I've not done this in a few weeks. I've been feeling a little off my photo game. I've been looking for new inspiration. So here you go.

There is a certain amount of beauty locked into decay, trapped with it is always a large amount of sadness. As I travel around the area where I grew up I’m able to see the struggles of keeping things standing. One of these days i’m going to need to travel with my camera or a pochade.

Last year the Beehive Collective raised $10,000 to repair and renovate the park overlooking the Bad Little Falls in Machias, Maine. The Bad Little Falls park is one of my favorite spots in Machias and sadly the kickstarter campaign ended before I could give. They repaired the guard rails, a dancefloor and installed 2 gazebos where bands can play. One day a year the park is lit up and is lively. I’m happy to see that the Beehive was able to save one of my favorite places in DownEast Maine.

I’ve been fascinated with buildings that are crumbling. Sad to see them start to cave in and be destroyed. Nature takes her toll on the construction of man. The barn I grew up with, my father had a concrete floor poured in before I was aware of such things. Growing up we swung on ropes from one side to the other, lifted ourselves far too high above the cement floor with block and tackle attached to our belts, and built forts in bales of hay.  

It’s been close to 20 years since the barn has been used for anything useful. A thick mat of wild grapes grows before the door, which was last accessed 5 years or so ago. It remains locked both with a chain and padlock but through mother nature’s frost cement is heaved in such a way that the doors will no longer open more than a few inches.

My happy memories of this place beg me to see it repaired but my brain tells me that this barn will eventually return to the earth as so many other buildings in the area have gone before.

I bought my ukelele back in  1999. I purchased the cheapest uke I could find at the local music shop, Ted Coles in Salem, MA. Ted Coles is no longer in business and there is no wonder why. I had the worst customer service I’ve ever encountered in there, and never went back. The ukelele cost about $35, with no case and no instructions. I managed to find a VERY beat up case on eBay for about $5 and a bunch of instructional books at Borders. I love how beat up the case is, but I think it’s time I paint it and make it 100% mine.

The uke has served my horrible playing skills well. It sounds about as good as I play, which is to say, pretty horrible. I have no rhythm and I’m tone deaf but I enjoy plucking away at its strings and generally enjoying the sounds the uke makes.

I’ve had it stored at my parent’s place for the last 5 years or so, why I don’t know. It always seemed to miss being packed with me as I came home. Now it’s here with me and I hope to draw it a few times, and play it a lot.

On the first and third friday of every month the cafe that I frequent has live traditional music featuring fiddles, banjos, and guitars. The lineup of musicians changes from session to session and they don’t have a list of songs they play, instead they chit chat and play stuff that comes to mind. It’s spontaneous and free flowing music. It’s really cool to watch a bunch of really good musicians jam together. I did a few good drawings but mostly they weren’t very good. Mostly though I simply had a good time drawing and sketching.

I wanted to show you some of the progress I’m making on the thank you ATC. I’m (as of this writing) on card number 19. I’ve stumbled into some great images in the Flickr Commons of Civil War era people. The great thing about that era is the mustaches on the dudes. There are some seriously awesome mustaches in those archives. The other things that is interesting is the contrast in women’s hair styles, some are completely severe and look like they hurt and others have some unkempt hair.

The interesting thing in the photographs is how washed out many of them are, as if proper lighting wasn’t thought of, or they were purposefully over exposed to hide some wrinkles and other imperfections. The overexposure of much of the face leaves the viewer with sharp contrast around the eyes and clear views of crow’s feet. I really love drawing from these images.

So here you have cards 16 through 19:




I also wanted to show you the business end of the Uniball Signo Bit 0.18 pen I’m using to start most of these images. It’s so small my camera had a really hard time focusing on it. I put my uni kuru toga in the pic to give you a reference of the size of that tip. The kuru toga is a 0.5 tip. The Signo Bit is a 0.18. It’s tiny and allows me to get miniscule hair thin lines. It’s also waterproof and lightfast. It’s not quite as dark a black as the Signo Bit pens but for a micro tip pen it’s pretty great. I highly recommend this pen to anyone who wants a micro tipped pen to throw in their sketching bag. (You can get it at Jetpens as well as refills!)

Well it’s been a crazy few weeks here in Comfortable Shoes Studio. A few weeks back I had car troubles and it completely depleted my reserves. It came as quite a shock when Ning sent me the email telling me that the yearly fee was coming due soon. Now, I know that the fee is due in the last week of July, it’s an every year sort of thing. It’s also one of those things I set out of my mind, especially when things are rough. So I paid for the brake system on one car and then the muffler on the other and didn’t think of poor Ning.

Like many people, I live paycheck to paycheck with a small reserve of funds built up over time. In fact I had been doing pretty well, I had cashed in my stock options, bought a shiny new computer and video camera and paid a bill or two. Needless to say I had a little buyer’s remorse when both cars decided to break down at once. So when that Ning bill came up as due soon, I decided to do my usual funding drive, but unlike most years where I ask for part of the fee, I asked the members for as much of it as we could get.

The outpouring of support, kind emails, and love of the group has been overwhelming and has on more than one occasion brought tears to my eyes. The members of Artjournaling.ning.com are the best in the world. I received donations from Germany, Australia, Canada, South America, England, and South Africa. I closed donations as soon as we hit the amount needed to pay the fee. After I closed the doors, people still wanted to donate, they sent in tips via the tip jar in the Challenge group. I got many more emails, again positive about the group.

It was simply overwhelming. We raised the full fee in 18 hours.

I’ve received a few extra donations and I’m finding a way to sink that into the site. I decided straight away that the first thing I’d do to thank everyone who donated was send them a handwritten thank you note. After we reached the funding goal in 18 hours I wanted to do something a little more, so I decided I could fit an ATC into each envelope. I cut a bunch of ATC from some nice watercolor paper grabbed my pens and set to work.

I thought that the ATC size would be a fast way to get everyone a small token of thanks. Heh. Heh. Heh. It is small, I’m working with smaller pens- Uniball Signo Bit 0.18 and Signo DX 0.28 in black with a wash of watercolor. These pens are tiny and I decided to stretch my artistic muscles by doing tiny little portraits. It took me a few cards to get accustomed to the ATC size but now I’m 13 cards into making a set of 34. Each card is taking much longer to complete than I had expected. Though I’ve shrunk the size of the portraits down I have not shrunk the time of creation down. Each of the ATC takes as long as a 5×7 inch portrait to create. So I’m spending anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes on each card. I was planning on spending a mere 15 min per card, but working with micro tips simply doesn’t allow me to speed the process up. If anyone ever tells you ATC are easy, they are totally wrong.

I’ve done some of the cards from life while sitting in Atomic Cafe and sipping an iced Americano, the rest have been drawn from images in the Flickr Commons. I’ve been giving my own spin to each image. I’m enjoying the process even if it was unexpected.