The Sketchbook Confessional is a blog where I recap all of the art that I made in a month, as well as what I’m reading, watching, writing, and up to as far as exercise.
Art:
This month I waded back into oil painting with a few paintings of the Boulder Flatirons.
I had a lot of fun painting in my watercolor paper in my Traveler’s Notebook. I discovered the magic of taping off the edges of the paper and painting within a little square or rectangle. Oddly I have never tried this before and I really enjoyed it.
I painted a few fish in watercolor on paper that I’d purchased on my Paris trip in 2017. I’m glad I saved the paper for these rainbow trout, though next time I think I will use it sooner, haha.
Speaking of documentation, In January of 2023, I finished reading several books and also blogs covering my thoughts about the books, as well as art related blogs. I find that when I’m caring for my baby, I always have time to either jot down a few sentences on my phone or read my kindle. Here are all the blogs I finished this month:
All Art is a Force of Optimism
Painting the Boulder Flatirons
Quote blog: “All art is quite useless” - Oscar Wilde
Book blog: The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
Book blog: Never Finished - David Goggins
Book blog: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
In January I created a couple new designs that I figured I would upload to Society6.
Overall I had a lot of fun making the above design using goauche, acrylic, and watercolor on duralar.
I made several oil paintings this month. I have had a lot of fun ‘drawing’ with oil paint, which I’ve done before - what I end up doing is laying down a thin layer of white or offwhite paint and then drawing into the paint with a dark color like teal. Impasto or thick painting is pretty unpredictable but drawing with it is at least a little controllable.
I stayed on two subjects this month, mountains and nudes, which I plan to continue throughout the year now that I feel better painting in oil again. I stopped for a while out of concerns for breastfeeding and while I was pregnant with my baby. If you’ve ever smelled oil paint you will probably understand this, haha. It’s nice to be back.
The painting of Mt. Elbert that I made at the end of December dried out this month though it did take a while.
What I’m reading:
I had what I think of as a huge literary accomplishment this month. I finished reading the first three books of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. I started reading it in 2020 and put it down for a few years, and only recently in 2023 have I powered through the last 30% in about a week where it was too snowy to go outside and I was too overwhelmed by the idea of brushing the snow off my car and chipping at the ice on my windshield. I had also run out of books to read and it was my last book I could read for free before buying a new one. This is also how I ended up reading as much Proust as I did, if I am on an airplane for a long time or stuck indoors somewhere I do end up reading books that otherwise seem impossible to scale.
I decided to start drawing pages from Botns as warmups on my tablet.
I think Severian is an interesting character because he does so many unlikeable things yet he does his best in all the terrible situations he finds himself in. He’s way more likeable to me than the character in Dune. Anyways, I’ve drawn some Botns stuff before and I’m excited to do more of it.
I think Botns is hard to read because of the violence. Otherwise it’s worthwhile. If anyone were to read this blog and start reading Botns for the first time afterwards they’d probably be like “omg why does she like this book, this is horrendous.” All I can say is it gets better at the end or in the last half. The language or writing is good the whole time but I liked the last half of the plot a lot more than the first half. I’m now reading through book 4, which feels like an afterwards, yet is still a part of the series.
This month I also finished Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art and The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, along with the new David Goggins book.
Running
I did walk a bit in January and squeezed in a couple 1 mile runs around Chautauqua. On a couple days, I hiked with my baby and my easel and a diaper bag, for a total of 42 pounds of weight I was carrying around. I sort of couldn’t believe I was doing this, but I did gain about 40 pounds while pregnant so maybe it’s not so different from how I spent most of 2022.
I knocked out a 7 mile run at the end of January and was glad to feel like I’ve completely gotten Covid out of my system after a rough couple months of residual symptoms. The first 3 mile run that I did after having Covid felt horrendous, I felt like I’d never be the same. Luckily I got over it, somehow, and am running back at my 2021 levels. It took about 8 weeks to feel better. After having my baby I was able to knock out a 6 mile run pretty easily, so I think Covid was harder on me than having my baby, strangely enough. I hope I never get it again.
Until next time -