Sketchbook Confessional September 2023

In September I was able to go to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico - I’d never been before! It was a friendly and fascinating place to go. During the same trip I went to Santa Fe, which I’d been to before and seems to have not changed much - still incredibly charming. I suppose cities that are hundreds of years old are like that.

On the way to Ghost Ranch I definitely recognized the mountain that Georgia O’Keefe painted often. It felt a lot like my trip to Paris, where I would turn a corner and recognize paintings that I’d seen for years, but never in person.

September’s first friday in Nobo was a hit! It was very toasty but I did end up surviving! It was great to meet everyone at this First Friday.

I finished several dragon bookmarks in September. All of these were fun to make.

I also finished a few oil paintings of Mt. Elbert in September.

I had a goal to make three large-ish Mt. Elbert Paintings between July and October 1 and I ended up getting them done all at the end of the personal deadline I had set up for myself.

Some small-ish paintings I made - each is about 5 x 5 inches:

Most of these are Mt. Elbert but one is kind of a mystery.

Reading:

In September I finished reading Calde of the Long Sun. I loved this book, there’s little more to say at this point since I’ve been reading Long Sun all year and I’ve posted about it in a few of my other monthly recap blogs. It’s been a fun series to both read and finish. I like how the world of these books slowly materializes. It’s like a painting that slowly fades into view, becoming sharper with each stroke. It’s going to be a good re-read in that way. Maybe a lot of art is like this, it’s a bit confusing the first time we see it, then if we read 1000 pages about it, it has a different feel. It’s almost like two different works in this way. It’s like the difference between seeing Starry Night at age 12 and Starry Night at age 36.

I’m still reading The Aeneid and The Letters of John Steinbeck. I thought I would finish these sooner but it seems like I fly through books a lot faster on Kindle, and I have both of the above in paper form.

After reading The Aeneid’s depiction of the underworld in Book 5 or 6, Dante’s Inferno makes a lot more sense. There is an order to everything in The Aeneid’s underworld, different people go different places, and not all of it is about punishment, as there is a heaven-ish place as well. I found this pretty interesting.

Running:
I’ve been taking a break from running this summer but with the cooler weather, I think I’m ready to make a comeback! We will see how the fall goes.

Sketchbook Confessional August 2023

In August it was very toasty in Boulder, I ended up staying inside a bit more often than not and making iPad drawings.

For the drawing below I thought about how I’m often shopping with my baby, and it feels like sometimes I am buying a universe of things for him to eat, wear, and play with. In a way, the things will become his universe.

I also did a quick sketch portrait of my baby as well. He grows so much every day. I try to soak in every moment.

For this drawing, at first I was thinking about a head that was an island of some kind, then I turned it into a series of layers of fluid.

This digital piece ended up printing well too!

I thought a bit about illustrating moments from games that I hadn’t seen done before. This one where Celes goes fishing came out of that effort. I wanted to do a strange angle and also make the place look idyllic, even though it’s effectively the end of the world.

She’s a weird character, maybe every character in FF6 is weird. At the beginning of the story, she’s working for the other side. She joins up with the resistance force, then stars in an opera? I guess. Anyways I forgot how sad the fishing moment was, I forgot that after fishing for the old man, Celes gives up all hope. Only after that does she see the bandana, and has hope again. What I think is significant though is that Celes can still fish, while the old man cannot.

In August I had a few hours on a couple days to hike, run, or draw while some family looked after my baby. It was fun. I ended up making a few drawings of things I had seen around Boulder.

With these drawings, I have some extreme limits in play. I have limited time to work on them, and I only use ink mediums for them. This, I think, gives them a kind of energy that can be hard to replicate without the limiting factors at play. I think if I had 8 hours instead of 20 minutes to draw a rabbit, I probably couldn’t make a better one, or one that I was happier with. For these, it continues to be fun to draw with the Kuretake double-sided ink brush pen. The above drawing of a rabbit was made with a Faber-Castell pen though.

Another digital piece I worked on in August is what I am calling the floating village. It was drawn using Clip Studio Paint models.

I had a cold at the end of August, so, both me and Baby Jewell were inside quite a bit. I worked on this piece for something like 5 days. Since I worked on it for so long, I decided to animate it, taking 2 more days to complete about 6 frames of art for a full second of unlooped animation.

