Sketchbook Confessional June 2023

Welcome to June 2023’s Sketchbook Confessional! The Sketchbook Confessional is a blog where I review all of the art that I made in a month. Rather than a ‘to-do’ list, the Sketchbook Confessional is a ‘done’ list, where I can objectively see what I made.

June was a month where I did utilize my sketchbook a bit more than not. I’ve been very into the Traveler’s Notebook, which is a leatherbound journal that has refillable pages to be filled out.

With my baby, it’s a little hard for me to travel, because I don’t want to put myself, my baby, and other people through air travel involving lots of crying. I had ear infections when I was a kid and I still remember the pressurization in my ears when I flew as a young girl, and that being painful. But at least I could pop my ears, I guess babies can’t exactly do that. Anyways! I’m living my ideas of travel through my Traveler’s Notebook, and I put together some scraps from my 2019 Tokyo trip (below). It’s been a fun way to look back on the trip, though I hope to have more trips to look forward to in the future.

Since June was an event-heavy month and very planning heavy, I wrote shorter blogs in June covering all of my creative things I was up to.

Making a Prompt Jar for Creativity

Tokyo 2019 ink drawings

Leadville Harperrose Studios Expansion!

Art life and Mom Life

Painting on Tile in oil and gouache

Traveler’s Notebook Pages from my 2019 Japan Trip

Kuretake Double Sided Brush Pen No. 55

Chromatek Water Brush Pens

Denver Fan Expo

Denver Fan Expo was June 30th-July 2, and it was awesome for the first two days, as of this blog’s writing there is still one more day to go! It was fun to get everything together for this expo. Most of June was all about ordering display items, prints, and stocking up on things for the con.

I had been to Denver Fan Expo as a fan before but not as an artist. It was wonderful to meet everyone who stopped by!

Now reading:

Lake of the Long Sun - Gene Wolfe

This is my favorite Gene Wolfe book yet. The second book in the long sun tetrology, there are secrets and memories of other Gene Wolfe books that appear in this one that make it quite rewarding. It’s also quite an adventure. There are many sci fi concepts and characters to enjoy and the writing is, as always, unparalleled. I finished Lake of the Long Sun in June and started the next book in this series.

Deep Work - Cal Newport

I’d read the similarly titled David Lynch book and thought I would give this one a try. The book opens with anecdotes about how writers and thinkers like Carl Jung accomplished their best work in isolated states. The book tackles the trap of visible busyness, and also internet-centrism. Since it was written in 2016, there’s no way it could have predicted 2020’s pandemic crisis and the mental health and connectivity issues that persisted throughout. Physical isolation became more of a norm for more of us than anyone could have expected, and I think what we found out in 2020 is that not everyone is meant to be isolated. Maybe creatives like me can’t wait for a few hours alone, but many, many people, including me, aren’t built for weeks and months of being alone in a tower like Jung was.

At one point the author does admit that people in roles involving people, like sales, probably perform much better when hyperconnected. The initial idea of ‘Deep Work’ might be limited to people who run databases, do computer programming, or write academic articles or fiction books, but I think it can be extended to practices that concern me, like art.

Building a Second Brain - Tiago Forte

Deep Work seems to suggest that electronics are the gateway drug to multitasking, the opposite of Deep Work. Building a Second Brain is more encouraging towards utilizing a computer to take notes.

I like both. I keep hobonichi techo day planners and also a Traveler’s Notebook for drawings. I think this blog is my Second Brain type organization system.

The thoughts in these books are important to me as I navigate life as an artist and a mom. The way I take time is totally different now that I have a baby and I am making every effort to stay on top of things.

Running:

I finished The Heavy Half in Leadville with a time of 4:44. It was a fantastically fun and exciting race, with snow happening for most of the race up high. At some points, it was like running uphill through a creek, as water was coming down the trail in large volumes. We’ve had such a rainy spring and summer all over Colorado. It’s strange to see so much water in places that would normally be dry, but that’s what is happening. Rain, on top of snowmelt, has made the season this way.

That was my big exciting June! Catch you next time!

The Leadville Heavy Half

The Leadville Heavy Half is 15.7 miles up to Mosquito Pass above Leadville. The start of the race goes straight up 6th street from Harrison Avenue, and winds through some of the historically scenic parts of the old mining parts of town.

In 2023, The Leadville Heavy Half had the special challenge of being snowy. On June 17th.

This was a race where preparedness was a decent component of the race, because at high altitude, there was still snow on top of the large rocks. Near the top of the race, which was adjusted for 2023, we were all running uphill in what seemed like a mud river, with rocks that would easily loosen and turn over underfoot.

Things I brought:

1. Osprey water pack

   Filled a bit less than halfway with Scratch Labs powder. There were aid stations so no need to take a huge amount of water for the Half.

2. Frogg Toggs Rainjacket

   This is a lightweight rainjacket. It’s inexpensive and doesn’t breathe very well, but this is what I wanted for this race. If I needed it to breathe a bit I could open the front. The important thing is that it kept rain and snow off of me.

3. Melanzana sweater dress

   I like this dress because it has a hood. My mom got me this blue sweater dress years ago and it’s my favorite.

4. T shirt

   A basic t shirt that I often wear. It has a lotus on it. I think I bought it at the Galleria when I lived in Houston.

5. Sportsbra

   Underneath it all, Victoria’s Secret, more like Victory Secret.

6. Shorts

   I had these in my bag and I never needed them. I wore leggings the whole run.

7. Leggings

   Athleta leggings, they were warm and didn’t soak up too much of the snow.

8. Ice spikes

   Like chains but for your feet. I didn’t end up using these, but it wouldn’t have been a bad idea if I had not had my Brooks Shoes below.

9. Brooks shoes - Pure Grit 6

   I got these at the thrift store in Leadville, they don’t seem very special other than that they have nice gripping elements on the bottom. I chose the grippiest shoes I had for this race, and it was a good choice. At several points in the race, it was like running uphill through a river. There were many loose rocks and several inches of flowing water for many many yards near the top of the race.

