Category Archives: Reflection

I Hit 50!

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I woke on my 50th birthday sick. Sick enough to call out of work. Sick enough I’ve sent my wife to pick up a covid* test, while I hope that it’s not. I don’t really want to be out of work sick.

Anyway, hitting 50 years old has brought with it a bit of nostalgia for my past and wistfulness for things I wish I had done, as well as a desire to actually do them.

I have spent the last few weeks making my own oil drawing sticks with my own custom colors. I’ve kind of fallen in love with the process. It’s a DIY that leads to additional art. The expense isn’t small but it’s cheaper than buying a full kit of oil paints over time. 

I’ve also been making black walnut ink and dye. My silly wolf shirt has never looked cooler. It’s a warm shade of brown that looks phenomenal. So warm and earthy. While the denim chore coat I over dyed looks a little dirty. It’s going to get another soak in the dye bath and a 48 hour soak in an alum mordant.

The black walnut ink this year is even deeper brown. It’s truly lovely. I can’t wait to make some art with it.

I am attempting to do the lake-ing process with it and create a pigment I can make an oil pigment stick with it as well as an ink for making prints.

Lake-ing is a process where you mix washing soda and alum into a dye bath to get the color to adhere to the alum to create a water insoluble colorant that can then be dried, ground and turned into watercolors or oil paints. The walnut husks have tons of sugars and while this is fine for ink or even liquid watercolors, it’s not great for lake-ing, it results in a sticky gummy mess. The lake-d pigments need washing to remove the sugars. This makes the lake process take long and be, in general, a pain in my ass.

Anyway, I lake-d about a quart of my dye and it has taken me about 4 days to get about half of it cleaned and drying.

The walnuts keep giving up more and more dye. The first amount of dye was very thick with sugars, the second soak is thinner but very intense with color. I’m on my 3rd soak and honestly, I wonder how many gallons of colorant I’m going to get out of these walnuts. I’m going to soak them again. We’ll see what happens with 4 soaks. I’m soaking the 10 ish pounds of walnut husks and walnuts in roughly 3 gallons of of hot water for several days, then draining and adding in 3 more gallons. It’s an enormous amount of dye and far more than I’ll ever need, but I’m giving some to a coworker and pretty much dying everything I own that is made of natural fibers that is white in the house brown. 

I also ordered myself a few plain white cotton button down shirts. I want to play with folding them to create interesting patterns with the walnut dye. I have ideas.

The oil pigment sticks have been really interesting to work with and I hope to keep making them. They feel like super creamy oil pastels but they harden on the paper or panel. They hold their shape and get rubbery is the best description. Once they harden up they can be layered over. This means that my art works are taking more time to complete, I have to be more patient. The exploration into the colors I actually use has been very helpful. I like earthy tones as well as BRIHT bold colors. SO mixing my own custom colors has been very interesting and very cool. The other thing is that the colors themselves mix better on the artwork than oil pastels. It’s less work to get a blend than it was ever before.

​I guess the point of this birthday post is that while my inner urge is to change things up I realize through this writing that I’m doing exactly what I want with my art- exploring and evolving. I hope for my next years to keep that up- explore and evolve.

This post is one of few that get’s posted concurrently with my Ko-Fi posts. Usually, my posts go live on Ko-Fi a month before they are here on this blog. If you enjoy my writing and YouTube channel please head over to my Ko-Fi page and consider supporting me. It helps buy art supplies and keeps me posting and making more videos for YouTube. Continue reading →

Is Lightfastness Important?

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I have this debate with myself on the regular and here are my current thoughts:

​Lightfastness is important in works that will get sold or be shown.

Lightfastness is unimportant (to me) in my art journal and sketchbook.

​There are no absolutes when it comes to lightfastness and materials. Even professional paints have fugitive pigments. Neon colors, shades of pink and purple and other colors fade and shift. Some fade and shift even under protective UV glass. Some will fade and shift even in a closed sketchbook or journal.

I’m looking at you blue Parker Quink ink.

Does it matter?

The answer that is unsatisfying but true is always, it depends. For me I don’t care so much if the colors in my sketchbook and journal fade or change. If I make a piece of art to sell I want it to look at good as it can for as long as possible for the people who buy it, so I strive to use lightfast pigments. That said, I also find myself using a wide variety of colors in my art these days and finding myself drawn toward bright colors and toward my own handmade and foraged colors.

