An Audience of One - Srinivas Rao with Robin Dellabough

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

American Flannel - Steven Kurutz

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Leadville Irish Miners’ Memorial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elevate and Dominate - Deion Sanders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Medium Moment: My Favorite Watercolor Papers

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

Traveler’s Notebook No. 27 Watercolor Paper

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

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

Strathmore Watercolor Postcards

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

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

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

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

How I found my forever paper(s):

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

And Oops I did it again -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TLDR Paper List:

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

2. Traveler’s Notebook 027 Watercolor Paper

3. Strathmore Watercolor Postcards
   
   

TLDR How to Find A Forever Paper(s)

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

2. Compare quality and costs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading and catch you soon!

Sakura Koi Creative Art Colors CAC Pocket Field Sketch Box

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Traveler’s Notebook Ended my Journal Guilt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sketchbook Confessional July 2024

Welcome to July 2024’s Sketchbook Confessional!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Canvas Rebel feature!

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

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

Sketchbook Confessional June 2024

Welcome to June 2024’s Sketchbook Confessional! The Sketchbook Confessional is a blog where I recount all the drawings, paintings, and other efforts I made in a month. It’s my “done” list rather than my “to-do” list. The Sketchbook Confessional is a way for me to objectively survey and assess my work in a limited period of time.

June was an exciting month for me because June 22 was LAUGH or the Lafayette Art Underground Hustle, an art fair series installment that took place in a neighborhood in Lafayette, CO. I had a lot of fun and saw some familiar faces, as well as met some new people at LAUGH.

June was a good month for me to make paper art. I made several miniature paper dragon pieces and put them into series or groups as framed pieces. It was fun to do these and several have already sold.

I tried out some new papers and motifs. Some of the paper I made myself, which was satisfying. It’s great to take things from a pulp phase to a completed piece phase.

In June I worked quite a bit with watercolor, making portraits of my toddler. Above is the largest piece of this series. I made probably 6 or 7 watercolor drawings and studies of this same pose where he was sleeping. It continues to be a good challenge to draw him. He truly changes so fast, every month. It reminds me that all of us change a little bit as time goes on, even if we don’t grow as fast as babies or toddlers, we change a bit on the inside.

To work on watercolors and give them my best shot, I added some Sakura Koi watercolor sets to my art backpack. These have been fun and easy to use with my Chromatek water brush pens. Watercolor is tough, certainly, but what I like about it, is that it feels like traveling light compared to oil paint. It’s much easier to carry around watercolor sets and paper than it is to carry around tubes of oil paint, an easel, and canvases.

My new creative medium in June was … journaling, or taking journaling a bit more seriously. I’ve had a Hobonichi Techo each year for about five years now. Sometimes I will keep up with these journals very well, and I will fill out each page about things I did that day, or places I went to. Sometimes I fall behind. What has helped me keep up recently is getting a thermal printer, which has allowed me to print out little photos of things that I did that day, and stick the photo to the appropriate page. It’s been a good way to work on my memory, which was in bad shape last year with all the sleep deprivation I went through being a new mom.

I’ve enjoyed getting into washi tape as well as a journaling medium. It’s a fun way to be expressive in a journal or scrapbook without necessarily drawing everything out. With a thermal printer and washi tape, I have a fast and easy way to express how I felt about any given day.

Reading:

This month I worked on reading a couple books. I’m a few hundred pages in to this Van Gogh biography by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. It’s fascinating to me. I felt like I knew a lot about Van Gogh after reading his letters, but this biography has much more context and much more information. Since in the letters, Van Gogh writes only to Theo, there’s much more to say and know since there were 6 Van Gogh siblings, and aspects to his story that emerge from other relatives like his uncle, and his mom and dad.

I also read “A Magic Girl Retires” by Park Seolyeon. I enjoyed this book quite a bit.