The animated island village took me most of a weekend between trips to the store and other errands. I had fun doing this and learned a lot about animation, namely, animating a wheel from a 45 degree angle, and finding other ways to make the animation interesting.

The animation had to be compressed a bit for it to be uploaded to this blog but here is the static image, much crisper.

Also here is a link to a higher-res animation. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cwf_KpdA73-/

To back up a bit, at the beginning of August I was a part of North Boulder’s First Friday, which was very fun. Thanks to everyone who stopped by!

Reading:

Steinbeck’s Letters

In August I dove into Steinbeck’s letters more than any other book. It’s interesting to read about the problems he has, that he expresses to his friends, publishers, lawyers, and his wives/girlfriends. In a way, they’re like Marcus Aurelius’ writings, not in such a philosophical note-to-self way, but in the way that Steinbeck could not have predicted at all that they would someday be printed as a collection, to be read by potentially millions of people. That said, he writes in a way that isn’t embarrassing to himself, he has a noble and direct demeanor privately and publicly. It doesn’t seem like the editors had any trouble finding wonderful letters by Steinbeck because there are hundreds of them, and hundreds of pages to read. By ‘wonderful’ I mean well-written, clear, and very descriptive about what he is up to. On the back of this book, there’s a quote that says this is arguably his best work. I’d have to agree, though I DNF’ed Grapes of Wrath, maybe it’s too sad, and really have only finished the delightful Travels With Charlie, because, poodle solidarity. I guess you could say that what I like most about Steinbeck is his nonfiction, even though so much of his fiction was based on his environments and realities that were very close to him. His life is very interesting to me, even though he wrote about the lives of others in his fiction, I think his life is the most interesting of what I’ve read of his.

The Book of Long Sun - Gene Wolfe

I love this book so much. It’s less brutal than New Sun, so there’s much more to love, in my opinion. There are parts of BOTNS that are quite hard to read, reading BOTNS, every time I thought I was over the worst of it, Severian sees or does something terrible again. But I did like Urth of The New Sun. Anyways the Long Sun series is like New Sun but much happier or lighter. I guess you could say my take is that BOTNS is like Game of Thrones and Long Sun is like Wheel of Time. Long Sun is just a smidge more comfortable, and still a fantastic fantasy … thriller? There’s still danger and adventure, but just a smidge less brutality.

The Aeneid - Virgil - Sarah Ruden Translation

The introduction I liked a lot, and it revealed a few things I never knew about The Aeneid, most of which is that it’s unfinished. Maybe everyone knew that, but I didn’t. The Aeneid now goes into my brain category of unfinished epics, a space also occupied by the Faerie Qveene.

The Aeneid feels like an interesting turn, it’s like a sequel abut the other side. Virgil knows this at several points, and through Aphrodite, he asks Aeneas to not hate the wars of the world, but to hate the gods who make the wars. Virgil and the gods alike know that ultimately the Trojan war leads to the founding of Rome, so none of it can be truly bad, but of course this is not how it looks to Aeneas, who loses most if not all of his friends to war.

When I think about Virgil I can’t help but think about how Virgil is Dante’s guide in the Inferno. It’s really funny in many ways. It would be a bit like me writing a book and saying I wanted Dante to be my guide, but that’s probably not old enough. Virgil lived about 1400 years before Dante, so maybe it would be like wanting King Arthur to be my hellguide. In a weird way the Inferno like any tv show or movie where someone meets their hero from the past, like Abraham Lincoln, or Shakespeare. This too is a bit like who Aeneas was to Virgil, a heroic person from long ago.

Gustav Klimt: The Complete Paintings - Tobias G. Natter

This book had a lot of wonderful writing and background on Klimt in addition to pictures of his paintings. I learned some interesting things about Klimt that I never knew, that he had a brother who was also an artist. He was also loved and sort of hated in his own time, as the writer says, Klimt belonged to modernity and tradition at the same time, and this gave critics enough to be ‘divided’ about. I bought this book for the images but ended up loving the writing. It does take some flipping back and forth to get the full effect or to see which paintings the author is referring to, but worth it.

Running:

In August I decided to take it easy a bit on running still, though I finished two runs on a trip to Leadville, which was no easy task.

Catch you next time -

Sketchbook Confessional July 2023

It’s July 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.