Part of the “it depends” philosophy is that this can be totally different for every artist and art journaler. If you want to use only lightfast pigments and materials in your art journal that is fine. If you want to use only fugitive pigments that is also fine. Every person has to decide what works and does not work for themselves.

I Forgot My Sketchbook at Work

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Last Friday I brought a bunch of supplies home for WFH, but decided to go into work to use the studio space. I took everything back to work in a tote bag*. I shoved my personal sketchbook into it. I have 2 going right now- a small watercolor sketchbook that is pocket sized and another that is for notes and what not.

When I left for the day I left the tote bag behind. It was all work stuff. Except it wasn’t. The pocket sized sketchbook did not make it’s way back into my backpack. I left the pocket sized one at work.

When I went to run errands on Saturday I realized my mistake and I was left with the worst what do I do!!! Panic ever. I’m trying to get back into- run errands and sit some where and make some art in the parking lot or at a park.

Cranky I left to run my errands and STRONGLY considered driving over to work to get my sketchbook.

My usual rule for sketchbooks is that I work in them until they are done, unless I need a large or smaller size. But for whatever reason I was HUNG UP on working in that small pocket size.

Instead of making sketches while I was out I took some photos. 

Then I got home and worked some sketches in my note sketchbook and was unhappy about it.

Then I had a thought:

Just grab another small sketchbook.

I literally have dozens of decent and cheap pocket sized watercolor sketchbooks. There is really nothing holding me back from using them.

Use the GOOD stuff is something I have to remember.

I reminded myself that I had thrown out so much good paper because I just hadn’t used it.

It’s time to break out multiple sketchbooks, work in whatever size I want to work and to break my own rules.

*I have eleventy billion tote bags but every time I see one made out of good heavy cotton canvas I buy it. If I need to get my purchase up over any amount to get free shipping… I add a tote bag. Work gives us tote bags. Sigh totes everywhere.

Mark Making Makes Interest in an Image

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I vividly remember seeing a real Van Gogh in person for the first time. The marks he made in his self portrait captured my attention. After that museum visit I did a deep dive into Van Gogh’s drawings and paintings- the thing that really unifies his work in my mind is the quality and quantity of his marks. Every mark unique and partially determined by his tools- from brushes to reed pens, his marks were all really interesting.

I have made vats of walnut ink, while not the ink Van Gogh would have used it has been forcing me to play with brushes and the marks the brushes make, particularly as I have tested casein medium/binder in the ink.

I have been using some old Strathmore 400 series drawing paper (90lb I believe) that I had ordered to make myself some books and then lost interest in the project. These pages were unearthed in the great basement studio cleanout. I cut the sheets in half to get 12×18 inch pieces of paper. These sheets are roughly the same aspect ratio as the photos I took this summer while on vacation. 

I’ve been working with these papers and my homemade inks to make studies of my images. I’ve also been making some mixed media pieces with the studies in mind. The interesting thing is that after I make a few studies of the image, I’m not looking too closely at the original photo, only checking in on it here and there, and occasionally never. I more rely on the studies, which work out the composition before I make the final art piece.

Anyway, I’ve been playing around with squirrel mop brushes and a few other soft brushes to create my images, and it’s been interesting to capture the marks these brushes make with the casein and walnut ink. The brush strokes very much lend to the sketch and the study. The layers of the casein based walnut ink give a lot of depth to the sketches.

I’ve also been mixing it up with these images. I’ve added in night blue Caran D’ache Neocolor 2, some blue Inktense, and some white chalk pastel. The walnut casein based ink mixes with the blues to create a lovely shade of warm gray that I’m ink love with. I mixed up some clear casein medium and have used that to further thin out the walnut casein ink and get even lighter lights.

The casein gives the paper a nice tooth for adding in the chalk pastel. I give the pastel a spray of SpectraFix to keep it from smudging.

In these images I’m attempting to capture the smoothness of the sandy shore line, the calm-ish water, and the rocky shore as well as the darkness of the trees and rose bushes.

The casein also dries to a lovely satin finish.