I definitely needed a shorter, lighter read as opposed to the Van Gogh book so this book fit the bill for that particular task. I won’t spoil anything in “A Magical Girl Retires” but I will say there were awesome illustrations and it was a surprising, fun read. I’m very glad the cover drew me in.

Lastly, this month I started reading “Grit, Guts, and Determination” by Cole Chlouber, a book specifically about the founding of the Leadville Trail 100 race. I was born and raised in Leadville and volunteered at several LT100 races, but I certainly didn’t know the whole history of the race. It’s full of references that will be familiar to any Leadvillian and it will also be exciting to read for anyone who wants to get to know Leadville a bit more.

That’s what I got for this month! Catch you all next month.

2024 Figure Drawings

*content warning - which is probably too late - anyways there’s drawn nudity here, so probably nsfw unless your boss is really cool or, you know, you are the boss

It’s been fun to get out to Art of Modeling drop-in figure drawing in North Boulder this year. I haven’t had much of a chance to work with live models in the past few years, and I took about 6 years off of figure drawing. My last drawing of a live model before these was made in 2017. It wasn’t much of an intentional break, I think I just had a lot going on with career stuff, covid, and eventually having a baby too. Many - if not most - of my drawings and paintings these days are done outside the studio environment, where my toddler can’t reach them (yet).

So, it’s been great to get back to a real studio environment and sketch figuratively again.

For all of the figure drawings shown here, I used a Kuretake No. 55 Double-sided brush pen. This is a useful pen for quick sketching because it has a fine point on one side for working on details, and it has a broad point on the other side for laying down dark areas very quickly. In addition to using ink, I also use a Chromatek water brush pen. I have a set of 6 of them and I use one with a more pointed tip, rather than the square tip ends. To get a good shadow going either on or behind a figure, I give the water brush pen a good squeeze while running it along a line made by the Kuretake No. 55. Usually, even if the ink of the Kuretake has been dry for a bit, it will fan out and spread if it is touched by the water brush pen. This lets me lay down quite a few shadows and values very quickly. Even so, it seems like the 10 and 20 minute poses pass in the blink of an eye.

The paper used here is a medium-sized SOHO sketchbook. I really like the tooth and thickness on this paper. It works well for the water medium I am using - there’s been no sinking through. In lowlight photos like the photos above, the tooth really appears in a beautiful way.

Something that surprised me about the figure drawings I did lately was that I really enjoyed drawing the model’s tattoos. It felt like a kind of meta game somehow. A drawing of a drawing. I realized that getting the tattoos right was a big deal.

Check out what The Art of Modeling has to offer - especially if you’re in Colorado or visiting. The Art of Modeling website is here and you can check them out on instagram .

Sakura Koi Watercolors - June 2024

It’s been fun to combine oil painting with watercolor lately. Both are quite different for me. For painting in watercolors, it really feels more like drawing and then brushing water into the drawing. Oil painting feels like setting down areas of color and shaping them.

I shopped around for a bit and then finally decided on these paints: Sakura Koi 24 Assorted Watercolors Field Sketch Set because I did want to take the set outside on my hikes, and the size and color range seemed perfect for what I am hoping to do. With 24 colors, there aren’t too many or too few colors to choose from. In the photo above I have the 18 color set and a 12 color set shown, so 24 is the right happy medium, I think. Here is the 18 color set:

I made the above self-portrait as a test and it worked out great. It was a pretty traditional watercolor approach where I made the drawing of my face and laid on the light colors first.

The paper used for this drawing is Traveler’s Notebook watercolor paper. To get the paper to lie as flat as possible I pinned it down with a lamp and a crayon container. I did have the pink/light magenta gouache on my palette but I don’t think I used it for this.

I’ve also been enjoying using watercolors to make portraits of my toddler. He’s at a really cute age right now. Everything he does is adorable and magical to me. I’m working to capture his face in the best way that I can.

