Sketchbook Confessional: July 2020

Welcome to the Sketchbook Confessional for July 2020!

It’s the future and we live in the time of COVID-19, let’s live heroically, let’s live in style. #jewell2020

The last half of July was interesting for me on the personal side - I’m in the process of rethinking my studio location with COVID being so extant. More news on that side too, readers, just know that change is in the air for me! Just like it is for so many of us.

This month I made a few more animated gifs, like Mr. Blue Cat over to the right. I am learning more about making small drawings come to life in just a few frames.

Check out all of my gifs here on Giphy!

Other than a couple gifs, I did some sketches in Clip Studio Paint below, and the rest of July is in my June-and-a-Half update.

I’m putting a lot of content on Instagram IG TV of my processes in Clip Studio Paint on the iPad Pro. It’s been a fun way to connect with people from all over the world, and friends new and old, while staying at home for COVID measures.

There are a ton of great and amazing art video timelapses out there, where you can watch art come to life at a rapid pace.

What I aim to do in my Instagram art videos that is DIFFERENT from silent timelapses is to narrate my decisions and choices as I draw, so that my thoughts, not just my motor skills, are captured in the video.

I think that understanding artist thoughts, not just physical talents, is the ticket to developing art skills and becoming better artists overall. If we can investigate our thoughts, we can learn and grow in meaningful ways.

Instagram Video Directory:

Digital Collage - How I use photographs of abstract paintings and layer them into Clip Studio Paint to create textured, varied artwork.

Character Development - Drawing a couple character busts from scratch.

Animated Gif Process - How to make animated gifs in Procreate.

Smiley time on the IG!

IG TV is fun and it’s been a great way for me to get my work permanently into the world. I probably will go onto Youtube one of these days. For now, Instagram is where it’s at for livestreaming and art tips from me - plus you get to see my smiley face!

Life and Fitness:

I’m super pumped to say I’ve hired triathlete Alex Willis to be my running trainer. My goal is to eventually run a few long distance races, such as a marathon, and if I get there, a 50 miler.

At a certain point I realized that the longer I run, the better I feel about life. So at this point I am positively addicted to running in the purest sense of the phrase.

I’m two months free of alcohol at this point, however I’ve gone back on to caffiene. I could give up alcohol but not coffee!

COVID stay-at-home time was and is a perfect time for me personally to kick alcohol - otherwise it is just me in my backyard drinking Coronas, which is kind of, er, well it’s not very fun.

The good thing about kicking alcohol completely is that I am taking steps to solve problems in my life instead of just drowning them out. Things that I don’t like about life or myself, I am working to fix deeply, instead of bandaid. It’s been good so far.

To make life fun, I’ve gotten into treating myself by dying a strip of my hair various colors.

My hair changes just about every week. Right now I’m only using two colors from Manic Panic to get a range of pinks, purples, and blues.

Related blogs:

Sketchbook Confessional: June and a Half

Would love your support on Patreon

Print Shop

Who wrote this:

I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!

- Becky Jewell

Sketchbook Confessional: June and a Half 2020

Welcome to the Sketchbook Confessional for June and for the first half of July!

It’s the future and we live in the time of COVID-19, let’s live heroically, let’s live in style. #jewell2020

The sketchbook confessional is a ritualistic art process blog where I go into ALL of what I am making, thinking about, reading, and doing fitness-wise during a specific month - only, this month I didn’t get June finished, so I am blogging about June and half of July!

Making art:

Geddy the Poodle Gif!

I’ve been working on learning how to make animated gifs and have uploaded a few to Giphy! Thinking and creating in terms of animation has helped me create better artwork over all. It’s been fun to think about how things ‘move’ and how weight and direction affects art.

I’d recommend trying animation in Clip Studio Paint or creating layer-based animated gifs in Procreate if you never have - I learned a lot from this and have found that gifs are a great way to bring life to my static drawings and designs.

The GIF I am proudest of is the one at the top of this blog, I made about 6 or 7 four-frame gifs before drawing and animating an entire scene. Here is my process for the island gif

1. Drawn in Clip Studio Paint

2. Exported as a layered PSD File

3. Imported into Procreate

I watched a ton of great youtubes on how to animate via layers in Procreate. Someday I’ll make one too when I get a bit more time!

In addition to GIFs, I made some Colorado-based art in the form of a Topo Map of Leadville, Colorado. I also drew a patch of Columbine and added rainbow gradients in honor of both Colorado and Pride Month.

Both pieces are available as prints and more on my shop on Society6! Check them out here:

https://society6.com/beckyjewell

I worked a bit on Tilted Sun in June and am planning on finishing the first 100+ pages and releasing a print version. Keep an eye out for a future Kickstarter and an opportunity to support the print version of Tilted Sun!

