk of life so well.

I think a book like this would be useful for someone who wants to work specifically on portraits and work in-depth on it. There are tons of great videos, instagram reels, etc, out today with simple tutorials that focus on one area of the face. There’s so many timelapse videos where it’s so wonderful to be impressed with the artist’s skill and the outcome of their work, but we never hear why they artist is doing what they are doing, or what they are thinking while they are painting. This book contains all of that: the why, the how, and the what. He has an answer for every expression and skin tone. Of all things, the dog on the front cover was also a signal to me - he seems to have captured not just the woman in the portrait, but the dog’s expression is also so full of life.

My next step in oil portrature is to keep working on the 29 steps. I’ve asked a couple friends if they would volunteer model for me. I may also try to get my hands on some of the painting DVDs that Sanden offered. These, too, seem to be scattered across eBay and somewhat available on Amazon. To be frank with you, readers, I don’t even own a DVD player right now, but I want to see what more I can get from this person’s knowledge. I’ll report back when I find out more.

Thanks for reading and catch you soon!

Sakura Koi Creative Art Colors CAC Pocket Field Sketch Box

I enjoyed this set so much I bought it twice. With only 12 colors, I felt like I was getting everything I needed from this vibrant set.

Let’s talk about the tennis-ball yellow color. This color is gorgeous. Like many neons, it can run the risk of being too much, but combined with the other colors, it fits quite well.

The purple is the darkest-valued color in the set.

The color I use the least of is the sparkling white color in the upper left corner. I wasn’t sure what to do with this color. It may be a different story if I give it a try on dark paper sometime instead of white paper.

I found that after some time with my initial set, the sparkling copper and gold colors looked better and better as they were subtly mixed in with the other colors. Many of the drawings in this post have a sparkly sheen when tilted in sunlight.

I like working with this set in series - I will paint a couple normal-hue watercolors and then do a neon version when it seems right, like this mountain goat with a neon background:

I found myself combining this set with the other Sakura set and it working quite well, like in this image of Pinnacle Rocks from Final Fantasy IX. I loved this area of the game and it seemed like a place that only gets passed through for a couple moments. So I wanted to make a watercolor of it that brought out how vibrant it felt.

^ I usually have two sketchbooks open at once so why not two color pallets anyways?

The colors also make nice tones when watered down and placed into backgrounds, like the sunset behind the buffalo above.

These colors are a little hard to get in other places. I didn’t even know such a tennis-ball yellow was a thing I could get before buying this set. It also seems hard to find iridescent watercolors at such an inexpensive rate or included in a set. This is a set that has everything fun in it - bright colors and iridescent hues combined. If you’re looking for something bright, I loved this set and I continue to use it almost every day.

Traveler’s Notebook Ended my Journal Guilt

Has Journal Guilt happened to you? Maybe! How many of us have bought a finely-bound 100-page sketchbook journal with glittering aspirations to fill the whole thing with elaborate thoughts and sketches, only to get three or four pages in and be subsumed by life as it happens. And so we re-open the journal weeks or months later and learn once again that Time Waits for No Man, or no person. But we had such a good feeling about this journal! This journal was going to be The One, the journal that we finally sat down to work on, a heirloom we could all look back on with warmth and, hashtag gratitude. Maybe it’s not the journal’s fault. It’s wonderfully made, after all. Maybe it’s us.

Traveler’s Notebook has a flexible approach to journaling, scrapbooking, collecting, and scheduling that has worked for me like no other journal. It ended all the guilt I had about Never Filling Up a Journal.

The Traveler’s Notebook No. 27 Watercolor Paper Refills usually are priced anywhere from 6.50 to 7.60. Maybe 8.00 online if you need it in a rush. Each refill contains 24 pages, and I typically only use 12 pages since I want to paint on one side of the paper.

If I make an indelible mistake, as I often do with watercolors, it is easy to remove the perforated page and recycle it. And it’s a low risk situation - the whole thing only costs seven dollars.

