New prints are up on my shop! Check them out here: https://society6.com/beckyjewell
Staying Positive As a Creative Person During COVID-19
I have a hashtag that I love to use on Instagram, called #AlwaysBeCreating - or ABC.
#AlwaysBeCreating makes me happy whenever I use it, because it is a bit of a joke about “Always Be Closing”, possibly the best sales mantra of all time (and also the most cliche).
Sales and Creating Art aren’t always different, however the sales mentality and the art mentality are such an odd couple that .. Always Be Closing and Always Be Creating will always put me in a good mood.
I love the Always Be Closing moment of Glengarry Glen Ross so much, that I even make joke art about it from time to time, like in this mini painting of an office space that has a snack table with a bucket of art that says “Art Is For Closers.”
So, that’s how I got onboard with:
#AlwaysBeCreating!
Yet, there are definitely some days - especially during COVID-19 stuff - where I don’t feel like I am always creating. I start to get kind of stressed and worried “Am I doing enough?”
Taken too literally, “Always Be Creating” can’t be a healthy mentality, because it seems to pressurize. Artists are people too, right, what about eating and sleeping, and playing Zelda? What if by Always Creating, we get burnt out and exhausted?
So, I think Always Be Creating should be taken with the salt of more generous, kindhearted subtexts.
Generous, meaning:
If you’re eating a bowl of soup and the soup makes you think about drawing a ramen shop scene - that’s creating.
If you’re stuck in traffic and the traffic makes you think of an idea for a children’s book series - that’s creating.
If you’re drawing on an ipad or on paper or on a napkin - that’s creating.
If you schedule out your Instagram posts so that you can create later - that’s creating.
If you’re chatting with friends in slack or on twitter about your ideas - that’s creating.
If you’re organizing your home so that you can create more efficiently - that’s creating.
One of the best comics ideas I ever had came to me while I was driving cross-country from Texas to Maryland, and I was alone in a car bored out of my mind. Though I wasn’t in front of my art supplies, at my computer, or in the studio, I was still creating.
So, I think during COVID-19, it would benefit all of us artists to take the generous side of #AlwaysBeCreating even a bit further:
Even though we are all at home and staying away from people we might adore, even though cons are cancelled and zooms wax and wane between being cool and getting old, we’re still being as creative as we can. Nobody expects a global pandemic.
If you’re doing even the smallest thing for your health and well-being, that’s creating.
Always Be Creating! Until next time!!
Related Blogs:
The importance of Personal Work
Who wrote this:
Throwback Thursday: Lessons from High School Art Class
It’s #ThrowbackThursday!
Here I am with my high school art teacher, Nancy Branca, winning some kind of prize for a painting of made of Stockholm, a place I'd never been to.
My mom had taken photos of Stockholm while on a trip. I made her photo into an acrylic painting. The real prize was my mom liked the painting so much she had it framed and it still hangs in her house in Leadville.
I still remember a lot of Miss Branca's advice about art, which I’ve detailed below:
Stand back from your work .
When you’re getting deep into a piece, try stepping back from it to see it from a distance. You will see new things and ways to improve the piece very quickly. With digital art, you can zoom out and see how it looks.
If you’re working from a photo, add small changes so that your piece is more personal.
It’s fun to make art look as realistic as possible, but it’s also fun to add your own flourishes and start developing a style. Cameras and photography kind of made hyper-realistic painting into more of a moot enterprise. Painting hyper real is great, but chances are good that your audience also wants your personal touch too.
When you draw, look at the thing you are drawing as much as possible.
It’s good to look at the model or object you are drawing and let your hand work while you are looking at the model. Looking at the page is ‘okay’ but try to look at the model as much as possible. Your brain will move your hand so that you follow the object whether you look at your hand or not.
There were a lot of other fun moments in high school art class, where I made fan art of Keanu Reeves and drew a lot of pictures from Victor Hugo novels for some reason! And, there’s so much advice that I didn’t list above, too.
I hope you enjoyed these tips from my art classes of days past!
Ra, more art!
Related blogs:
The importance of Personal Work
Who wrote this:
Sketchbook Confessional: April 2020
Welcome to April 2020’s Sketchbook Confessional, where I get all of the art out of my system.
The Sketchbook Confessional is a place where I post and describe all of the art that I did in one month’s time, an effort to reel in the chaos of art and objectively know what I did and did not do.
I had a solid April creatively, and have been focusing on getting better at art all around. To do this, I started asking what I really liked about the art that I like, and piecing together tutorials and watching art documentaries and tutorials as well. I drew a lot of very random moments too.