For now, read the whole comic online at:

www.TiltedSun.com

Start at Page 1 here:

https://www.tiltedsun.com/comic-1/2018/5/5/page-1

Reading:

I got a new Kindle Paperwhite and am cruising through books almost as fast as I used to when I rode the D.C. Metro each day. Here is what I am reading:

Call Sign Chaos - General Jim Mattis

This is a great read about leadership in general, and the leadership that goes into being a Marine and a Marine leader.

My favorite part in the book is a moment where Mattis goes into the importance and value of reading, where he states that if you don’t read hundreds of books, you’re probably going to fail. Well … he sort of puts it like if you don’t read or try to read and expand yourself, you’re kind of a moron. It’s nice to hear this from a Marine, and even nicer to hear it from one of the most loved and respected generals of all time.

Too Much and Never Enough - Mary Trump

This book is an empathetic look into the family that created Donald Trump. I think a lot of bravery went into this book. I’d had the book purchased for a week before it was released - it was recommended in my Kindle library after I read Call Sign Chaos by General Mattis.

This book is a tough read and I have to intersperse it with happier books to get through it.

Autism in Heels - Jennifer Cook

This book is a GREAT read for anyone who has an autistic family member, friend, coworker, or is autistic themselves. It is also a GOOD read for anyone. Even if you feel you have never met a person who is on the spectrum, you probably have, if you’re over 12 years old.

A ton of stereotypes get blown away by this author’s kind and funny narrative style, especially because she goes into such depth on the experience of being an autistic girl and woman.

The depth is important because most diagnoses and understandings of autism are built around how autistic boys and men navigate the world, where the diagnostic range needs to catch up with how autism is experienced by girls and women.

“Autism in Heels” is a perfect title to describe some of the hiding, mirroring, and acting that autistic women do in order to fit in - something that happens all too commonly since autistic women tend to fly under the radar, even to themselves. The author wasn’t diagnosed until she was in her 30s.

Please read this book.

Memoirs and Misinformation - Jim Carrey and Dana Vaschon

I love Jim Carrey and have been watching him in 2020 even more fervently than I watched Ace Ventura ever since he started painting and drawing. I also follow him closely on Twitter. I was excited to see this book being released and picked it up on the first couple days it was out.

This book is like Jim Carrey himself - it’s funny, wildly expressive, borderline absurd. I like the book a lot because it knows it is borderline absurd and, like Hollywood itself, sometimes it doesn’t try too hard to make things seem real. There’s a part where Jim Carrey and Charlie Kaufman and Anthony Hopkins get into a fight while eating Chinese food and, long story short, this anecdote almost killed me, it was so funny.

I think you might need to have a supermassive sense of humor for this book - otherwise it might seem too sad, but that’s also kind of what I think about life itself.

Cradle: Foundation - Volume 1 - Will Wright

I started reading the Cradle series in March and picked them up again in June after falling off my book game for a couple months during COVID.

I LOVE these books, they are so fun. There are spirits, warring families, mystical paths of study and skill, monsters, wealthy rulers, impossible goddesses, dragonbone cities… I’m all about it. The narration and plot reads a bit like a video game - the fantasy world has a very clear hierarchy of superpowers, and items and actions that help characters achieve those powers. The main character’s inventiveness is almost as charming as the second main character’s skill and power, and there’s a lot of deeper moments about invention vs. power, or the unstoppable teaming of invention + power.

Playing:

I’ve picked up a D&D campaign on Discord/zoom with some friends from Twitter and new friends. It’s been so fun to play D&D and have a couple hours each week where I don’t think about work, art commissions, or exercise. In a way it’s my main social time aside from zoom happy hours at my company and zoom family calls.

On one of those family calls, I explained a bit of D&D to my mom, who remembered kids in the 80s playing it when she taught high school English. It’s interesting, but not surprising, how storytelling and team efforts are attractive game concepts.

While explaining D&D to my mom, I realized that D&D, to me, is ultimately a bit more positive than Magic the Gathering - I used to feel bad about whipping people at Magic, and would also feel bad about getting whipped.

There are clear winners and losers in Magic, and Magic is a bit more about antagonizing others. On the other side of the fantasy game spectrum, D&D is about group survival - rather than beating your friends, you’re working together with them. The DM is not an antagonist (usually) either. Ultimately, I can see why D&D has had a resurgence and why it is sticking around. It’s a game about team/group success rather than competition.

Fitness:

Art and fitness for me are interlinked, both inform and balance each other. If I am stuck on an art idea or overly stressed, I just go for a run for a while and usually have my art issue worked out, and my stress melts away.