10. Sunglasses + Hat

    Funnily enough I have done a race where I forgot my hat. I couldn’t find it on race morning and I sweated off all my sunscreen so you can guess how that ended up! Luckily this time I had a pretty well-built list and I didn’t get too scattered before the race, so I remembered. The sunglasses I have are the first goodr lenses I ever bought, also at a Leadville race event in 2019. They have a bit of paint on them but I like them better that way.

11. Honey Stingers + Gummy Bears + Gu

    I only recently discovered Honey Stingers and really liked them. My other MO for fueling on long runs is gummy bears. For 13 mile or half-size runs in the past, I usually eat an entire medium-sized bag of gummy bears, or 600 calories worth. This isn’t really enough though, so I took the Honey Stingers too, which to me are like giant-size gummy bears. The race was sponsored by GU so I enjoyed eating exactly one of those during the race. It’s a little unusual but I ate some Honey Stingers the night before to load up on carbs. I didn’t eat any during the race since I ate gummy bears instead.

Some of my fueling choices

So that’s all my gear I had!

As far as night-before fueling, while driving up to Leadville from Boulder, I drank as much water as possible where the water had some Scratch Labs in it. This may have been one of the more important steps for me of the race. Carbo-loading and fueling is something that I see other runners talk and write about often. For Leadville, I recommend… hydro-loading? It’s a bit more than simply ‘staying hydrated’ it’s purposely drinking almost more water than is comfortable on the way to high altitude. This helps me personally avoid headaches from dehydration. It may not be as important to do this for people living in Leadville and racing, since I lived in Leadville for about 18 years before going to college, and I don’t remember thinking as much about water back then.

I ate some oatmeal and quesadillas for dinner because that is the most carbo-rich thing I could think of. I ate oatmeal again for breakfast the next day. My opportunity to fuel is the day before, because I struggle to get energy during races. I theorize that my body works so hard at running, that it stops digesting or doesn’t actually digest. Almost everything i eat during a race, I end up throwing up later after the race. I always feel better afterwards, I wish I could keep food down, though. This is no dis on any of the foods I eat. It’s a total me-thing, not because the gummy bears are bad or whatever.

As far as the running I did to prepare, I pushed my baby in a stroller for many of my training runs, to the point where when I didn’t have the stroller, it was like running after pushing a sled. I sort of fell forward. The most I can put my baby through for a stroller run is about 5 miles, after that, I think it’s a bit too long for him to be in the stroller and I get him home so he can crawl around. My other runs on Strava were 10 or 13 mile elevation-gain heavy runs. I knew I wasn’t going to win or place high in the Heavy Half, my goal was to finish.

For a few days I thought The Heavy Half was the easiest race in the Leadville Race Series, it turns out with the Leadville 10k included in the series, the Heavy Half is probably the second easiest race. It’s hard to explain Leadville to those who aren’t familiar with it. I guess, one way to think of it is that everything in Leadville is hard - even driving there can be hard if you don’t hydrate right. The Heavy Half isn’t the hardest race you can do, but it’s still pretty silly. Running up a mountain from Harrison Avenue? 7 miles straight uphill, the last miles of which are covered in snow?

The Heavy Half doesn’t qualify as a half marathon because it’s too long. It might have been the hardest half marathon in the United States, but it can’t be, technically, because it’s 15 miles instead of 13.1. It’s aptly named, in this case. The Heavy Half is the heaping serving of a half marathon, it’s the cup that overfloweth, a weird outlier race that happens concurrently with a distinguished marathon. That said, there’s very little that is ‘half’ about it - I would say it’s entirely heavy.

As for what’s along those almost-16 miles, most people probably aren’t thinking about the closeup scenery of the mining relics, however the close scenery was all we had in 2023’s race, which was wrapped in sheets of falling snow.

I frankly loved this. Being a person who has painted a mining structure from part of the race, I couldn’t get enough of the old mining shanties and buildings along this race.

Even outside of the Heavy Half, whenever I see these structures, I think to myself “What on earth were people doing here?” and I start to get an understanding of the determination and obsession that was mining. I imagine scores of miners traveling up to 12000 feet almost daily to search through the earth for ores, run machines made of wood and rope, and pump water along refining sluices. All of us in the future are enjoying life with metals that were probably still in the ground 200 years ago. I’m writing this blog to you via my computer, basically electrified rocks, and I drove to this race in a car that almost certainly made use of molybdenum, the key mineral at Climax mine in Leadville.

As for how I felt during the race, I felt good most the time, and I was in good spirits. It was certainly hard, but I knew I could finish it.

I ended up getting 556th out of about 770 people. The above is my strava map, but I must have derfed something up about it, because my official finishing time was 4:44 and the mileage should have only been 15.7. Maybe I went out of service briefly and that was it. Who knows though, maybe a short walk back and forth around an aid station, or stopping to take photos of mining relics added some extra mileage, and maybe I accidentally paused Strava somehow, or it lost signal and the other 30 minutes of my race. Either way I am happy with my 4:44 time, it’s so easy to remember!

In a word, that was huh-huh-huh-HEAVY

Harperrose Studios Expansion!

I was happy to travel to Leadville lately to see the newly-expanded Harperrose Studios! Harperrose now has more than twice as much space as before to showcase local Leadville and Colorado artists!

It’s wild for me to remember that Harperrose’s building space used to be the old video rental place in town. The transformation of this little corner of Leadville has completely floored me. This space is such a good thing for Leadville, and such a wonderful way to honor artists.

Mineshaft postcards are pictured above, featuring six of my mineshaft oil paintings. The mineshaft in the paintings can be seen from the Mineral Belt Trail in Leadville.

Below is a large oil painting of mine of Mt. Elbert.