In July I worked on quite a bit of paper art, including making handmade paper for backgrounds for pieces.

I enjoyed making these hummingbird pieces and am happy to say they are all shipped out of my home, either to collectors or to Harperrose in Leadville. I’ll be sure to make more soon.

In July I made a few ink drawings in my Traveler’s Notebook of scenes around Boulder, which have been very nice to look at this summer, with more flowers and taller grass than I have ever seen before.

To make these, I’m still using the Watercolor paper for the Traveler’s Notebook, and a double-sided Kuretake pen. It’s really the only pen I need lately. Usually I don’t get too excited about supplies or gear but this is a pen I will be buying again and again for the future. I think they’re about $5 each if you buy a pack of three of them online.

To make some of the smokier elements in these drawings, I am using Chromatek water brush pens to draw out the ink of the Kuretake ink pen and make grays. I had some watercolors ready to go for these, but I decided I liked them best in black and white.

I haven’t gotten out for any plein air painting lately as it’s been a bit too hot. I can only slap on so much sunscreen before I feel like the extra-close Colorado sun melts it off and I’m getting too toasted. My goal for August will certainly be to find more shaded places to paint.

Playing:

In July I played quite a bit of Octopath Traveler 2, I enjoy the set design of this game quite a bit, and I get attached to the stories as well. They’re a fun way for me to spend time when I am taking it easy from art, running, or baby care. Here are some of my favorite moments, there aren’t too many spoilers in these other than what the scenes look like.

I’ll get excited about the little houses and things like that in this game. I think the details are very easy to appreciate. Even the wallpaper in the shot above is a nice moment.

Running:

I’ve been taking it easier on running ever since finishing the Leadville Heavy Half in June. This has been great timing because it’s been a bit too hot to run most days. Now I’m usually just hiking or taking Baby Jewell out to playgrounds to play. Also, Baby Jewell is now 1 year old! He’s 25 pounds so he definitely keeps me strong as I lift him dozens of times a day and carry him around town for all of our errands. I can safely say being a mom hasn’t slowed me down at all, in fact it’s probably made me fitter than I was before, even in 2021 when I was doing things like half-marathon distances every weekend.

Since I’m taking a break from running and plein air, my process for July was very much about going on hikes and getting photos to draw later. It’s been a fun way to work, which I hope to continue.

That’s what I got for July 2023! Catch you next time!

Kuretake Ink Pen - Double-sided Brush Pen No.55

When I visited Tokyo I happened across a pen I really liked, and luckily it has many variations. The pen was a Kuretake brush pen, though it took me a little while to figure out what it was, as almost nothing on the pen was written with roman letters or English.

The Kuretake No.55 is an excellent double-sided brush pen. I like how it was a bit smoky, it was a lot like drawing with water on a Buddha Board. Here is a detail photo of a warmup drawing I did, where you can see the smokiness of the ink pretty well:

I went on to make this drawing of lupine with the pen:

What I really like about this pen is that the two nib sizes are about all one really needs to make a good drawing. The ultra thin brush is nice to do detail work, and the larger brush on the other end is good for shading or blacking out large areas, and larger linework. And it’s just one pen, so it makes working much quicker.

The ink does take a bit of time to dry so it’s a good idea to work from left to right in a drawing (if you’re righthanded like me, if you’re lefthanded, the opposite of what I just said), or to not draw on the right and then switch to the left quickly, because the ink got on my hand pretty easily. But I actually like that it dries slowly. I think it’s what gives the ink it’s smoky, pretty look.

Here’s the other Kuretake pen I’ve used that I really liked - it was an impulse buy when I was in Tokyo. I didn’t know or understand anything about the pen, something about it just felt right and it looked cool, and it wasn’t so expensive that I felt it was out of reach, so I picked it up:

This is the other kuretake pen I’ve tried, a. much thicker, darker pen with very black ink. A very nice pen to use for drawing. Making finer lines with this pen requires a very gentle, delicate touch

Kuretake offers many other pens, and they also make eyeliner pens and other cosmetics? (Seems like a fair enough product diversity offering). The pen I got in Japan was a single-sided deep black pen, but I liked this double sided pen quite a bit more. It felt more versatile and is smaller, so easier to use.

Chromatek Water Brush Pens

These water brush pens are a fun and easy way to create watercolors from pigment or from watercolor pencil linework.