Painting or drawing kids is always an interesting artistic task because they have such round faces compared to adults. There are some adults who keep kid-like faces throughout their lives but many of us grow out of or into a different face. At times, to me, it’s almost like I might as well be painting a cat instead of a human, that’s how different painting a baby versus painting an adult is to me. Maybe it’s not this way for other artists though. I think it would be interesting if there were an art school out there where students spent a whole semester on painting the very young. It also wouldn’t be bad to have weeks of classes dedicated to other singular topics, like plants or fabrics. I’m sure there’s curriculums out there that exist like this, but I haven’t seen them.

Sketchbook Confessional May 2024

*content whatever thing, some nudity in the form of drawings included in this post, probably safe for work but only if your boss is cool

Welcome to May 2024’s Sketchbook Confessional! This is a blog where I look at all the drawings, paintings, and other art pieces I created in any given month. This blog is my “done” list rather than my “to-do” list - it is an objective way to review what I have done in a limited time frame. I also catalogue other pursuits such as reading and exercise in these blogs.

May was a good month for my work.

In May 2024 I made several pieces of paper, painted the paper, and created animal bookmarks from the paper. Mostly: dragons!

Aside from paper art, I did get outside a bit to oil paint en plein air. I found a few waterfalls to paint and really enjoyed it. I also tried a new size of painting canvas panel for the outdoors - 12 x 16. It just so happens that I have a painting suitcase that was designed to hold panels of this size, so I gave it a try. The larger format is working out for me, though I do need a decent amount of time to cover a 12 x 16 canvas, it’s been worthwhile to get these done because more space has meant more brush movement and more possibilities for me. I do have to take a whole backpack of paint for these, instead of measuring out tiny daubs of paint beforehand and packing those. Luckily at this point, I’m pretty strong from lifting my 30 pound toddler all the time, and the easel and wood suitcase are already heavy, so I figure what is the harm in taking a few more pounds?

I was really happy with this 12 x 16 plein air painting.

Here’s a painting where I had a bit less time, but still really liked ultimately and … it’s always fun to make these even if some seem to turn out better than others.

As far as drawing, I got to North Boulder ArtofModeling Figure Drawing for one session and finished some drawings I was happy with.

The above drawings were all done with a Kuretake no. 55 double sided ink brush pen, and a Chromatek water brush. I had fun. The model was amazing! I hope to get in to do this once a month or so.

At the very end of May I got a little fed up with the smell and cleanup of oil paint, and I think too that I was exhausted from plein air trips and hikes, so I bought myself a simple watercolor set. It’s been fun to fall back into the arms of watercolor. I’m still a little confused by it, so I am reading as much as I can about watercolor to bring myself up to speed. It makes me feel a bit better when I look at watercolors by masters and I can see that something eluded them in the painting.

As soon as I finished the watercolor above, the next day was June 1 so I’ll post those in another blog!

Reading:

I finished Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and loved it. I could not put this book down and I read it for hours at a time at night. Probably the best book about the theme of ghosting and closure that I never expected to read. Or, not a spoiler, it is sort of about Ghosting before it was a thing. I didn’t realize that it was considered the best book of 2014 by a few critics before I started reading it. I can certainly see why people felt this way. It’s my favorite book of his, though I think his book about running is kind of in its own category. Usually I give books away after reading them, or I put them in Little Free Libraries or sell them, but I think I’ll be holding on to this book for a while. There are a couple paragraphs about life that really stood out to me, that I want to go back to.

Books published from 2008 to 2019 before 2020’s coronavirus crisis strike me in a certain way. It’s the recent past at this point. Many of them seem optimistic to me. When we were all in the thick of spring and summer 2020, I could hardly bear to read some books that were published in 2018 or so. The problems or goals of the people in the books didn’t seem important to me. I guess it was one of those moments where life is so dramatic that the need for any kind of entertainment that has an ounce of drama is grossly diminished. Does a person read a mystery book while an earthquake is happening? Does anyone need spy movies if there is a forest fire nearby? In 2024, books published in this timeframe still feel to me like watching someone in a haunted house (due to the global financial crisis) walk into a room where a Covid-19 monster is waiting.