The painting above is of a fairy-slipper orchid, a rare flower that can be found near Leadville in rare instances. One hint I will say is that I have seen them near Turquoise Lake. From what I’ve seen, they grow in shady areas with mixed amounts of moisture and dryness.

Several of my original paintings are at Harperrose studios, as well as prints, mini-prints, paper art, and bookmarks!

All in all, the grand-reopening was a wonderful event and a fantastic way to celebrate the expansion! Congrats Harperrose!

Sketchbook Confessional April 2023

Welcome to April 2023’s Sketchbook Confessional - the Sketchbook Confessional is a blog where I review all of the art that I made in a month. Rather than a ‘to-do’ list, the Sketchbook Confessional is a ‘done’ list, where I can objectively see what I made without forgetting or getting too grandiose about it.

In April I started something a bit new - painting in oil on glass. I found some small palm-sized glass samples and thought they would be wonderful to paint on.

Luckily I was right. Funnily enough, some blogs on the internet would have one think that painting oil on glass is a doomed mistake. It worked just fine in my case with these glass samples. I decided with some of the glass samples to make paintings of old mining structures around Leadville.

It always awes me when I am running or skiing up high in Leadville and I happen across some kind of old mining relic. It reminds me how crazed yet methodical people were about mining the earth. First of all, they were at anywhere from 10,000 to 13,000 feet, in the 1800s, digging and exploding and sluicing the earth around. I imagine how hard it is to walk around at 12000 feet and then imagine swinging a sledgehammer or moving rocks around. It’s not exactly the mining scene in Zoolander that plays in my head but, almost? haha.

Anyways, I think all of the wonderful nature aspects of Leadville get a lot of credit and I’ve personally done a lot to credit those wonderful aspects with the mountains in my paintings. Mt. Elbert, waterfalls, animal life, and Leadville flowers are usually my subjects so I figured, why not talk about mining history in my art? It’s not as glamorous a subject and the pollution in Leadville is seen as one of the negative parts of it, but I think it’s better to talk about the whole picture than to pretend the mining aspects of the town and pollution do not exist. After all the entire town probably would not be there without mining - nobody opens an opera house at 10,000 feet for no reason for no customers.

I made around 12 mines total.

I made a few paintings in my Space Cowboy series. Eventually I want to do a bigger one, for now I made a small 4 x 4 inch painting and 3 x 5 inch painting.

I also made it out several times in April for plein air painting, as it’s finally getting a bit nicer out, and there’s this thing called #Pleinairpril that I was able to get excited about.

I’ve been trying out a new rig with a lighter easel and also using a cigar box as a palette. The cigar box works well because it contains the paint and it doesn’t slide around.

It was truly fun and challenging to get out a few times with my baby as well. Plein air with a baby, for me, involves double the planning and gear. It’s really fun and luckily we don’t have to walk too far to find something cool to paint in Boulder.

In April I also tried out using photos of myself as starters for the AI app Prequel. I saw Prequel in an ad and thought it looked interesting, so, I gave it a try.

I gave the ai a few photos of me and used what is called the “Watercolor” AI on the app. I thought this was fascinating as an exercise. I learned a lot about how this particular AI and AI style handles faces or what it thinks is pretty - it definitely grabs highlights on my face and makes them brighter, and makes my eyebrows thicker, darker, and more rounded. Which I don’t think is a bad look, only different. I think the AI’s faces can lean towards looking a bit uncanny or ‘overdone’ in some instances, but not all.

What these remind me of are covers of photoshop and illustrator magazines from about 2009 - present, many of them feature realistic face-bust portraits with, reductively, lines and flowers coming out of people’s heads. Which I don’t think is a bad look. I can’t help but think the AI has trained on covers or illustrations like this. I had a lot of fun with this and it’s something I can do while I’m rocking my baby and I have only one hand free or even 0 hands free at times. It’s more fun - way more fun - than scrolling news sites.

More on my foray into ai swimsuit photos here.

For fun, I made a book of the swimsuit photos and AI photos side by side.

At the end of April, I worked on a bit of paper art involving dragons! It’s been very fun to do this:

Playing:

I took a bit of a break from Gene Wolfe books this month and instead, in my late night hours after my baby goes to sleep, I play Octopath Traveler on Switch. Even before I saw that a sequel was coming out, I was playing it, and then I saw that the sequel was coming out and I figured I should finish and enjoy the first one if I ever got the second one. I also have that thing happening with Gene Wolfe that happened when I played Breath of the Wild - I don’t want it to end, so I stop powering through everything, afraid the thing I love will be over somehow. Of course this is silly and I could just re-read or replay, but that’s how I am, I guess. I leave things that I really love somewhat unfinished.

Octopath and Gene Wolfe are aligned for me because I started both in 2019, put them both down for a long time, then finally got going again. I guess it was hard for me to focus on things like this in 2020 and 2021.

As far as Octopath, I really love this game, it’s pretty to look at and the concept art is cool. I started playing it as Primrose, the dancer, and I empathize with this character quite a bit. I personally think the Allure ability is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a game, and it’s more than funny because the power of seduction is such a real one. Mostly what each character says after Primrose Allures them is the funny part to me.

I thought the final boss for Primrose was truly scary, along with the finals for H’aanit and Ophelia. I won’t spoil it even though the game is like four years old at this time, haha. I ended up playing most of the game with the four women characters as a party. I like them the most, though I also think the scholar character is really funny and pure.

I also love the merchant, Tressa. Everything she says brings me joy, especially when I charge her up to her ultimate and she says “Welcome Back” and when she finishes a battle “Time to close up shop!” idk why this is so funny and perfect to me but it is. I think Tressa’s story was the first one I finished in the game. The part with the travel journal was so pure to me. There’s a lot of purity in her storyline which is a bit hard to find in stories about money and trade.

My other, unposted silly photos of the game don’t do it much justice. Since I played the original Game Boy growing up and I still remember gray and yellow screens, everything on the Switch looks like some kind of holy relic to me, light and color pouring out of it. Every moment in Octopath is so pretty it’s hard for me to get over. I could really go on and on about this game. I finished the main story and hope to play the sequel soon.