Since I’m at home under COVID-19 measures, I figured I would just take what I could get creatively - not everything was going to be perfect in April, so I cut loose a bit and just started going after whatever themes struck me, or whatever themes I’d been wanting to tackle for a while.
I also had a ton of fun making these Six Fan Arts by request on a livestream. Drawing while live on camera on Instagram is definitely a challenge, and it’s helped me figure out a lot about creating off-the-cuff, and also public speaking.
Even though it is very hard for me to do, I will watch the full replay of my Instagram live videos to get better at how I speak about art and also watch how I create while I am not creating.
Watching my own Instagram live playbacks is kind of like watching a video of yourself throwing a football or swinging a golf club - outside of myself, I notice things that I can improve or change.
Also, I think people in general are a bit more video-genic than they are photogenic most of the time. Most people seem to look a lot better in videos - I hope I’m included in that category!
In April, I started caring less about cohesion or gridding on Instagram and everything being wrapped up in a bow, and I started posting just about anything and everything instead of sticking with one central idea.
I think this approach helped me get a lot of art done, even if it doesn’t really make a lot of sense or look like it was made by one artist.
Reading:
I’ve been reading Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and while Kindle reports I am a paltry 16% of the way through, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book so rich with detail. I really don’t know what to make of this book. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read.
A couple illustrations from this series. Below I illustrated a segment early in the book, where Severian is swimming and gets caught in the roots of blue water flowers.
I also wanted to take a stab at this incredibly strange episode in the book where two men fight with large flowers or flower leaves, and the flowers are also kind of sentient - I am struggling to describe this and thought it would be a fantastic art challenge.
Whenever I run into something like this in fiction, something totally weird and hard to imagine, I like to draw it. I accidentally hit a filter in Clip Studio Paint and ended up with this alternate version of the water-flowers piece.
Writing:
I did a bunch of writing in April as opposed to reading. Now that I don’t spend 80 minutes a day riding the DC Metro, I have converted all of that time into either drawing, livestreaming, or writing.
I wrote these blogs in April:
Art Philosophy and Life:
The importance of Personal Work
Art How Tos:
Color Palettes from Moebius Illustrations
Color Palettes from The Little Mermaid
Before and After: How My Art Changed in School
Even after writing all of these blogs I have a lot of ideas that I need to get on this website. I have phenomenal energy around posting on Instagram, and am starting to bring that same energy to this site.
Playing/Watching:
I’m playing Breath of the Wild, and I’m not sure if I will ever finish it, not because I think it is a bad game, but because I think it is a good game and I never want it to end. So, after I stop my work each day I will turn on Breath of the Wild and run around and cook dishes, and usually not get a lot done.
I watched this mini-documentary with Jean Girard Moebius and grabbed some takeaways about what people liked most about working with him and his art. Mostly, his co-producers liked how fast Moebius was. I was a little surprised nobody asked him about where he gets his ideas - I think his speed was just so impressive that everyone forgot about the other part - his ideas.
I’ve also been watching Portfolio reviews from this fellow on Youtube - it is nice to see his active opinions about art, and, selfishly, it is nice to see other people get critiqued aside from me. I think watching portfolio reviews like this is a good idea if you are someone like me who is working in relative isolation and you aren’t surrounded by other artists every day. (True for me as of COVID and before COVID).
Fitness:
In April, to stay fit, I mowed my lawn a bunch and I also got some planks worked in to my daily schedule, where I spend most of each day at at a computer. Wow, planks have really moved my fitness along - I think I could do 500 crunches and it wouldn’t have as much impact as one 30-second plank.
I’ve been working harder at fitness for about 6 months and it’s been paying off. I’ve always been thin and have been able to pass as fit even without working out too hard, but I haven’t consistently been ‘strong’, so, my past six months of strength development have been an effort to change that.
Something I realized while looking at my website analytics was that almost nobody reads these posts, though they might be the best pieces I write. The most-read posts on this website are my how-to tutorials and product or software reviews like this one.
This makes sense. Nobody is going onto Google and typing in “Deep thoughts about art” — they’re usually typing in “Apple Pencil and Clip Studio Paint Review”.
A lot of people are interested in the ‘How’ of art or the speed of art, but we get lost immediately at the ‘why’ and the thoughts behind it all, but, like with the Moebius documentary I mentioned above - I wish we wouldn’t.
I think the most boring question you could ask someone like Moebius is “What pen do you use?” Tools do matter, but man, I would have loved to know more about what artists were thinking throughout the ages. So, this is why I will keep writing these blogs, even though almost nobody reads them.
Until next time, Ra, more art!
Related blogs:
The importance of Personal Work
Who wrote this?