In May I also finished The Origin of Creativity by Edward O. Wilson and enjoyed it. I am not sure if he finds the answer to his questions. Much of the book’s information about the human brain was fascinating to me, as to how it is pretty much the most complex piece of matter, and our main talent as a species is to think. Regardless of whether the book has answers I will be going back to it. It is interesting to note that few other species create anything at all. I feel since this book has been written there might be more to say about animals creating kinds of art, though.

Running?

For workouts I’ve walked back most of my running and much of my fitness routine is integrated into my daily life. I carry my toddler around and if I don’t have him with me, I am usually carrying my easel and backpack. It’s been a strength spring, with bursts of weight-bearing activity rather than endurance activity. I think I will keep going in this way for a while, it’s working well for me.

This is what I got for May 2024! Catch you next time.

Sketchbook Confessional April 2024

Welcome to April 2024’s Sketchbook Confessional! The Sketchbook Confessional is a blog where I recap all the paintings, drawings, and other pieces that I made in any given month. It’s my ‘done’ list rather than a ‘to-do’ list, a way of objectively reviewing what’s going on in my studio.

In April 2024 I finished several oil paintings, mostly portraits.

I was able to get outside a bit to do a few plein air pieces, Plein Air April or #Pleinairpril was a good excuse to do this.

The weather in Boulder this April was snowy, unusually snowy, even for Boulder. On April 1 we had a bit of hail and then it snowed very thoroughly two more times in the month. I ended up staying indoors a bit more than I thought, which was good!

I finished a piece based on a moment from Gene Wolfe’s Litany of the Long Sun. The piece is based on the quote “What are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured.”

What are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured.

I plan to do more work with these books as I have dozens of ideas in my head at any one time about things to illustrate. There’s quite a bit of freedom of imagination that can be set loose given these stories.

Ironically I think the best way for me to work with anything I have in my brain about Gene Wolf is to keep painting these ideas in oil. I do like what I have created digitally but I like my oil paintings too.

All in all, things have been good. I missed writing my monthly-recap blogs for February and March this year, but I did some art during those months that I really liked - I will find a way to post them eventually outside of instagram.

Alzabo Soup Banner

Earlier this year I was able to create a banner for the podcast Alzabo Soup, featuring characters from Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Short Sun.

You can see the full banner here in the gallery and throughout the podcast website. Even more info about it is available on the Alzabo Soup Patreon page.

I had fun working on this! I had quite the enjoyable journey reading all of Gene Wolfe’s Solar Cycle throughout the past few years. I’ve done some work here and there with other moments throughout Gene Wolfe’s books and I plan to post them on this site eventually, when I feel they are at their best-appreciated stage. It’s such a visually-rich world that I feel many artists would enjoy illustrating these books. I hope to re-read the books throughout my life from time to time. There’s much to learn and see from these books.

Creating the Perfect Art Space for Your Apartment

Creating an art space within your apartment isn't just about carving out a corner; it's about curating a place where your imagination can thrive, inspiration can flourish, and self-expression can live. This ApartmentGuide article which I am featured in will share expert tips for you to create the perfect art space in your apartment. Be sure to check out Artistic Oasis: 15 Expert Tips to Create the Perfect Art Space in Your Apartment.

Sketchbook Confessional January 2024

In January 2024, Boulder had a run of shockingly warm days near the end of the month. I realized it was so nice out that it would be silly to stay indoors, so I got out for a bit and did plein air on the Mt. Sanitas trail.

I think for many, Mt. Sanitas is an exciting and beneficial climb, for my purposes it’s certainly fun, and I go incredibly slow and only maybe 1/4th of the way up. There are many colors to see in the rocks on the trail, because the rocks are red and gray, and often covered with bright yellow-green lichen. There are also deep shadows on the rocks and glaring white mica. I find myself using a complete range of values of paint when I am painting around here.