The pens unscrew the opposite way that machines and screws usually twist on and twist off, they’re lefty-tighty righty-loosy, if that makes any sense. I’m not sure why they are this way but it’s pretty funny.

The brushes work pretty easily:

1. Unscrew the water container end (lefty-tighty righty-loosy)

2. Fill with water

3. Screw the water container back onto the pen

4. Squeeze the sizes to get the water into the pen reservoir

5. Draw with water!

For this drawing, I made an ink drawing using a Kuretake pen, the double-sided no.55 Kuretake. I gently ran one of the water brushes on the edges of the drawn lines, which were already dry for about an hour, to create the effect around the flowers,

For this drawing, I made a drawing with watercolor pencil, and then ran the water pens over the pencil. This is on Traveler’s Notebook Watercolor paper.

Another way to use these is to put them in pigment and then draw with them until the pigment is cleared from the brush. I thought this was the best way to get large areas of color. The broader brushes seem to be made for this especially, because finer lines can be made with watercolor pencils, but I like the finer brushes in pigment for this too. In this case, the pigment I used was Himi Gouache. Gouache could be put on a brush and applied on it’s own without water, but I often leverage the watercolor-like aspects of gouache, so I gave it a try with these brush pens.

Lastly, I found these were pretty easy to clean, or they were self-cleaning. Unless there’s very aggressive pigment loading, pigment doesn’t get into the reservoir of these pens, so the water cleans out any pigment on it’s own. Instead of dipping a brush in water to clean it, if I needed a new pigment on a similar brush, i could either just dab the brush on a paper towel for a bit, or let the color run out on it’s own. I squeezed the pens to remove more of any color that was still on the brush. Despite what I thought was pretty hard squeezing, the water didn’t run out in the pens very fast.

I think these pens would be great for plein air painting, or maybe it could be called a combination of painting and drawing. They’re lightweight, they don’t run out of water easily, and they are fun and easy to use on paper with pencils or paint. I haven’t tried it, but they’d probably also be very fun with acrylic ink or india ink.

To summarize

• Chromatek Water Brush Pens are a fun and easy tool for creating watercolors from pigments or watercolor pencil linework. They can be used with gouache and ink too.

• The pens have a unique unscrewing mechanism, once you get the hang of it, it is straightforward, but the first time opening them can be a bit tricky. (righty-loosy)

• The pens are easy to pack and clean. The water doesn’t run out quickly.
  
  

Expanding Skills by Working With Limits

I’m a busy mom, and I have limited time each day to work on art. This is okay, and good even, because it means that the time I do spend has to have a high impact. Or at least, I want it to have a high impact, because I want to either maintain my art skills or get better.

When I was working up to the long distances that I run, I used to go for 5 or 7 mile meandering runs around my neighborhood in Maryland and DC. I didn’t have a time limit or goal, I just wanted to go for a run.

One day though, I decided I wanted to run 6 miles in 60 minutes. I did this on a treadmill at a gym. I didn’t even know I would be able to do it, but I did.

The impact this single goal had on me was higher than any of those other meandering “Oh I guess I’ll just go run” runs that I ever did.

With art it is the same. I began to have to ask myself the question, if I have only 1 hour a day or less, what do I do? How do I maintain the skills I’ve built for my whole life? How do I expand those skills?

For me, one high-impact way of retaining drawing skills is drawing a photo with Sharpie. Let’s go over what it means to draw in ink, and Sharpie specifically:

No takebacks, everything is permanent so everything matters

Are you an artist who draws on a tablet and on paper? Have you ever been drawing on paper and your brain tries to press CTRL-Z? Or maybe your brain tries to access the Procreate double-tap to undo a previous action? I ask because, I’ve done this what feels like thousands of times. What I try to do is draw on paper with Sharpie until my brain stops doing that.

Only one color. No real shading.

Thinking will happen in terms of shapes and line and negative space. There are only three main values to using a single Sharpie color: Paper, Sharpie, and Sharpie Pressed Hard.

Only one size of pen.

No outrageously broad strokes, no hair-thin lines without using the hand to either change the pen angle or pressure.

What’s the point of doing all this if I can get back on my computer in an hour and use my wacom tablet? The point is that ultimately when I do get back on the computer, I can use my time better because I am faster and more accurate at art.