Print Shop Open!
I’m happy to say I’ve opened my print shop on Society 6! Check it out.
New prints added each week!
Who wrote this?
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
When Art Isn't Therapy
The problem with art is that it can be whatever you want it to be.
Art can be this dreamy, relaxing thing, or it is an excruciating, nigh-impossible endeavor.
It’s a bit like running - you can go for an afternoon jog, or you can be an ultramarathoner. At some point, you have to jog to get to the ultramarathon. It’s all running at some level. Ultimately, the degree to which art goes has to do with you.
Who wrote this:
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
Daily Blog: April 15 2020: Personal Work
About a year ago I noticed a new term being used by artists in my community: personal work.
"Personal work" entails work that you make for no person, for no reason, and for no money.
Personal work for me is work that comes from the deepest part of me and 'demands' to be made. Most artists make Personal Work their whole lives, and only at a certain point, do we start making commercial work or commission-oriented art.
Personal work doesn’t have to make sense or cohere or be on time, and it often comes from a very deep place. It’s an absolutely liberated form of expression.
Though it is made for no reason and usually for no money, personal work is the most valuable kind of work artists can make for ourselves and for our culture.
Who wrote this?
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
Daily Blog: April 12 2020: Art Therapy is Too Late
It’s worth taking a moment to look at how we talk about our feelings today. I think the current model is flawed, and art is partially to blame, but this can be fixed.
For feelings that are hard to deal with, we have therapists and hotlines, but, why? Why are discussions about feelings something that gets kicked into a secret room, or a confidential phone line? Don’t talk about your feelings in public. We also have art museums and sacred spaces for art. Don’t touch the art.
We try so hard to contain them, but every now and then, art and feelings break free.
Like when song perfectly expresses our feelings, or when we take a perfect photo.
I’d argue not for museums or Art Therapy, or even Art Appreciation, but Art Integration. Integrating art into your life consistently, like good diet and exercise, will bring feelings forward in as they exist, not after, and not always in crisis. Buying a piece of art that makes you happy, or making a piece of art that sings to you, is probably one of the healthiest things you can do.
The point of museums and seeing art isn’t to feel special or fancy, it’s to develop self-expression and self-knowing in an expansive way.
Bring art into your life, see it, or practice it, and you will uncover life's mysteries beyond your wildest imagination.
Related Blogs:
It’s Good if Art Seems Pointless
Who wrote this:
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
Daily Blog: Fan Art Friday!
It was so fun to make these Six Fan Arts on a 60-minute Instagram Livestream last night!
Thanks to all who joined! Be sure to join me on Instagram if you haven’t already, and request your favorite characters.
Props to the Six Fan Arts template!
Who wrote this?
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
Daily Post: April 8 2020 - Toonme Drawings
Lately I have made some photo-to-comic-art drawings, here are all of them so far!
To make these works I ask each person to send me a photo and I draw over the photo in Clip Studio Paint in my comic book style.
It’s been really fun to make these for people.
It’s been so fun to make these. If you’re interested in a toonme drawing, message me on Instagram, Twitter, or comment!
Who wrote this:
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
Daily Post: April 7 2020: In Praise of Low-Stakes Art and Crafts - Especially During COVID-19 measures
Sometimes, I make art about what I think are difficult and serious subjects, like love and relationships and the nature of reality.
Extremely weird, diffusive art that I’ve made
And sometimes, I make Perler bead art.
Most of the time, art involves our very best work and talents - critical thinking combined with communication and a sense of style. Art takes all of this and more.
Sometimes art doesn’t require any of this. That’s the cool thing about art.
Balancing between high-stakes, high-demand art and low-stakes art has become, well, a bit of an art for me in my creative life.
A narrative scifi epic of 100+ pages, Tilted Sun is the result of me writing, drawing, inking, lettering and planning a comic. It’s been a year-over-year project. Comics are usually made by 8 people for a reason!
When you take a step back, a lot went into Tilted Sun and still goes into it each day when I work on my art.
I’ve also done paintings like this one, a 30 foot tall acrylic which hung in Norlin Library at CU Boulder, seen by thousands of people per day.
The other thing about painting is … it’s hard. Even a tiny painting is hard to do sometimes.
To supplement my current work in comics (hardmode) and painting (death hard mode), My recent low-stakes side project is resin casting.
All that I have to do with resin is mix it up, find something to embed in it, and pour the resin and the thing into little trinket moulds.