Running:

In April I got a few big run expeditions in. The biggest run I got in was 9 miles, and I started stroller running quite a bit more too. It was exciting to do as we move towards summer. I’m still training for the Leadville Heavy Half but the runs are fun to go on regardless of any goal. It’s fun to see everything around Colorado greening up a bit for spring.

Sketchbook Confessional: March 2023

The Sketchbook Confessional is a blog where I look at the past month and all the art and creative things I did in that month. Like a backwards to-do list, the Sketchbook Confessional is a ‘done’ list.


Painting:

In March I continued my Mountain Paintings series. I paint these on plexiglass that is either clear or already a color. It’s been fun to do and see what happens with the various color backgrounds.

I had a lot of fun making these.

I’ve started a new painting series that I call Space Cowboy, featuring cowboys and deserts, night skies with stars, galaxies, ect. I’ve really liked this idea and I’m going to expand on it. Below is a small 8 x 10 study of what I want the idea to look like on larger canvases or panels, which I think turned out well.

In March I also moved back into some realism or sketching in oil with turpenoid and have really enjoyed it.

Now that I am painting in oil after having my baby, I am moving back into realism. I will be focusing on figures and maybe, landscapes, in April. It’s been an exciting way to work again.

I’m not sure why but sometimes I forget how much I’ve trained in realism and also how happy it makes me to paint this way. Maybe writing this will help.

Lately I moved my studio to a new part of my place so it’s more light. It’s been really nice.

As far as things outside of the studio, I did get out to paint a bit en plein air at the end of March. It’s been a very snowy winter, and cold, so it was very cool to get out on a nice day. I painted in oil en plein air for, I think, the first time in a couple years, as most of the plein air paintings I made in 2021 were gouache.

On the digital drawing/design side of things in March, my friend’s cat, Bitty, is running for Pet Mayor of Louisville so I made some button designs for Bitty’s campaign. It was really fun to do this.

Travel:

In March I went to DC for a bit, I saw a friend’s art show, went to the National Gallery, and I caught a bit of blossoming season. I can’t believe my incredible luck with this. I don’t mind being one of those silly, over-the-top tourists who gets really close to the trees and takes dozens of photos. Some sights in life never get old to me, and those include tree blossoms, mountains, and water.

I also stopped by my hometown of Leadville to see a tiny bit of skijoring! It’s always fun to see this whenever I get a chance. Few things are more “Leadville”

Reading:

On the plane back from DC to Denver, I finished reading The Urth of the New Sun. This book brought Book of the New Sun home for me, as I’m sure it does for most people. I won’t say much more but I loved it. I bought The Fifth Head of Cerberus and The Litany of the Long Sun to read next.

Running:

I had some decent running in March! I’m still getting ready for the Leadville Heavy Half this summer. I knocked out an 11 mile run in Boulder that spanned from Wonderland Lake to Chautauqua and back again. I’ve always wanted to do this, and, it’s very possible. I’m not sure why it took me so long to finally do it, but there you go. Every time I run up Chautauqua there’s a lot of elevation gain to be had. It’s also pretty hard, I think at least, to run from Boulder Creek up to Chautauqua and then keep running around Chautauqua.

Leadville Tiny Waterfalls

When the snow melts in the summer in Leadville there are many small waterfalls to be seen. They’re very beautiful. I have a few photos of these here.

What I love most about these waterfalls is how much they change the terrain they fall on - the high rockies are usually dry and brutal, but all kinds of life - flowers, mosses - can grow around these snowmelt falls.

It seems like another world. These waterfalls are probably at about 11,000 feet, maybe even 11, 500 or so.

Boom Days Rocks

In Leadville you can still see some rocks or large boulders that I painted in high school for the Boom Days Drilling competition. This one is my favorite, it was a bright sky blue and now is a powder blue.

Mt. Elbert

My latest medium-sized Mt. Elbert painting is done! Here it is:

This was my first larger oil painting I’ve done in about 18 months, since I’ve been avoiding oil paint while pregnant and in my months of breastfeeding.

My insane routine as an average high school athlete in Leadville

I was never the best athlete in school, but, I did do my best.

I was consistently the third or fourth runner on my team, I’d finish something like 25th or 30th overall, and the third in my group of peers who also went to school in Leadville. I was always very average, but I was very happy as a runner and skiier in high school.

For some reason, I had an absolutely insane routine which involved exercising three times a day, with weightlifting in the morning, xc skiing or xc running in the afternoon, and squeezing in some biking at night.

Here is my routine from when I was 16 and 17.

5:30 am - wake up and drive to the gym

6:00 - 7:00 - lift weights

7:00 - 8:00 - jazz band

8:00-3:30 - school

3:30 - 5:15 - xc running or xc skiing

5:30 - drive home + shower + dinner

6:00-7:00 - stationary bike while reading

7:00-9:00 - free time, art, videogames, college prep

9:00 - sleep

Looking back at this routine, it looks absolutely bananas. As a 36 year old, I ask myself… why? Why on earth did I do all of this?

The answer to the ‘why’ question is simpler than it sounds. It would be possible, in a moment like this, to be self-aggrandizing and to take credit for being a total unique person who did all of this completely on her own.

That would be false. The real reason is that I did all of this because I had good influences in my life.

My parents were always doing outdoor activities like skiing and hiking, and the friends I had in high school were also very athletic. Remember when I said I wasn’t the best, and I saw myself as average? It’s because even though Leadville was and still is small, there were still many others who were better than me at everything. That’s why I put in the time. It wasn’t because I wanted to be the best. I knew my friends would always beat me and be faster. I put in the time because I wanted to be the best possible me.

For me, there’s something relaxing about doing my very best. If I do my best, I never feel like I want to go back in time or do something differently. I rest well at night knowing my time was spent perfectly.

