Welcome to the Sketchbook Confessional for August-to-mid-September 2020!
It’s the future and we live in the time of COVID-19, let’s live heroically, let’s live in style. #jewell2020
August represented a bit of an art slump for me since I am in the middle of packing, moving, and driving across the USA back to Colorado.
Many years ago I realized I went through times of art production and times where I would absorb, rather than produce, art and information. I try to not beat myself up for falling into a series of weeks where I don’t make paintings or comics, and intentionally categorize this time as Learning Time, or an absorption time. August and September have been absorption months for me so far. I have been reading more than writing, and looking at art more than creating it.
Art:
In terms of art I have been making 2-4 frame GIFs and uploading them to Giphy: I added a few GIFs here to Giphy: https://giphy.com/beckyjewell6
Overall Giphy has been super interesting to participate in as an artist. My whole set of GIFs had about 1.1 million views in early August. Later in September, the number ratcheted up to 20 million as one gif took off like a rocketship, for some reason. The GIF that got the most views was an animated version of Be Nice Make Art.
I don’t know what this means or why it got so many views. Instagram? Giphy front page? I’m glad it was popular as original art, and wasn’t a spongebob cutout or something. Though, those are pretty cute, too.
Writing:
Usually I don’t write very much about, er, writing in these updates. This month I did work on writing some key moments in my comic Tilted Sun for future reference when I get back into art production mode after my move. Ultimately I know what Tilted Sun is about, I just am disappointed with how slow I am moving imagistically with the comic. Someday, I might move back to writing, or start writing a fantasy book in addition to writing and drawing Tilted Sun, simply because writing moves faster. It is way harder to draw a flowing scarf than describe it.
So, I have the themes worked out in my head and the characters, it just takes me longer to complete than the ideas hit me. A lot of good paintings are like this. They look like they just zapped into existence, like Athena from Zeus’s head… yet they actually took years of work and failure.
So, the allure of writing has been fun for me lately while I am moving boxes around and energetically am not working deeply enough in my head for drawing.
Reading/Watching/Playing
Reading:
I finished reading the Jim Carrey book, Memoirs and Misinformation. This book probably isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve read and liked Pynchon or other absurdist-bent books you’ll like this. Ultimately the book does a great job of recreating what it is like to be an artist with a capital A - reality and art blur together, until you’re not sure which is which, and you can hardly afford to care. Distinguishing art and reality isn’t the point of this book, the point is wholly something else, which I will save for you if you read it! I personally loved this book. I just loved it.
I picked up Barking Up the Wrong Tree at a Fedex hub and read it in a couple days. It’s a good success-anecdote book, something I’d usually read on an airplane. There were a couple good paragraphs on art specifically, and the Dunning-Kruger effect which I thought was interesting:
After learning about Adele’s weightloss and seeing one of her Instagram posts, I finished reading: Untamed by Glennon Doyle. I really like this book. I think the earlier that women read a book like this, the better their lives will be. Mostly, I am all for making a life that belongs to you, instead of adhering to tradition or doing things by the book so that other people will like you. This book takes readers through a journey of Glennon’s life as she starts out following tradition and adhering to grueling perfectionism, and she ends up blazing a new path.
I empathize with the sobriety points. I can’t say my own experiences in love and life have been as terrifying as Glennon Doyle’s experiences - it’s one of those books where I read it and think “Wow if this person can get through all this trauma, most of us can do anything!”
While reading this book, I realized how the pursuit of art is a get-out-of-jail-free card for women. In art, you are praised and loved for pursuing new and different ideas. There aren’t many other paths in life, aside from athletics or study, that can help women transcend deeply pervasive misogyny. A lot of American and Christian default narratives that are supposed to apply to womanhood are pretty harmful, and discarding these narratives early, as early as possible, is a good idea. Whatever helps women do that is good, whether it is art, study, athletics, anything.
I also finished reading Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown. I thought it was good after the introduction, which was a bit too namedropped for my tastes. Written in 2017, there are a lot of aspects of this book about racism and the racist divide that apply to struggles that we are still confronting in 2020.