Now, that said, resin casting isn’t always low stakes - if you want, it can be a huge undertaking. Entire tables can be coated in hundreds of dollars of resin. It’s also possible to encase musical instruments in resin - such as guitars - where if the pour is unideal, the stakes at hand are both the cost and time of the resin pour, and the cost of the instrument. … Yikes …
Anything, any kind of art can be extremely serious if you want it to be.
Yet for me, right now, resin is my little pet project where I make trinkets that nobody, not even me, is worried about.
No clients are wringing their hands over the quality or artistic merit of my extremely average resin casts. If the resin casts turn out wonky, I lose, at most, fifteen bucks and a couple minutes.
It’s great to go after big things in art - it is also incredibly scary and full of failure and twists and turns. So, sometimes, I need to make a smaller thing to have a sense of completion, however small, in the midst of a longer journey.
Low stakes art has been especially helpful for me during COVID-19 measures, where I am staying in or near my house 95% of the time. Small pieces of art help me feel like I am making - at least- something, even though I can’t go out and meet my friends or move my art forward in other ways.
Until next time!
Related blogs:
Why Art Seems to Predict the Future
Tilted Sun - Sci Fi Fantasy Comic
Sketchbook Confessional - March 2020
Who wrote this:
Daily Post: April 6 2020 Kingdom Hearts and My Summer Job as a Roofer
Some of the roofs I worked on in Leadville were old. Well, not this old, but still pretty old!
In the summer of 2005 I left CU Boulder and went back to Leadville to work as an assistant in a local construction business.
My job was to gather up old, discarded roof tiles and put them in my truck, a red 1980s-era Toyota with golf-themed upholstery that my grandpa had gifted to our family.
On my first job I went up on a roof and caulked roof tiles. On the second job I cleaned up a bunch of debris that other roofers were stripping and throwing off of the house. Old roof off, new roof on.
I would picking up slats of rotted roof wood and centipedes would scatter from underneath. Sometimes there were dead animals, creatures that had lived in or on the old roof wood and had been thrown to the literal wayside of each home. Other things would happen - like I would almost accidentally step on upturned nails, or I would scrape myself on dry, unsanded wood, or get a sunburn.
The idea of a desk job seemed nice. Yet at the same time, I loved my roofing job. I liked it a lot.
It felt good to get exercise and to see the tangible effects of my work. I would often talk to the homeowners and they would bring me snacks or water. I’m sure it looked pretty weird - a construction crew of mostly grown men and then a teenage girl lifting and throwing debris into a vehicle. As a roof-tile-gatherer, that summer I learned that there was always high demand for work that nobody else wanted to do.
I would return to my parent’s house each evening fairly exhausted and would play the Playstation 2 in my brother’s room. I spent hours and hours playing Kingdom Hearts, the first Kingdom Hearts. Alice in Wonderland, Tarzan, Hercules, Pinnochio … I can still hear most of the levels in the game. It was simple and familiar enough for me to latch onto after busting my ass on rooftops.
In Kingdom Hearts, the two main characters seemed to be about 15 years old. I was 19 at the time and remembered thinking “Am I too old for this? Should I be more mature by now?”
It was sort of the same with roofing - I wondered if I should be doing some other kind of job, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
It was a good summer to realize that it was fine to just love what I loved, even if it seemed off the beaten path of my age or gender.
Who wrote this?
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
I survived the great art critique massacre of 2004-2007
Daily Post: April 4 2020 Judgement Happens, Keep Going
One of the best and worst aspects of studying art or going into the art major is critique.
Critique format would run as follows:
You work on a drawing for two weeks, spending 1, 2, 3, 16 hours on it
On critique day, you hang your drawing on a wall next to all of the other pieces of other students.
The professor and your peers go one by one, talking about and critiquing each piece on the wall.
You aren’t allowed to talk during the critique of your work. You cannot verbally defend or support the critique statements that your peers or professor are giving.
Critiques could go well or poorly depending on about a billion x factors: whose piece was next to yours, what the professor ate that morning, who your peers were, if it was sunny outside or not.
In critique of my own drawings and paintings in school, what I noticed was people would say almost the exact opposite of what I had hoped or envisioned.
At some points I got angry and at some points I also cried, but then eventually, I realized the point was to just expose myself and my work to judgement over and over. The point was to be vulnerable, so that eventually you could be tough - and not tough in a dumb turtleshell way, but tough in a sophisticated, smart way.
The challenge is that you might have to be insane, or incredibly tenacious, to keep going in art. After being told their painting sucks, a painting that they’d delicately painted for 40 hours, most people would quit, drop out, or give up.
The good thing about art critique is that at least you are in the same boat as 20 others, each who have tried to take their best shot.