This is also why I still pursue art and make art - I think it’s something that I can always do better at. There’s always something interesting to find out, a new discovery, a new place to excel. I may not be the best at it, but I can be better than I was last year. In art, I can be the best possible me. Art and running are interconnected because everyone is running a bit of a different race. There’s no ball or time outs, there’s only a course, and all of us.

What seems to be the same about my life as a teenager and an adult is my habit of using every scrap of time for something. Every moment continues to matter to me. I don’t wake up to lift weights anymore, but I do wake up and lift my baby and carry him all around my place! If I ever have a routine that is more intense than my high school routine, I’ll keep you posted.

Until next time, see you, Space Cowboy…

Leadville Sunset on iPhone 14 Pro

Lately I had a chance to take photos of a sunset over Leadville with the iPhone 14 pro! It’s a very fun camera to have on hand.

Sketchbook Confessional February 2021

In February I continued a series of oil paintings of Mt. Elbert near Leadville and also lupine flowers. I will keep painting these as time goes on.

I also tried something new this month and I wasn’t sure if it would work. In the first week of February, I painted a D&D mini of a dragon using the oil paints that I usually keep in my studio.

A couple of quick google searches revealed that yes, oil paint would be all right for these minis. Turns out oil paint is almost preferred, as long as it is thin.

Overall, painting the dragon mini was really fun and relaxing. It felt a lot like coloring in a coloring book. All of the hard parts of the artwork are already solved if you paint on a pre-built mini.

I couldn’t help but thinking that the dragon kind of looked like it was very happy and smiling, so I made a few instagram stories where the dragon was singing.

I ended up liking this so much that I bought another dragon to paint.

I sort of bought the dragon on a whim. I went into a game shop in Boulder and was so bummed about how empty everything seemed. The game shop, which would normally be full of people playing Magic and tabletop stuff was just empty and dark. I had to buy … something … so the dragon was what I picked out.

In other Dnd and ABBA related art realms, I drew a picture of myself, my Elder Scrolls Online character Averle, and my DnD character Arlina having gal time together with Geddy the Poodle.

I had an active and busy mid-February so it was fun to unwind with this silly just-for-fun drawing.

In a way, I do spend a lot of time with Averle and Arlina. I realize that this is sort of like looking at a grown adult who has imaginary friends, yet they are also extensions of myself. It’s fun to play Arlina because she can change into any kind of character, however, for my next Dnd character, I want to try to vastly branch out and play a character who is much different from me IRL, maybe an orc or tiefling one of the new 5e nonhuman characters.

Reading Watching Playing:

I’ve been very into Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. I started reading this book in April of 2020, and it gets more and more interesting with every page.

There are so many moments in this book that would be fun and challenging to draw. I’ve made a list of things I want to draw from the book

Severian and the Star Men

Severian and the Avern

Severian and Dorcas in The Green Room

I mapped out Severian and the Star Men below, haven’t gotten much further and I sort of want to model this one out or pose to get it right.

Fitness

In February I got some nice training in at Leadville, CO with trainer Alex Willis. I did a couple miles running around Harrison Avenue in Leadville, and a few miles of skiing at Mt. Massive Golf Course. Getting up to Leadville from Boulder always seems to take a lot of energy from me. Even though I was born in Leadville and grew up there, it is still difficult to go from 5000 feet to 10000 feet and exercise a lot. This might go to show you that elevation is an incredible challenge no matter who you are.

I was able to knock out a couple big runs in February, like a 9 mile and a 10 mile. I hit my best efforts on a 10 mile and 15k. The scariest thing about the 10 mile run is that it goes … relatively fast. Mentally, it doesn’t seem like a drag at all, I sort of go into a mental state where I am not experiencing any stress while running, I seem to be somewhere else. Here are some results from Strava:

I also became “The Legend of Wonderland Lake” on Strava, which sounds pretty badass, haha!

It’s nice to have all of these stats and times in Strava and to have had them for a while. I can look back at my times from running in DC/MD/VA and compare notes. In the DMV I was running 12-14 min miles almost every mile. In Colorado, it looks like I am a lot faster in Colorado, about two minutes per mile faster on average, with 11:30 min miles being around my average. Given that Boulder is a lot higher in elevation than DC, that’s pretty good.

I don’t see myself as very fast, but I am able to endure and persist through just about anything. At the end of 10 miles, I feel like I could go 10 more.

In other fitness news, things are going well with sobriety. It is a lot easier to hit my goals with running and fitness by having alcohol just be automatically out of the picture. I’m still very hooked on caffiene - this might be something I work on kicking next, but at this time I don’t see any health benefit to doing so on the same level as kicking alcohol, so I’ll probably be sipping coffee for a while.


Thanks for reading!! xoxo


Who wrote this:

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

- Becky Jewell

Sketchbook Confessional January 2021

I started writing these blogs, Sketchbook Confessionals, in the fall of 2019, as a way to take inventory of all the art that I made, books I read, and fitness things that I did in the past month. Writing these blogs has helped me remember what I do each month, a kind of ‘done’ list rather than a ‘to do’ list.

I made several paintings of Mt. Elbert near Leadville in January 2021:

While painting Mt. Elbert and lupine flowers, I made a couple sheer abstract paintings using the paint left over. It is very fun to just cut loose and let the paint flow freely on these kinds of pieces. I call these Leftover Paintings, and I’ve been making them off and on since 2015:

Sometimes, in my opinion, the leftovers are even better than the mountain paintings.

In January I made a ton of Rainbow Cats too. I’d estimate I made about 95 of them.

The Rainbow Cats are fun for me to make because they are all different, all handmade, yet they are simple enough to get repetitive, zen, and very satisfying. A Rainbow Cat is kind of a relaxing art that I make. I draw the stripes for the Rainbow Cats while watching Twitch in the background. I can’t do this with oil painting - if I try to paint and have something on like a video, it doesn’t work very well.