I’ve been making art my whole life - I painted as a toddler and I finished an art major. I have my art for sale online and in galleries. Of all my experiences in art, what I find myself going back to when I draw like this is the negative space training I did in a high school art class. We learned from the book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.” Where some left/right brain studies have been debunked, the principles of this book and it’s focus on negative space has served me well time and time again.

It might be that Sharpie drawing is incredibly frustrating at first, which is good, because every high-impact learning environment is going to be extremely frustrating. For me, it can often be a way of making a series of mistakes and rescuing the situation at the last minute.

When I look at all the mistakes I make in a drawing, I do think of the Bob Ross maxim of “Happy Little Accidents.” Maybe the biggest skill in art is patience and some dogged ability to keep working and have faith that everything will turn out okay in the end. Everything looks kind of bad or flubbed, until it suddenly looks good. Everything looks impossible until someone actually does it. The funny thing about limits is that they expand us, and eventually absolute limits get absolutely transcended.

Wonderland Lake September 2023

Here I am with Baby Jewell, my 1.5 month old, getting some painting in! A kind passerby took this photo and sent it to us.

When I think of painting, I think of relaxing. It’s great to get out and just let go. However, I will say that plein air painting is an exercise in chaos management: everything is fine and dandy until the wind comes up and blows dust on the canvas, or when several bees get attracted to the paint colors, or when, suddenly, it rains.

Sometimes I run into animals, or Baby Jewell burps up on my clean shirt, or he needs an impromptu diaper change on the trail. I never know what will happen next! That goes for the artwork, and for the act of getting to a nice painting spot.

There’s so much to prepare regarding bringing the right supplies, and planning for anything and everything. If I plan well and consider tools carefully, almost any kind of chaos can be under control. If I forget a crucial paintbrush or leave behind an outfit change for Baby Jewell, I have an opportunity to learn and do better next time.

Maybe the most important thing I’ve learned in painting plein air with a newborn so far is that the messy process is just as much of a treasure as the painting is once it’s done. The outcome or the painting is (usually) cool, but simply getting outside and going on the journey is an accomplishment. Even if I get dirt in my carefully arranged paints or if I’m only walking for 5 minutes before getting rained on, everything good is in the art of the trip. Each day that I decide to get off my butt and go outside is a good day, and now I get to do this with my best buddy! <3

Like most new parents, I was a little worried about what would happen to my life once I had a baby. Would I still be able to do art? What about my career?

Luckily all of these anxieties have gone away - through taking action, careful planning, and creative thinking, we’ve been able to find harmony together.

I made several paintings I am happy with while at the lake lately, a couple are above. I’ve been using gouache in the Traveler’s Notebook and it’s been going well. While the Traveler’s Notebook paper that I am utilizing right now is meant more for writing than painting, what I do after painting is I flatten the entire book under a couple other books to get any ripples out of each page. If a piece is really good, I consider removing it from the journal to make as it’s own framed piece.

Above is my exciting Art Mom Gear!

Traveler’s Notebook from Two Hands Paperie

iulie watercolors - the best, love these

JMFT Industries mini zip pouch

Himi gouache - within reach pricewise and high quality

Melanzana skirt - get them in Leadville!

Cotopaxi backpack - best colors ever!

A cup from my grandpa’s house

Ergobaby carrier - very comfy for me and Baby Jewell

Huggies - perfecto

You might notice the Himi gouache looks a bit dried out in the photo - it still works great when rewet! And I think it works very well with the iulie watercolors.

I’m very excited about my Art Mom Gear. It’s very heavy and I haven’t put any thought into making a lightweight setup, but that’s ok, I’m used to taking things pretty slow. With Baby Jewell in his carrier and backpack, I carry an extra 25 pounds, and I’m sure this will increase as Baby Jewell gets bigger or if I get some heavier paints or a big sketchbook.

After lifting Baby Jewell all over the place and carrying him across the countryside, I feel very strong. It’s hard to measure exactly how I’ve changed strengthwise before and after giving birth, but I will say that I feel strong, maybe because it has been like I have effectively carried a watermelon around for several months, up and down various stairs and trails. I’m just getting back into running and am taking it slow, running 1.5 miles or so at a time.

More painting on the way! I can’t wait to show what I’ve been up to lately on the trail.