Outside of the art-school world, people who are NOT artists will take cheap shots at your work and ideas. They won’t believe in your vision. Your plans won’t make any sense to them. They will lodge judgements, and basically say whatever they want.
I think this is actually okay - judgement is going to happen and it will never stop.
The point is to keep going despite all of this and to pursue work that makes you a happy and satisfied person, no matter what people say.
Strangely, it is this give-no-fucks mentality, this freedom, that makes the best art.
This is the point of any kind of art education, be it at an institution or not, and it’s most valuable cornerstone.
Keep believing.
Related blogs:
The Artificial Intelligence Engine of Clip Studio Paint
Overcoming Negative Self Talk as an Artist
Who Wrote This:
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
Daily Blog: April 3 2020: Palette Knives
It’s been fun to catch ephemeral moments in painting with my phone camera every now and then. Photos like this are why I tend to paint thick when I can.
It’s very hard to control thick paint or do ‘what you envision’ so you have to be happy with surprises if you paint this way. You also only usually get one shot, just one swipe of paint and that is what must happen. Reworking thick paint ends up looking kinda bad. I am still no master of this technique, which is why I take the palette knife photos - it’s all accidental, yet I wish it could be preserved forever.
Related blogs:
Who wrote this:
Daily post: April 2 2020: Geddy's Haircut
Like most good art, Geddy’s haircut isn’t something I planned.
A few weeks after we adopted Geddy from a poodle rescue, we took him to a groomer in Austin and said that she should just groom him in the way that she thought would look good, and in a way that she felt creative. It was possibly the laziest dog haircut request of all time. “Just do what you think looks cool” was the art direction for Geddy’s haircut.
Geddy’s hair is now a classic romantic poodle cut, which he has had for four years. He gets compliments and tons of attention. He gets more modeling and influencer gigs than I do, for sure.
Children also love Geddy because he looks like a storybook poodle, he looks like a poodle that you see in graphic designs and advertisements. I will often be walking Geddy, cars will roll by and children will yell “Poodle!” from the window of their parent’s vehicle.
The fact that Geddy brings so much joy to everyone around him brings me joy. He’s just sort of the last thing you expect to see. He’s also extremely friendly and will jump into just about anyone’s lap immediately, put his paws on their chest, and kiss them on the mouth. I am not sure why he is such a flirt, but it is pretty funny. He just loves people.
Geddy is also very emotionally in-tune - If I want to go running, he will get excited. If I want to chill out and play Octopath Traveler, he will chill out and snooze. Whenever I make art in the studio, he’s usually right there snoozing in his bed. He’s even gone to work with me a few times!
Pretty much whatever I am up to, Geddy will follow. He isn’t afraid of firecrackers or thunder. I think he just watches me and decides “Whatever works for her works for me, I will be as much like the human as possible!”
I have no idea where poodles got the reputation for being high strung or only for rich people. They’d be a great dog for anyone. They’re smart, sure, and not high strung. Poodles are like your friend in college who slept on a couch and got lost at parties, who never studied, and kept getting A’s in quantum mechanics.
I think if more people had poodles, more people would be happier. You don’t HAVE to cut their hair in a fancy way. Puppy clips are cute and you get all the same poodly goodness.
Related blogs:
Why Dumbo and Pinnochio are weird movies
Who wrote this:
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
Daily Post: April 1 2020: How my art changed in school
A lot of artists and my artist peers will go to art school or go into the art major and ask “Is this worth it?”
In this blog, I thought I’d share some of my very old art from when I was 18 and 19 years old and just starting out as an art major at CU Boulder.
I found this drawing of a Girl in a Yellow Flying Machine (circa 2005)
I really like this old drawing of mine. The wings of the flying machine look delicate, but believable. I believe the pilot’s excitement. I believe the entire scene with help from the two figures on the right who are watching (or not watching) the flying machine girl from a cliffside.
Another drawing I found in my old freshman year sketchbook was of a Monster Cathedral (2005)
It’s pretty funny and also not bad, the buttresses are now spider legs, why not? The entire thing is asymmetrical - I don’t understand the placement of the tower - but why not?
As I looked through my sophomore notebooks, it was clear I had started to develop a style, and also work more heavily in ink:
This style was my effort to ‘draw strong’ and see how far I could carry a single line. It was all ink, so I had to make strong, permanent decisions in this style.
Here is another piece from 2005-2006 of a breaking egg:
I still draw in this style, many of the elements of Tilted Sun and paintings that I make are true to this style - if not on paper, then digitally.
Here is a piece I made in the style from 2019:
Every time I find myself wanting to knock my education or have ‘artist shame’ I have to remember the drawings from 2004-2006, and that both styles are actually pretty good for a teen. To this day I still have many styles.