On the fantasy side of things I am enjoying Cradle: Ghostwater by Will Wright. I like all of the Cradle books and am making a ton of fanart about the series. There are parts of this book that are so F*ing metal, man. They’re fun to read as an artist, and in a weird way, the books read a little bit like playing a videogame. The powers and characters’ skills in the book are clearly tiered, like advancing levels in a game. Plus there are flying clouds, giant turtles, sprites, treasures, and I do have to say I like the main character a lot, and his bff.
I read Business at the Speed of Thought by Bill Gates and it turned out to be an absolutely wild read because it is pretty much 400 pages of convincing you to turn your paper-based office into a computer-based office, which makes sense for the time. At first I didn’t realize the book was written in 1998. Reading it now feels like reading 400 pages of someone convincing you to purchase an automobile instead of riding a horse. I admit I had to skim parts of it. Interesting read in 2020.
The other book I read in the Bill Gates realm was the book by William Gates or Bill Gates SR - Showing Up For Life. I liked this book, it’s about 1-2 hour read. William Gates is about the same age of my late grandpa and had a similar life - both William Gates and my grandpa were in Japan after the bomb dropped. It is interesting to read books from people in this generation.
Finally, I finished reading I May Be Wrong, But I Doubt It by Charles Barkley, after finding a copy in a local Little Free Library. One of my favorite things in the world is Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, to the extent that I wrote a please-play-this-game blog about it four years ago. I love the bravado of basketball and basketball references, and though I don’t follow the game right now, I follow a lot of what I call Basketball Drama. I love basketball shoes.
The saddest thing about this book is how it was written in 2002 and things aren’t much better when it comes to race in America. Barkley has several prescient talking points about confronting racism instead of sweeping it under the rug.
Playing:
I’m in the middle of a super fun D&D campaign with some friends online. D&D kind of works like … therapy for me, or how I’d imagine the perfect therapy to be. It takes me out of my day-to-day, gives me fresh perspectives, and, since D&D is so collaborative, I don’t feel like I have to mercilessly whip someone at something (ala Magic the Gathering.) Time just flies. We’re about 10 sessions in and it’s been just awesome. I think everyone should play this game at some point in life.
I also started playing Paper Mario: Origami King on Nintendo Switch. This game is a perfect game.
First of all, it’s funny, and about as random as Katamari. Nothing makes sense, yet, gameplay is perfect and easy to navigate. And it’s fun to look at. It’s also funny how confetti fixes everything.
The beginning is a little hand-holdy but it’s to be expected with how strange the battle system is. The line-em-up strategy vaguely reminded me of the group-and-attack battle methods in Radiant Historia.
Fitness:
Overall, August has been hot in Maryland-shy-of-DC and I’ve been staying indoors. The most exciting thing about August and September is that September 1 marked my third month of no-alcohol, which is huge for me.
I quit drinking sometime at the end of May. There was no momentous breaking point, no dramatic bottle-smashing. I just didn’t want to drink Coronas in my yard any more. I miss my friends a lot during COVID-19 measures, and realized I didn’t need alcohol the whole time, COVID or not.
I can’t remember the exact date, so I am calling June 1 my sobriety birthday.
I’d say for me personally, I’m much sharper mentally without drinking. The sharpness and competence permeates everything I do, from my professional career to drawing silly things like cat gifs.
The allure of alcohol for me, artistically, had to do with trying to relax my inner critic and fitting in. Similar to how, I guess, drinking can be a good way to lose inhibitions socially, when it comes to art, relaxing the inner critic feels good because self judgements can be shaken off quickly. I’d rather just try to ruthlessly ditch, to utterly abandon my inner self critic without drinking, which is going pretty well.
Not everything has to be perfect, and, I don’t have to fit in.
That’s it for now peeps! Next time I write I will catch you in Colorado.
Related blogs:
Sketchbook Confessional: June and Half
Making Animated GIFs in Procreate
Who wrote this:
