Hokusai - Mad About Painting


Pairing this book with Hokusai’s Method was a good idea for me personally. In Hokusai’s Method, I got a good idea of how Hokusai taught how to draw, and in Mad about Painting, the book is, well, about the painting process rather than drawing.

I found it fascinating how he describes the painting process and also colors. I think it would take me several tries and several hours of work to make a painting exactly like Hokusai did, but what seems cool to me is that, given the directions and specifications in this book, it would certainly be possible. The right paints might be a bit hard to get, but it would be possible.

The painting process as laid out by Hokusai seems easy after reading about some of the printmaking processes. What I got from the anecdotes about printmaking in this book was one of those blunt reminders that being an artist used to be highly chemically involved. We, the artists of 2025 and beyond, can certainly choose to make our own paints and solvents today. We probably aren’t making them on small cooking fires in Japanese ceramic jars, with no safety equipment, but you catch my drift. (I personally enjoy driving to Michaels and purchasing paints and solvents that have been made for me by wonderful professionals.)

So, while I don’t think people like Hokusai or Leonardo Da Vinci would have referred to themselves as chemists, they may as well have been, and this book certainly lays this out plainly. Near the end of the book, Hokusai describes mixing and heating acid in order to make copper printing plates, and he warns the reader to not inhale any of the smoke from the multi-step process, or several body parts will erupt with boils. Anyways, have I told you lately how grateful I am for Michaels coupons?

In all, I really liked this book, it’s like Hokusai’s Method in that it’s a process time capsule from the past. It clearly explains the way things were done, and how to do them if you want to, often at a high level of personal risk.

Maybe it speaks to Hokusai’s brilliance in that he was not only a wonderful artist and a superb communicator, but he also had almost twice the lifespan of the average person in Japan at the time, and he managed this despite handling many hazardous materials. As far as I understand it, he was a highly functional, healthy, and thoughtful artist until the very end. The title of the book is “Mad about Painting” and this title does suggest something kind of crazed and uncontrollable, like a person who lives in a cave and pulls out their hair when they make an artistic mistake. Yet all I can think is that Hokusai must have been an individual who was full of care.

Related: Hokusai’s Method blog

The Fascinating World of Vernon Lee



I made this Thug Life version of Vernon Lee or Violet Paget wearing pixel sunglasses because I personally wouldn’t want to argue against her

I happened across a mention of Vernon Lee while reading about someone else: John Singer Sargent. Like a dazzling secondary character in a book with a singular focus character, Vernon Lee, or Violet Paget, sometimes attracted the limelight of my eye a bit more than Sargent. She was more mysterious, somewhat forgotten, and pretty alluring to me for that reason.

To better understand Sargent, I googled Vernon Lee a couple times and didn’t get too far. There’s not a lot of information out there about her. Still, something about the name Vernon Lee seemed vaguely familiar to me, even as I faced down mostly short and empty google results. Had I heard the name “Vernon Lee” in grad school? I couldn’t remember, so I chalked it up to how the name sounds uniquely American and Of It’s Time, aligned phonetically in my head with Harper Lee and Mount Vernon.

Vernon Lee is the pen name of Violet Paget, an art and travel writer of the Victorian age. She wrote stories about the uncanny or horror stories, as well as essays about art, culture. Like how John Singer Sargent was an American born in Italy, Vernon Lee was British and born in France. As a young teenager in Rome, she met the young Sargent, and the two of them hung out every now and then. I couldn’t help but imagine the buttoned-down, straight-shooter artist type hanging out with the punk goth girl. She tried to get him into Mozart (want to listen to my mix tape?) and Sargent wasn’t too interested. With the hindsight of the future, I can see them hanging out and being lifelong friends pretty easily. Sargent never married and seemingly never even dated too seriously - his romantic life has been quite speculated upon, but remains a mystery. Violet Paget was decidedly queer, in a way that was as outspoken as was condoned at the time. They remained good friends throughout life. They both got into some art fights, but seemingly not with each other or not seriously.

I certainly haven’t seen all of Vernon Lee yet, but I wanted to blog about her before finishing all of her work, which I want to take my time with. As of this writing, I’ve read The Virgin of the Seven Daggers and Other Stories and Proteus: Or, The Future of Intelligence.