So, yes, I think studying art formally was worth it. There is a patent change in my styles and skills from 2004-2005, and each year after that. Studying art formally doesn’t have to mean university classes either - I’ve seen many people improve just by hanging out with artists they admire, or via following youtube. I personally learn new things on youtube and new things from my friends every day.
That’s the cool thing about art - it just keeps getting better.
Catch you soon!
Related blogs:
Why Dumbo and Pinnochio are Weird Movies
Who wrote this?
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
Sketchbook Confessional: March 2020
Welcome to the Sketchbook Confessional for March 2020!
It’s the future and we live in the time of COVID-19, let’s live heroically, let’s live in style. #jewell2020
Art:
This month I was whipped around by COVID-19 measures, but not so whipped as to not join Folding@home. Marc and I pointed 40 cores of our household computing power at COVID-19 research. Our electricity bill for March may be very high, but that doesn’t matter as much as getting work done for these projects.
While stuck at home to avoid Coronavirus/COVID-19, I ended up doing a lot of livestreaming on Instagram, where I made the two images above on two 1 hour livestreams.
March was kind of a lost month for me since I was sick in the first part of March, and then life changed with Coronavirus measures near the end of the month.
While working on comics and illustrations and nursing the weird cold I had in early March, I set up Instagram so that it would post old work from my trip to San Francisco in 2016. This is a nice way to go back through old work and not feel the pressure to post.
Strange as Post Pressure may sound, I do like to entertain my followers and make a lot of good, interesting posts, in addition to livestreams. The Later app helps me out with post scheduling. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering how I slam out 600 word missives on Instagram on a phone … well, I don’t. I use Later to type it all out on a computer, and get those posts scheduled for weeks ahead of time.
Here is what my Later user interface looks like, where I have posts scheduled out across four social profiles for weeks on end.
It’s been really awesome to use Later. I’d recommend it to anyone who balances multiple social profiles for multiple projects or personal work.
Travel:
In March this month, given COVID-19 worries, I cancelled a trip that I had planned to Leadville. I was almost heartbroken, but it would have been more heartbreaking to travel and possibly soak up and transmit illness to those around me.
So.. March has been a month of being at home for me. It’s surreal.
Now, I am not sure when I will go back to the office. Four more weeks? Six? I’ve been at home for so many weeks that now, it will be a surreal day when things get back to normal.
The tough thing about my life in this COVID-19 world is that I’m actually a borderline extrovert. I love being around people, but they have to be the right kind of people for me.
If we make it through this COVID-19 thing and kick it to the curb properly, there should be a national holiday made.
Reading:
In March I stayed indoors quite a bit and finished reading several books.
I finished Miyazaki’s Starting Point, a collection of interviews, speeches, and articles where Miyazaki discusses his work at length. It’s dense reading, but not laborious - fun to read, just big. I’d started reading in February before my trip to the Bahamas. My only regret with this book is that I wish I had run into it earlier in life - but maybe then I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it. There’s moments where Miyazaki describes how his animation teams would hand-paint 50,000 cells to make a single movie, and other incredible facts which will lend to anyone’s appreciation of animation - even if that appreciation is already high.
Accomplishing art at any cost seemed to be the norm for not just Miyazaki, but also for his peers, role models, and workers. He also takes questions very seriously and answers questions from his interviewers in ways that I did not expect. Now to move on to Turning Point.
I finished The Broken Earth series by N.K. Jemesin, wow, what an incredible sci-fi story. I loved the richness and lore of these books. They’re definitely a bit more allegorical and post-apocalyptic than high escapism fantasy. I dug the hell out of these books.
I finished reading Atomic Habits by James Clear on March 7th, in the middle of a sinus infection that had me checking and rechecking websites about Coronavirus symptoms. I thought this book laid out a lot of interesting strategies on how to reinforce good habits and move bad habits towards extinction.
In late February and March, I started posting about Books I Didn’t Finish - Proust and Melville made the list, and there are a few others that I need to talk about in the future. I’m a recovering over-achiever and have a Master’s Degree in English Literature, and think it’s all right to talk about books that we don’t make it through as readers.
I started Radical Candor by Kim Scott. I started reading it in the midst of COVID-19 panic and feared some of the principles may not ever apply in life-under-crisis, or it would take years to recover as an economy for the leadership ideas in the book to apply, but I think they will apply at least at a high level.
I started reading Book of the New Sun on suggestion from a few different folks - So far I think this book is absolutely wild. I’m not quite sure what to make of it just yet. I also started reading Cradle: Foundation by Will Wright.