If I fill up the whole book - yay - ! I feel like I don’t have to beat myself up, and I can buy another refill without worrying.

With Traveler’s Notebook, the question isn’t “Can I fill 100 pages?” Or “What if I lose this notebook?” It’s “I already filled 6 of 12 pages so maybe I better get my next refill”

Funnily enough, with making watercolors, I’ve learned that the secret for me personally is to have three watercolor pieces on rotation in a setting, because often, as watercolor goes, each piece needs it’s heavier water pools to dry before it can be moved to the next step. So I keep three Travelers Notebook watercolor refill booklets on hand. Sometimes I might even have four of them in my backpack.

An example of how I use three Traveler’s Notebook watercolor refills at a time to rotate between pieces that are drying or dry.

Sometimes it is easier to take the refills out of the notebook to help them lie flatter and dry more evenly if I utilize a lot of water to make a piece.

A rare moment where I bought a smaller-size refill packet of watercolor paper. I like the format of this size, too!

A close up example of a sketch I did copied from concept art of Haanit in Octopath Traveler.

The way I think of my Traveler’s Notebook “build” is that I have my finished books in storage or on display, and I have three to four active, working notebooks. This keeps me moving through books at a pace that works for me. And, as I see the finished books stack up, it builds my confidence about completion.

Completion is one arena within which I battle, another is the scrappy dueling field of perfectionism. Fortunately, I don’t have any feelings about perfectionism with Traveler’s Notebook refills, because each one is, again, only seven dollars. That’s like half a fancy sandwich these days. Yet, I’ve definitely had feelings of perfectionism with sketchbooks that are more along the lines of $20.00+. Even though I’m sure I’ve spent hundreds by now on Traveler’s Notebooks, I’ve certainly used them without being stalled by my perfectionism.

Perfectionism? Guilt about … not using art supplies? Hopefully you don’t struggle with any of this, and as you are reading this blog, it’s kind of a curiosity to you more than anything. Maybe you fill book after book of 100 pages and you draw dazzling images on both sides and you haven’t had a perfectionist moment since 1999. But if you feel inklings of any of this affecting you, I can’t recommend Traveler’s Notebooks enough. Plus, it’s really, really nice paper. Traveler’s Notebooks have truly set my sketching life free.

Sketchbook Confessional July 2024

Welcome to July 2024’s Sketchbook Confessional!

The Sketchbook Confessional is a blog where I recap my work that I’ve done within a month’s time. It is my ‘done’ list rather than a ‘to-do’ list - a way for me to objectively review my completed work.

July went by in a flash, it seems. I was able to take a few days to fill up pages in my Traveler’s Notebook Watercolor refills with watercolors using the Sakura Koi CAC set, a group of twelve brilliant neon and flourescent colors. I drew things like Balogar from Octopath Traveler and scenes from Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun, or at least the way I see some of the scenes from the book.

In July it was so hot outside that I was able to make a lot of handmade paper and set it outside to dry. It seemed like on some days, the paper would dry in record amounts of time. Something about it felt like putting a towel out to dry and it already being dry by the time it was hung up.

Above is a good image of the Sakura Koi CAC set and how it layers. I’m working through the Watercolor Workbook by Budd Biggs and Lois Marshall (shown above) and mostly getting completely schooled, owned, or otherwise surprised, and am finding that learning to watercolor well is going to take probably my whole life, and it will be worth it. I like what I make right now, and at the same time, I am also sure I can make more and better watercolors.

After making lots of handmade paper, I usually paint the paper and then cut it into paper animal shapes. Here is a nighttime frisbee dog which was really fun to make.

I was able to get up to the high country at the end of July and get a few wildflower photos as well. This was fun, and it seems like there are many wildflowers out, this season.

All in all I got a lot done in July! It really did fly by though. Summer is so exciting. Catch you next time!

Canvas Rebel feature!

Recently I was able to complete an interview with Canvas Rebel. Take a look at the interview here:

https://canvasrebel.com/meet-becky-jewell/