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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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