Another art form that I worked on in January was video art, as I got my art projector to work again. I am not sure what I will do with it yet, but I made a couple videos for Instagram where I projected an animated gouache painting onto myself. The process for these is:

1. Make abstract painting using gouache

2. Animate the painting in an app like Pixaloop, using simplistic paths

3. Save the file, load it into the projector, project the animation onto a wall

4. Stand against the wall

There has to be more I can do with this but I am not sure what, or how to make it into more meaningful art.

Reading/Watching/Playing:

A sword, drawn by our party DM, the “Sword of Songs” utilized by Arlina, the Changeling Bard

The funnest thing I am playing continues to be a D&D game I am playing with several other artists and designers, where I play a Changeling Bard named Arlina. I think we are up to almost 20 sessions now, all happening over zoom/videocall. Playing D&D is something I look forward to, specifically because of its improvisational nature. It turns out that I really like the feeling of being on my toes, unexpected monsters, funny changeling hijinks, and our DM is doing a great job.

I realized how important D&D was to me when I went too hard on a big 10 mile run in the summer in DC, got dehydrated and too sick, and couldn’t make a session that night because I was struggling to keep down water and ibuprofen. I was so sad I couldn’t make the session, which I had been looking forward to all week, and pretty much had to say “please go on without me comrades.” At that moment I realized, wow, I really, really like D&D a lot. Now I plan my runs more carefully, haha!

My drawing of Arlina, the Changeling Bard

It’s fun to play Arlina, she has become like Averle, my character in Elder Scrolls Online - an extension of myself who has stayed with me for some time. Changeling hijinks, like changing into an Orc but not knowing Orcish, changing into an antagonist yet not knowing exactly how he would act, and changing into an NPC who had passed away - all of these are moments that were interesting to play as a Changeling.

Even though Arlina is like me, in her base form, it is fun to be her because she can kind of be anything. Since she is a Changeling, similar to Mystique in the X Men, she can be a big dumb orc if she wants, or a shadowy thief.

It’s wild to remember that our D&D experience is different for each person in the party. Whatever we are all imagining in our heads is completely different from the next person. If we happen across an ice cave, the ice cave is totally different for me versus the person in the zoom window next to me, and the person next to them. In this way, D&D is a lot more like five people reading a book, than five people watching a movie or playing a video game. This is why it is so special, I think.

This month, I also started playing Octopath Traveler again. This might be one of those games that I just keep playing throughout life. Witcher 3, Final Fantasy games, Ocarina of Time, all of those are like that for me.

When I think about how I first started playing Witcher 3 in my Austin apartment, and later moved to Houston, Maryland, DC, and back to Colorado, I remember what a longevic, eternal game it is. I remember Witcher 3 specifically because I got CARDED to purchase it at Target in 2015, which was quite flattering and also very funny and entertaining to me. Some games just hold up forever. Octopath and Witcher 3 are like that for me.

I wish I had read more books in January, however, I was very tuned into the news. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this, there were a lot of important moments in January for the United States.

Fitness:

This January, I hit a couple big runs, including an 8 mile run at the very end of January on the 30th. When I am feeling my best and running well, the miles pass very quickly, as they did on this particular 8 mile run.

I’m getting better overall fitness too. Aside from not drinking alochol, I don’t watch my diet too closely, though I do try to eat well enough overall. I will eat lots of bagels, lots of mexican food and thai food.

More oblique ab definition in January! Not sure why, must be all the running + strength + dancing?

For some reason, this month, I started getting more definition in my oblique abdominal area. I don’t think I deserved this at all, because I haven’t been doing planks like I used to. I think it all must be coming from running big miles, and the strength routine I am doing as part of my training. Sometimes I also dance in my studio since I miss doing Zumba.

Completing long runs on the weekend to the order of 6-8 miles reminds me of when I was in Tokyo, and I would walk 5-10 miles each day to see all the art that I could. I was so tired each day and so hungry from all the walking, I would struggle to find enough food to stay energized. Since portion sizes in Japan were so small, I would order things like three croissants from Starbucks and buy several sodas from vending machines. Walking and running really do take a lot of energy from me, and, I suspect, from most people. Whenever anyone asks me for fitness advice, I will always say ‘run'! and if you can’t run, walk! And once you feel pretty good about that, do some planks. My advice will always be pretty simple like this.

Jan 1 marked 7 months of no-alcohol for me as well. It may sound strange but I don’t even think about alcohol at all, I don’t seem to have cravings. It might be that my exercise routines have replaced alcohol completely, and that staying at home for COVID, ie, not going out to bars, ect, has made it even easier to forget about alcohol.

To sum up: In January 2021, I did a ton of work in painting and video art. I completed a total of 10 paintings. I played a lot of D&D and ran something like 75 miles total with a couple large runs mixed in. I hope to continue this trend in February.

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 August 2019

Welcome to another Sketchbook Confessional where I go through everything I did in a month!

Background on Sketchbook Confessionals:

I found that I wasn’t keeping track of how much art I did and that while I had a to-do list, I wasn’t keeping a good ‘done’ list. The Sketchbook Confessional is a chance for me to get it all out and just post everything I did in a month, a time-bound way of reeling in the chaos of art.

Art:

August brought many ups and downs for me in the studio and day-by-day, I made some art, but not a whole lot. I’m still working on relaunching Tilted Sun soon. For most of August I would get home from work and be nearly exhausted, too tired and too hot to do anything but eat Fruity Pebbles and hang out with Geddy. I mostly felt like the girl in the illustration above - knives everywhere, fun crystals everywhere, but at least I still have my pool of dreams.

To just get my art off the ground I made this work of a man with a lotus on his face:

In working on Tilted Sun I am thinking mostly in covers and symbols - which isn’t a bad place to be, it just makes the surface a bit hard to reach if you’re at the bottom of an iceberg. I wish there were more conversational parts of the comic where characters talk to each other and the plot advances, but right now I think it’s like 68 pages of world building, so, my plan is to change that with the upcoming set of pages. Holy smokes. If you ever feel like criticizing a comic try making one for yourself first.