Most of the writing in The Virgin of the Seven Daggers and Other Stories was highly accessible to me, reading in 2025. A few of the stories read a bit like The Count of Monte Cristo: it’s an old book for sure, but it contains pacing and characterization that make it feel like it was written yesterday. Interestingly to me specifically as an artist, each story in the Seven Daggers anthology is usually about an artist or an uncanny art event.

I can’t help but think that John Singer Sargent and all of his ilk and friends co-inspired some of these uncanny stories. The characters don’t seem to be exactly like Sargent, but they are kind of a near miss, something you’d want to do as a writer if you wanted to write about your Rad Art Friends but didn’t want to be too on-the-nose about that funny thing that Henry James said at that one party. The stories aren’t vengeful or snarky towards visual artists, they’re more in awe of art’s power.

Too, they’re fun stories on their own even if they don’t directly reference the art stars of the Victorian age. Since Vernon Lee was writing around the same time as Oscar Wilde, and Wilde and Sargent ended up living across the street from each other at one time, her work inevitably reminded me of The Portrait of Dorian Grey. To be frank, I don’t know which came first in the world, if Dorian Grey hit the shelves before Vernon Lee’s tales, or if it even matters because the times were so concerned with art’s power and the uncanny. I wouldn’t say either was a rip-off of the other - it seems like they are a part of the same conversation, one that took several different turns with several arguments and arguing parties. Sargent wasn’t a consistent fan of Wilde, to put it lightly, but Vernon Lee liked Wilde and gave Sargent some of Wilde’s work to read (like the Mozart, he wasn’t into it). Dorian Grey certainly had a lot to say about appearances and morals or how a person conducts themselves, while Vernon Lee’s short stories in Seven Daggers are more about how art is spooky enough on its own. There’s a couple stories that have high-resolution morals such as “don’t mock the poor or mentally ill” but overall, what I get from the more diffuse stories of Vernon Lee’s Seven Daggers is this: “don’t mess with art unless you’re ready for art to mess with you.”

Vernon Lee doesn’t seem like a person to argue against in any setting - it seems like an easy way to lose. Proteus: The Future of Intelligence is a fascinating essay of hers to read to see how she argues and makes claims. She’s quite a powerful essayist. After reading Proteus, I felt like I had a better sense of the challenges of her times, as well as what she wanted to say. To Lee in Proteus, intelligence isn’t so much the ability to change, as change itself.

When I think about Vernon Lee’s times, they’re among the most interesting in history to me. Because we seem to like to divide centuries in history when years have two zeros, it’s not common to take a class on the period of 1850-1950, or even read a book on it, but it’s a sea change of a hundred years. So many things happen during this timespan that my head spins. Given that Vernon Lee was living in this time, she had the right idea with considering change.

In all, I found myself agreeing with and appreciating most of what Lee says in Proteus. I’m also glad I read this essay after reading Ovid’s The Metamorphoses long ago. One thing that I think of often when I think of The Metamorphoses is … why DO we have so many myths and tales about shapeshifters or transformations? Why DO we have hundreds of pages about Proteus, or about how a person was transformed into a cow or a flower? By the time Ovid was writing The Metamorphoses, way back in, oh I don’t know, 10 BC, we already had so many stories where people change that he was almost all too easily able to write an anthology about them.

To Lee, Ovid, and everyone who told the tale, it’s almost impossible to find the demigod Proteus and it’s even harder to wrestle him into submission, which is the only way he will answer a question. He’s also always right. For Lee in Proteus, it’s not so much a question of “How Intelligent Can You Be.” Instead, it’s “How Much Can You Change?”

I’ve only just scratched the surface of Vernon Lee and I already love it. I love her. I’m glad she was John Singer Sargent’s friend, even though he was a bit frosty about Mozart, who was clearly all the rage. She’s very much that erudite friend who reads or listens to something new and brings it over to your house. Even though she wrote stories about the uncanny, she’s the sun to the Victorian moon - she seems to generously share what is otherwise hidden away.

Dancer Paintings - The Centennial State Ballet

Lately I was able to make these oil paintings of ballerinas based on dancers from the Centennial State Ballet, who posed at the Longmont Art Walk on Main event in the fall of 2024. It was fun to work with these talented young dancers to make these paintings. Each painting has been donated to the ballet or auctioned to charity to support the ballet itself or local art institutions in Longmont, CO.

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.



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.

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.

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”