The myths that artists are physically weak, or that you can’t be both a jock and an artist, are myths that just sort of need to go away.

I think we are stuck with the myth of artist-as-unwell because artists would actually talk about their ailments, as opposed to being silent. So we have rich information about when van Gogh was in an asylum, but we forgot about the letter where he writes his brother about how his doctor mistook him for an iron worker. Same thing for artists like Frida Kahlo - artists themselves aren’t more sickly, they are sick at the same rate of everyone else, and they just make a painting about it.

Sometimes, the more stress I have, the more I run - because running helps me stay away from the computer and away from getting TOO invested in my phone, it helps me mentally reset.

June and July so far have been big months for me for running and biking. I have completed two ‘big’ runs at 10 miles and 10.5 miles in the past couple weeks - these runs are big for me right now, in the future they may be more standard. A year from now I might be reading this blog and fitting in 20 mile training runs on a Saturday. We will see!

I am training for marathons, and eventually, I want to do 50 mile ultra race. Who knows what racing will really look like in the future? I might just do a marathon and capture it on Training Peaks/Strava, and that will be good enough.

In other fitness news, I stopped drinking alcohol around the end of May, so I am calling my Soberversary June 1st. I feel… a lot better without alcohol. It was a good time for me to quit, because with stay-at-home orders, drinking just didn’t seem like something that needed to happen.

Now that hanging out doesn’t really happen, and therefore social anxiety doesn’t happen, I quit drinking and I feel like I am just thriving, soaring mentally and physically beyond my own wildest dreams.

Where I used to write a couple sentences, I now write a couple paragraphs. I identify problems sooner and come up with solutions faster.

I was thinking earlier this month that the last time I felt this sharp, this intelligent, was in high school when I was working with calculus and studying particle physics. I also wrote long science fiction fantasy books when I was in high school - sounds insane, but I remember looking at the word count in Microsoft Word and there’d be something like 180,000 words there.

So, I am off my own personal chain now, it seems. The dollars I save from not buying beer are one thing, but the time I save from not drinking is invaluable. I can’t put a dollar amount on that.

Ra, more art! xoxo catch you next time!

Related Blogs:

The importance of Personal Work 

Art Therapy is Too Late 

In Praise of Low-Stakes Art  

Sketchbook Confessional May 2020

Who wrote this:

I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!

- Becky Jewell

Sketchbook Confessional May 2020

Welcome to the Sketchbook Confessional for May 2020!

It’s the future and we live in the time of COVID-19, let’s live heroically, let’s live in style. #jewell2020

May is a special month for me since May 1, 2018 was the launch date of my comic, Tilted Sun! It’s been interesting to look back on this comic and also look forward, but most of all, it’s been important to stay present with it too.

I think if I get too excited about what I have already done, or too nervous about what is to come, creatively and personally, I get trapped in my own kind of helix in my head.

For this reason, small projects and lots of exercise have seemed to help me get through stay-at-home life. I miss my friends and just generally talking to people because everything that everyone has to say (about both art and life) is always so surprising.

I miss telling my friends a joke and having them laugh, or staying out at the bars in DC until 1 AM talking about politics and ideas. I guess what I kind of found out during this whole coronavirus event is that I am actually kind of extroverted - my peers take me out of the helix in my head - and this is invaluable to me.

During COVID-19 and Maryland’s stay at home measures, I’ve been journaling and writing as much as possible to keep track of how I feel, even if it is a couple shorthand notes in my Hobonichi Techo journal, or a scribble on a document in Clip Studio Paint, I’m doing my best to keep on top of my mental states.

Around 2016 I was so sad at the polarization and meanness that I started seeing online, and I began making art that was explicitly about love and romance. I wanted to depict relationships and people that looked happy and safe, because that was the opposite of what I saw online. My studio in Austin, TX in 2016:

If you’re an artist working with themes like this, you’re immediately at huge risk of criticism that tacks it all ‘onto you’ like, “If you’re painting people who are making out, that must mean you either like making out a lot or you’re lacking it.”

I think times of social injustice need an overflow of art about love, trust, and safety, because it is what we are all lacking. Thinking back to the sex-positive 70s, it makes sense that social and racial revolutions went hand in hand with … sex, and being freely-loving.

I think the freely-loving kind of mentality is still a shock to people in 2020. I think the most shocking, punkass thing you can do is love someone, love yourself, love people, or love something relentlessly, ESPECIALLY if the world tells you NOT to. This does scare me a bit, that love is punk. But that’s all that I can think of as true.