Fitness:
This month I didn’t make it to the gym for COVID-19 reasons, and it broke my heart. I wish I could have said goodbye to my personal trainer. I never thought my personal training journey would end due to a pandemic.
That said I did get outside for some jogging and found myself feeling strong and fast. Maryland is outrageously pretty in spring.
Without a treadmill I don’t really measure my speed or time or miles, I just run until I feel like I’ve done a good job.
Maryland went onto Stay-at-home or shelter-in-place orders yesterday, March 30th 2020 - for now it is a beautiful place to be stuck. I run around, dodging people like in a tag game in school, and take photos like these:
At the end of March I started to do Daily Posts on this blog. I realized I write a ton on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, so I might as well transmute some of it and post it onto this blog.
Until next time!
Related Blogs:
Sketchbook Confessional: February 2020
Daily post: March 29 2020 - Why Making Art Seems Psychic
A strange thing started happening in my art a few years ago: The art I made in the past would end up predicting my future.
I would go through some sort of event, or I’d see something, a building or a place, and think, 'Wow, this moment reminds me of that drawing I made 8 months ago,' and I'd find ways to relate the events in art and in life.
I wouldn’t say the predictive powers of art are creepy, they are more like a wolf or a snake - an animal that we can view as creepy if we want, but is really just being itself.
The math side of my mind kicks in when Psychic Art Moments happen, and says, "Wait! There's a logical explanation for this! You make art about so many things, that it's only a matter of chance and time before one of them, before one of the pieces, becomes true, before it becomes a real event!"
This is valid. I paint people, landscapes, animals, events, stories, ideas... Most artists deal with many different kinds of themes.
So yes, there is a category aspect to art that predicts the future: Make art about bunnies, skyscrapers, and football shoes, and eventually you will notice bunnies, skyscrapers, and football shoes in your actual life. It will seem psychic, but it’s more an act of noticing, of calling up categorical memories.
Making art also affects memory and intention in incredible ways. About a billion articles and studies have mentioned that writing down a task or a goal makes the writer more likely to achieve the goal. I think about this a lot when making art. Writing is one thing, and drawing is another.
So, even if I draw something not necessarily wishing for it to come true - if it does come true - then I will remember deeply that I drew it. Or I will notice it.
If I create art around something, I remember it, and I also remember it into the future, which is why the prediction thing seems to happen. I don't remember art that is about what doesn't happen, ie, I don’t remember my ‘faiiled’ predictions.
The last reason that making art can seem like having psychic powers is because artists are sometimes bringing previously-unknown ideas into reality. Painting a still-life is recognizing reality, it isn’t exactly painting the future, but it’s affirming a reality. In art, you can also paint and affirm realities that don’t exist yet.
Related Blogs:
Daily post: March 28 2020
On a down day, artists have to look out, because all art can seem pointless at times. It can seem especially pointless when there's a big problem happening, like a pandemic, and especially pointless in a culture that over-values productivity.
I think this is backwards. I think art moves us forward in ways that I can't really understand yet. It makes valuable connections out of sheer accident that otherwise would take years to make. It's sometimes all that is left over when a bustling culture moves on.
I'll get back to you on this.
Who wrote this?
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell
Studying Interiors in Final Fantasy IX
A list of everything in the image above:
a cat
an umbrella bucket with many umbrellas
a box
three unique handwoven rugs
a large chest
a large clock
a fireplace
a minature hanging lamp
a sled with a chair/platform on top? I really have no idea what that black mage is sitting on
a ladder
a smaller clock
(And there might be more things I am missing!!)
After working on comics for a bit, I realized something about my own art that could be improved:
Set design and drawing interior spaces.
I’m good at drawing people and ideas, and okay at nature, but not.. indoor things.
Chairs? Wtf. Tables? Uhhh…. (draws a blank). Lamps…(not my forte).
I would stare at an empty room I had drawn, and wasn’t sure how to make the room seem ‘lived in’ or ‘believable.’ At first, I couldn’t figure out how to improve this.
To tackle the problem, I thought about art that I had seen where there were believable sets or interiors that I could study for a long time. It turned out that of all the places I looked, Final Fantasy IX has heartbreakingly good and detailed interior sets.
The hotel in Lindblum has a lot to learn from.