I also worked on identifying more places where I was weak as an artist. Namely, shirt collars. Shirt collars are very confusing to me and I am not very good at drawing them.

Like saying the same word over and over again, the more you repetitively draw something, the weirder it ends up looking.

But, I did learn a lot about collars, and, most of all I learned that it is good to look at references to draw these.

In August I worked on pouring ink patterns - these are not ‘art’ on their own, so what I typically do is cut each sheet into multiple pieces and re-collage them. The ink patterns are like origami paper - they are a material, but they are not yet in their final form.

While pouring out ink, the excess needs to be dabbed with tissue or it will flow off the sheet. This ends up creating very beautiful patterns on paper towels and toilet paper.

I’m not sure what to do with these by-products yet, but my instinct is to save them.

Travel:

In early August I went to my hometown Leadville to get away from the DC heat and relax a bit. On a shakier-than-one-would-like flight, I drew these lotuses which I had seen near the Anacostia river at the Lotus festival, using a pen from Sekaido in Tokyo

The Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike race happened to be happening during the same weekend I was in Leadville. It was super to see so many old friends in Leadville, including immense triathlete Alex, Leadville Laurel, and my old cross country ski coach, Mr. Quinn.

Many people have probably heard of the record snow this year in places like Colorado and Lake Tahoe. All of this snow allowed flowers to bloom in August, in amounts I had never before seen. Here are photos I took of the mountain flowers:

It will be good to go into the winter with these photos as a reminder of summer, and I can paint the flowers from my studio in Maryland.

Reading and Playing:

As an unabashed nonfiction junkie, I read the following books:

Finding Ultra - A great book by Rich Roll, where he harnesses his extreme personality and transcends alcoholism to become one of the fittest athletes and ultramarathoners in the world.

Art Thinking - my boss lent me this book and it is the most meaningful book I’ve read about art in years. The book’s thesis is that art as a practice can be integrated into working life, not separated, an absolutely dazzling argument compared to the traditional narrative of dayjob/artjob splitting. It’s not just that art and life can be integrated, but when it’s integrated, all of humanity benefits. Read this book if you are an artist who is also a lawyer/doctor/software executive/worker.

Unfuck Yourself - An instant classic. I loved the positive affirmations. If you read the entire book in a Scottish accent, it’s even better.

And after carrying the book halfway around the world to Japan and back, I finally finished reading Cryptonomicon - It took me about as long to read this book as Neal Stephenson took to write a new one. 1000 pages of code making, code breaking, treasure hunting.

I played a bunch of Octopath Traveler after my friend Jesse lent me a Nintendo Switch.

I also played Breath of the Wild, which reminded me a lot of exploring the mountains in Leadville and hiking around Colorado. I haven’t finished either game but just getting to play them for a small amount of time was inspiring from a production perspective - the details and artistry in each game gave me some hope for the world.

Related blogs:

Sekaido art store in Tokyo

Leadville Summer 2019 Photos

Making of Tilted Sun

July 2019 Sketchbook Confessional

Who wrote this:

I am an artist who lives and works in Maryland-shy-of-DC! I make comics, oil paintings, and I travel! See you next time …

-Becky Jewell

Leadville Summer 2019 Photos

In 2019 the mountains and western states saw record amounts of snow, where cabins in Tahoe were buried to the chimney and locals in Leadville were shoveling 4 feet of snow off of their roofs. Watching the snowfall from afar at my home in Maryland, it seemed like everyone in Leadville was shoveling their roof for about 6 weeks.

And the snow just kept coming. An avalanche near Copper Mountain slid down a mountainside and 100 year-old trees sank into the flow like capsizing ships. The avalanche was so powerful that it went down the mountain, into a valley, across a river, and up the side of the other mountain on the other side of the valley. Trying to escape this avalanche must have felt like being chased by a bear and climbing a tree, only to find that the bear is a much better tree-climber than you.

The roof of the bowling alley in Leadville collapsed - not the only roof-collapse in recent years in Leadville, but a pretty major one, where the alley probably won’t be repaired and will likely be taken piece-by-piece to the landfill.

Despite growing up in Leadville, winter is not my happiest time, especially not now that I live in Maryland near Washington DC. Winter isn’t full of fun fluffy snow here - basically it snows, and then it rains on top of the snow. But at least I wasn’t having to create a pulley system to get a snowblower onto my roof - I’d start to feel sorry for myself while standing on an uncovered DC Metro platform in heels in February’s nastiest sleet, and then I’d open Instagram and scroll past a photo of someone’s truck in Leadville, irretrievably immersed in four feet of snow.

If it had been my truck, I wouldn’t have known where to begin. Pray that I’d brought the snow blower into the house, so that I could start right out the door? Would the doors even open?

With all of this record-breaking, tree-slaying, roof-caving snow, stunning flowers emerged in the high mountains this summer at around 12,000 feet. Instead of hiking for miles and looking for the right creek to possibly glimpse an occasional columbine group, columbine bouquets were everywhere. Everywhere.

Each photo in this blog was taken on a Google Pixel 2 camera, a machine which seems to be able to see far better than I, with each dewy filament of this thistle standing out as clearly as in life.

Outfitted with the Google Pixel 2 camera, for the first time I feel like I am doing some justice to the beauty of the high mountains in photo form.

Since Leadville has become a more well-known place over the years thanks to the amplification of the Leadville Race Series, I’ve done what I would call a C-minus job of explaining how beautiful Leadville is to my friends in Texas and Washington D.C.

You can talk and write about mountain life all day, but ultimately nothing I say ever feels on point about Leadville - nothing really sums it up. At a certain point, words just don’t work. Only the best writers among us ever come close.

Maybe photos come close, maybe paintings do.

The flower peak is usually around July, this year it stretched into August. With temperatures dropping in September, these flowers won’t last too long, but who knows - the fall should at least bring gorgeous colors and possibly some snow, too.