More life:

During May 2020, I’ve also enjoyed connecting with my friends and wider audience over Instagram livestreams! The livestreams aren’t always perfect - sometimes the quality is bad, or some random trolls show up, or the signal drops. Yet, they are a fun way for me to get out of my head and into art, and back into chatting with people who I love deeply. Here are some works I did on 1 hour livestreams on Instagram in May:

I also did a couple livestreams featuring gouache on yupo paper, both translucent yupo and opaque yupo.

I made some flower art of flowers that I found around my neighborhood and used them for quasi-motivational poster like posts.

Some of the aesthetic of the “Way too Fucking Much” art that I made came from looking at Dasharz0ne posts, which are pretty funny satires of toughguy-biker aesthetic posts that circulate the internet.

I think if you share motivational messages, that is great, but it is true that some motivationally-aimed messages intrinsically tap into and exploit weakness in people. They can be very ‘this or that’ polarizing, and sometimes a bit judgmental, and sometimes they go after a straw man.

Take motivational messages that say “I am enough” for example. What? Who the fuck told you that you weren’t enough? Fuck that person. Even if that voice is you, and it’s ‘you’ saying that you are not enough, and this is the thing that the motivational message needs to fight … that inner voice needs to go. It’s not going to be fixed by a chipper post on Instagram.

So, the piece above came from thinking that asked: “What if, instead of stating that I am merely enough, I acknowledge I am already overflowing?”

I think this is true of most people, not just over-the-top artists. Our cup runneth over already.

In May, I was able to finish some Toonme work and a couple other fun commissions too.

Reading/Watching/Playing:

I read the second volume of ElfQuest and am in the middle of the third volume. I really like this series. It absolutely turns most comics on their heads, in that sometimes there is violence but that’s not the focus of the series. Overall it’s a series beyond it’s time. I don’t think I’ve seen a more sex-positive comic, or a comic that treats PTSD so well. At least of it’s time. Either way, it’s refreshing to read.

I have only been playing one video game in May: Breath of the Wild. I am not sure if I will finish it or not. In this game I spend a lot of time wandering around looking at butterflies and trees, and cooking food. I keep climbing towers instead of doing shrines, and usually with shrines if I can’t solve the puzzle in a few minutes, I leave and try again later.

Fitness:

My fitness routines lately are pretty lassaiz-faire as far as how ‘hard’ I go, I’m only able to measure time, or, the duration of my jogs in my neighborhood in Maryland-shy-of-DC. I run anywhere from 30-60 minutes, about four times a week. If I find myself helixing, I will run every day and force myself to take an ‘off’ day.

I’m also super into planks, and every day I step away from my computer or ipad and do at least one 30 second plank per day, usually in sets of three each day. I can now do about 40 seconds three times a day and will feel the impact of a 60 second plank for a full day.

I’m glad Geddy photobombed these shots of me doing a full-arm side plank - by the end of the plank you could see a lot of strain in my face!

Thanks for reading and catch you all soon!!

Related blogs:

The importance of Personal Work 

Art Therapy is Too Late 

In Praise of Low-Stakes Art  

More 2016 photos from my studio in Austin, TX

Who wrote this:

I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!

- Becky Jewell

New Shop Prints up!

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 

Art Therapy is Too Late 

In Praise of Low-Stakes Art  

Print Shop

Who wrote this:

I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!

- Becky Jewell

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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 

Art Therapy is Too Late 

In Praise of Low-Stakes Art  

Print Shop

Who wrote this:

I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!

- Becky Jewell

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 Therapy is Too Late 

In Praise of Low-Stakes Art  

Getting over Judgement in Art  

When Art Isn’t Therapy

Art How Tos:

Color Palettes from Moebius Illustrations 

Color Palettes from The Little Mermaid

Fan Art Friday!  

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 

Art Therapy is Too Late 

In Praise of Low-Stakes Art  

Print Shop

Who wrote this?

I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!

- Becky Jewell

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:

Why Art Seems Pyschic

It’s Good if Art Seems Pointless

In Praise of Low-Stakes Art

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:

I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!

- Becky Jewell

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

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:

1. You work on a drawing for two weeks, spending 1, 2, 3, 16 hours on it

2. On critique day, you hang your drawing on a wall next to all of the other pieces of other students.

3. The professor and your peers go one by one, talking about and critiquing each piece on the wall.

4. 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

Why Art Seems Psychic

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:

Poodles are chill dogs

How my art changed in school

Defeating Negative Self Talk

Who wrote this:

I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!

- Becky Jewell

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 making art seems psychic

Why Dumbo and Pinnochio are weird movies

That time I went to Akihabara

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

Why Making Art Seems Psychic

Folding at Home for Covid-19

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

Sketchbook Confessional: January 2020

Sketchbook Confessional: December 2019

Who wrote this?

I’m a painter, I make comics, and sometimes I do computer stuff!

- Becky Jewell