Aside from landscapes, I worked on portraits a bit too, which I go into in detail more in this blog. I was happy with how these turned out.

I also made several flower and mountain paintings in January.

I made a few other lupine pieces that aren’t shown here, but I think there were about 5 of them total, mostly of small size.

I’ve been able to do some ‘collaborations’ with my 18 month old, it’s been very fun. He scribbles a bit and I make a drawing. It’s fun to do these on canvases from Michaels because they are durable and survive all the spills, footsteps, and other mishaps that paper cannot.

In January I also made some non-collaborations of art of myself and Bebe. We’re right on the line between being able to still call him Bebe, he’s more of a toddler now I suppose.

On the digital art side of things, I finished Glass House Man, a piece I’ve been working on for a while

Anyways, that’s what I got for January!

Portraits in Oil January 2024

Lately I’ve been working on painting portraits in oil, and it’s been a fun journey so far.

Every now and there there are old cigar boxes for purchase at the creative re-use center in Boulder, Art Parts. I usually buy a few of them if I see them so I can put my paint tubes in it. I suppose cigars and paint tubes are roughly the same size, so these kinds of boxes work really well for table-top organization. They wouldn’t be terrible for plein air painting either,

The other thing I often get at Art parts are sheets of acrylic plexiglass. These are great to get from the creative re-use center because they don’t have to be any special size or even clarity, and they are usually a dollar or less. I usually either turn the acrylic plexiglass into paintings themselves, or I place white paper/cardboard underneath them and use them as palettes, like below. My palette for portraits is as follows:

Here we have 3 daubs of white and a series of mostly-warmer colors on the left, followed by cool and dark tones on the right. The jelly-like substance that you see in the upper right is gamblin solvent-free gel. It’s the only medium I utilized for these portraits, and I use it pretty sparingly. It helps brushes glide more easily across the canvas, while extending the paint throughout. Just about every paint stroke eventually has a little bit of medium, unless I am working on details where I don’t want the brush to slip or glide too much.

What I found out while working on these portraits of myself is… I am very pink. My face is almost pink everywhere in fact and seems to be either pink or yellow when I really look at it. I didn’t have any cool tones except in my neck and in my eyes. My ears took up a bunch of cadmium-red hue colors and they seemed to be either red or orange.

I also don’t seem to be green, at all, I seem to only have pinks, oranges, or yellows. I looked hard and couldn’t find any usage for green in the original photographs that I utilized to paint these portraits.

After making each painting, I loaded the above photo into Clip Studio Paint and took several eyedropper-tool pulls from it. The colors seemed to stay in the carnelian-orange-red area.

I thought maybe if I kept eye-droppering the photo, eventually I would find some sort of surprising color, like green or purple, but I tried it maybe a few dozen times in promising areas and it seemed to be red/orange each time. I guess maybe one surprise is that my skin in the photo never registered as actual pink, it only ever registered as light red or light orange. So I suppose what I said a few paragraphs above isn’t true at all, I’m not pink in any way, I’m simply very orange-red with different levels of white.

To get the dark tones of each portrait, the color I utilized was Payne’s Gray. To me, Payne’s Gray appears like more of a mid-tone gray when printed on the tube, but in reality, it is quite dark compared to the printing. It made a good default unmixed color for deep hair shadows and pupils, and mixed with red it was a good hair-shadow color.

Once a good mix of colors is on my palette, it looks a lot like the photo above. You can see the heavy use of Payne’s Gray (dark blob on the right) and the somewhat more sparing use of the three white daubs. I guess in working these paintings, I wanted different whites so I used different daubs of white for different mixes.

The second photo I worked from I liked a bit more because I could see different colors in my face, like purples.

Overall I made six portraits of myself, three from the 3/4ths angle and 3 from the front-ish angle. I liked all of these for different reasons. In some situations I think I nailed down certain areas better than others.