Leadville was a Superfund site for a while in the 90s, and the remnants of mining and exploitation of the land can still be seen everywhere. You can also see why people kept digging - look in any of the mining tailings piles and the diversity of rock that is there is unlike any I’ve ever seen.

Some of the wrecked mines of Leadville are still explainable, where remarkable success happened and wealth boomed out of the earth. Still others are like ghosts, where there is no explanatory plaque, no historical marker, no mention of anything in books. What were people doing here? What was all this? Considering that the above would be buried in wintertime under 12 feet of snow, the desperation and hunger of it all just oozes out of these structures.

Someone was here and they wanted something, badly.

I was trying to understand what this once was - it's at about 12,000 feet at the Mt. Sherman trailhead near Leadville pic.twitter.com/2ND6DhrsuO

— Becky Jewell (@beckyjewell) August 25, 2019

But even before major cleanup of the mines, life was finding a way - like these flowers and many more.

Related Blogs:

Painting Mt. Elbert

Plein Air Painting in Leadville

Plein Air in Washington DC

Who wrote this:

I’m a visual artist who lives in Maryland - I blog about art, I make art, I make comics, and I travel! I also like poodles, mountainbiking, and technology (most of the time). More about me here. Until next time, catch you around the internet.

- Becky Jewell

Art Journal May 20 2018

Lately I've been looking at a few big changes in life, mostly adjusting to life on the East Coast! 

This weekend I worked on a couple small watercolor pencil drawings made on the paper from France (Paris art store blog here!) Although my trip to Paris was in November, it took me a while to think about what I wanted to put on these delicately handmade pieces of paper. Perhaps I shouldn't say 'delicately handmade' - they're really strong and sturdy pieces of paper, yet you can feel the care and time that went into creating them. 

Indian Paintbrush

For these small watercolor pencil drawings I am still using the Caran d'Ache Supracolor pencils, wonderful pencils in every way. The variation of colors in the 80 pencil set prove to be a dynamic and sophisticated range.

I couldn't decide on many of these pieces to add water to them or not. The seemed to look fulfilled with no water added, so I let them be for the most part. 

A couple happy hummingbirds 

On the other side of the studio, I've been working through a list of Things I Want to Paint, a list of photos that I have assembled on Facebook of memories, things, and people that I want to paint. 

I decided to keep a running list of Things I Want to Paint after one day where I was stuck in front of my easel without a thought in my head of what I wanted to do. There is little worse than scraping along and finally getting time to paint and then suddenly... not knowing what you want to paint! 

"Things I want to Paint" is a public gallery on Facebook, so even if you are not my Facebook Friend, you can still hop over and take a look! (I am extremely friendly I just don't have time for Facebook too much anymore...) 

Below are a couple results of "Things I Want to Paint" 

A photo of my friend's vacation to Tahiti, including a shark swim, and the painting: 

A photo of my mom relaxing with Geddy the Poodle, and the painting: 

These paintings are fairly in keeping with my style and outlook, I like to paint with bright colors only, I usually stay away from using brown or gray. 

This month has also been a good month for digital art. I am still loving every moment of Clip Studio Paint on the iPad Pro. I'm finished with the very generous free trial and am grateful for every feature, every penny is worth it. If I meet the developers of this app I will hug them. 

One aspect of Clip Studio Paint on the iPad Pro that stands out and that probably doesn't get enough laudation is the basic pencil tool. The pens are great. The watercolor effects are bangin. But the regular old pencil tool really... just drives it home. It seems so simple, but it's so very powerful. Most importantly, it feels natural. 

I made a couple drawings in Clip Studio Paint using a light lavender pencil on a black background. It's a lovely etching, scratch-paper like effect. Here is a portrait of my grandfather's cat, Flash, who has an interesting pattern on his back which resembles a broken heart: 

I'm also working on this larger digital piece of two lovers surrounded by foliage - I was thinking about leaves from all of the places I have lived in the past 5 years, and incorporated leaves from Maryland, magnolia leaves from Houston, aspen leaves from Colorado, and forget-me-not shaped flowers from Leadville. I'll probably work on this one a bit more .... 

I haven't made as many romantic paintings or drawings this year, not sure what it means, I both struggle and resist in putting words to most of my best art - this is probably why. 

Lastly it's been a great couple weeks of Tilted Sun being released and out in the open. The comic launched on May 1 and releases a new page every Tuesday and Thursday. It's also featured on the top level navigation of this website. For some reason I always leave Tilted Sun for last, I'll have to not do that next time! 

Tilted Sun is free to read online! Tether Orbs, cyber horses, electric guards, spy birds, and all kinds of cool things await you in the world of Tilted Sun! 

Until next time ... excelsior! 

December 2017 Studio Update

Before moving to Maryland I made a couple final paintings in Houston, including this piece of a Fairy Slipper Orchid: 

I will miss painting in Houston and I will miss the weird ideas that swooped down upon me while stuck in traffic. 

These pieces will be available at http://www.harper-rose.com/ in Leadville, Colorado. 

Right before moving I had the chance to visit Paris, France, and see some of the greatest paintings of art history. I was interested to capture the self-portraits of painters and paintings of painters.

"What do you mean, the painting has to be done by tomorrow?"

There were moments in the Louvre that surprised me, such as my own awe at sculpture. 

After the Louvre I tried a quick drawing of the sculpture with the photo as reference. The statue had too many admirers in the museum itself - I would have never been able to get close enough and have enough time to make a drawing there! 

While in Paris I was also able to pick up some water color pencils (more on those soon!) and very special paper.

This paper turned out to be so special that when I searched for it online, the website seemed to be defunct. 

The art store in Paris that I visited was this one: http://www.magasinsennelier.net/ I was amazed by their selection of handmade papers, along with many other fine art materials such as pigment, pastel crayons, and easels.  

That is December on the studio side! Catch you guys soon.