Let me just dive in to everything happening here:
The wallpaper is green and diamond-patterened. Each floorboard seems to be unique, not a pattern. Paintings in the hallway of the hotel are a bit crooked. The wallpaper in the hallway seems to be dusky rose. Columns that support the structure are made of stone piled stone and mortar. A lantern juts out from one of these columns in the hallway. The beds in the room seem to have pink silk coverlets, and plaid pillows with handmade wooden headboards. Each room has a different handwoven rug. One room has two twin beds, the other has a queen. The room with the queen bed has a lantern, and a table with a cup on top of the table. The windows in each room are curved at the top and touch the floor. They, too, are a bit lopsided, but I don’t get the idea of poor craftsmanship. I get a ‘handmade’ feeling. Outside, the world looks green and bright, you can see the streets of Lindblum.
I’m sure even after writing the above paragraph and reading it a few times and rechecking the image, there are still a few details that I missed.
This set defines how I feel overall about Final Fantasy 9 - there is an amount of care that went into it that convinces me, despite a slightly cartoony feel, that the whole thing is very, absolutely real. In the same way that there’s a bunch of junk lying around in sets for Howl’s Moving Castle, I believe in the reality that these sets are casting because there is just so very much thought in each one.
There are also metaphorical sets in Final Fantasy 9, like this staircase into a burning red eye, probably the most metal/emo thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
Or this interdimensional twisting bridge and castle, a presage to the folding, twisting landscapes of Inception and later, Dr. Strange.
Let me make a list again for the image above:
grass
cobblestones
stained glass with a mountain motif
stained glass with a fish motif
stained glass with a sun motif
green painting on the center column
ladder
carefully laid radial cobbelestones
(Why is the church actually just a circle with a center column in it?)
Until I started working on this blog, I never took notice of the windows in this chapel in the opening of the game. I tend to focus on the characters when playing, I think a lot of us might. But even after playing this game for years, on Playstation, on my iPad - I never noticed that there was a fish or monsterlike fish in the stained glass of the window.
I made another list for every item I could see in the set below:
Wheel barrow with goods and small signs sticking out of it
a treasure chest
a potted cactus
a large hookah-like bottle.
an anchor
Several other bottles and jars
a canister of some kind
a clock
a massive chest of drawers
a cash register
wall flags with bottles on them (potions?)
posters, fliers, calendars on the wall
a few lanterns on the wall
a large mage hat and cloak on the wall
buckets
hints of an upstairs suite with books, pillows, a bed
Many of the scenes I am detailing in this blog are shops, like the one above in Treno and the image below from the Black Mage Village.
I think the Black Mage Village shop may have even more surprising, random items in it than the one in Alexandria.
I never noticed the dinosaur figurine on the top shelf of this scene until now.
All of these details probably don’t seem to be important, but they matter for the believability factor.
I thought about games where I didn’t really believe in the characters or their world, and this did come up for me often in Final Fantasy 13.
Look at Lightning’s kitchen here -
I don’t get a good sense of who Lightning is as a person from this scene.
I see a lot of repeating patterns in the bottom right, vague apparatuses on the left, and repeat bottles of wine or olive oil, I guess, near a stove, which looks upscale and nice. She seems to have two boxes of the same cereal, perfectly symmetrically together in the cupboard above the stove. And maybe some jars of protein powder.
I want to know who Lightning is, I want to care about her and believe in her, but given this scene of her home, I just don’t understand her. I don’t learn anything special about her.
Maybe the point of the game, for many, isn’t to care about these things, but if FF13 came off as a bit cold and blah at some moments, I think this is why.
Final Fantasy 9 casts a spell of lived-in spaces from the very beginning to the very end. Like this image of the Tantalus crew in the opening scene. There’s a couple’s portrait on the wall framed in twisted cold, a few Shakespearean-romance-play-acting costumes on hangers, and an entire custom rug. There’s a back room with folios hanging off of shelves, an ominous hook, a plant in the lower right corner, and chests abounding.
And then there’s this moment near the end of the game, a clocklike structure with horned creatures peering out at you from each interval.
What are the symbols on the clock? They have a quasi-horoscope feel, and there are also a ton of different spires emerging from it. Zidane seems to be able to traverse the entire space due to the clock falling apart. In the game, the player probably spends all of 5 seconds getting through this screen.
That’s art too - it must take hours and hours to paint each of these backgrounds and consider them and make them interesting, all for a couple seconds for one person to traverse. Art distributed or seen at scale works a kind of time magic, where if millions of people traverse the same clock scene and it takes them five seconds, it ends up being more time than the artist ever spent painting the scene.
In a way, taking five seconds to paint just one more oblong jar into a scene, just one more random potted cactus, goes further than even artists could possibly imagine.
Related blogs:
Shameless Fanart I made: Final Fantasy Weapons
Persona 5’s perfect summation of the art world
Who wrote this:
I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!
- Becky Jewell