Acorn Cap Ink- Part 2 This Time with Iron

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My first foray into acorn cap ink was a total success. It produced a lovely golden brown ink. I worked quickly and knew the caps had more tannins to leach out. I attempted a slightly longer extraction method- I put them into a jug with far more water than strictly necessary and let them sit for a few days. I then repeated a boil and steep for a couple of more days. That is to say when I arrived home from work I turned on the burner and brought the caps to a boil, then let them steep over night and repeated the process of boiling in the AM. I did this for 2 or 3 days. This was quite low effort, I set them to boil while I was making my morning coffee and evening tea.

Then I strained the caps out. Once strained I ran some boiling water over the caps to remove any tannin rich liquid clinging to them. Yes this added more water that needed to be boiled off but I think was worth the effort.

After this process I reduced the liquid by 50%. I then divided this into 2 part. One I boiled down just as I had for the first round of ink and added that to my container of plain acorn cap ink. The color is slightly more brown than golden brown. Still quite nice.

The second batch I reduced down with the addition of a large rusty nut I found while out on a walk. Pretty much anything with some rust on it will work. I added an additional cup of water to the mix to get the tannins more fully covering the nut. The tannins react with the rust to create a deeper darker ink color- in this case it is quite black when you look at it but goes on the page as a rich gray with a blueish cast. It’s quite lovely.

Again the smell of the ink as it was cooking down was pu-erh tea and the woods. Really quite lovely.

A couple of notes- I will reduce the ink far more the next time I make it. The color isn’t as intense as I’d like and the first application with a cheapie brush pen is quite thin and pale. It does layer quite well.

I suspect that there is a sugar content to the caps as there is much more of a sheen than there should be given the amount of gum arabic I added.

Gum arabic impacts how the ink clings to the pen and the brush as well as flow on the page. I use it for the cling properties. The ink does lift quite easily. Again I suspect the sugar content acting like honey or glycerin does with watercolors- increasing the water solubility of the ink.

Thus far my favorite way of using it is in a cheap brush pen. (Link to the pens I’m using.) It can clog quite easily so I have altered my brush pens by removing the thin fiber tube that slows waterflow.

Next year when I make another batch I will add in a fermentation stage to allow some of the sugar to ferment off. I believe this will reduce the lifting and water solubility on the page.“

More Studio Clean Up

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The studio clean up stalled last week because of my knee situation.* But I’m moving better and was back at it today.

I have lost count of the number of trash bags I have taken out of the basement. A lot, we’ll go with that. Many. I have been able to keep track of the recycling because well, the sanitation workers are still on strike, so recycling is still not being picked up.**

It’s a LOT of recycling.

Not all the recycling is coming out of the art studio, as I’ve mentioned previously, I’m also cleaning out some other hobby supplies on the other side of the basement, mainly beer and wine and mead brewing supplies. 5 gallon carboys take up a lot of space. I have gotten all the wine bottles out and onto the curb where people may or may not take them.

We had under utilized the space under the stairs and I cleaned that out completely and now have 5 of the 6 larger totes stashed there. 3 of the 5 have paper in them. I might need to evaluate my paper situation.

I also went through my plastic drawers and consolidated a lot of stuff into a few of the drawers. I was then able to move some stuff like small sketchbooks and en plein air supplies into 2 of the drawers.

I discovered that on one of my large shelves I have shipping supplies stashed, in sizes that I no longer use or will find useful. These will get moved off the shelf so that my cardboard drying rack can have a home as well as a few other supplies in totes. I have the dehumidifier running and I’m moving an air filter down there to help with the basement smell.

The bench top is getting more and more clear. I can see the bench in some sections. On more than one occasion I have looked at the stuff on there and thought, I could toss all that. But I won’t because some of it is still good stuff.

At this point i think I need one or two more weekends of work to get the studio to a actual workable set up. Probably 2 week ends before it’s more organized than not.

It’s going to take a lot longer to get the tool situation of the other side of the basement taken care of. Also we are now selling the VW Rabbit and that needs some love before it can be sold, namely, I have to fix the rear hatch lock issue. It’s a fiddly bit of annoying electrical nonsense, and honestly, I’m one step away from buying a whole new rear wiring harness and calling it good.

That said, despite my knee I’m making progress on both sides of the studio and feeling pretty hopeful that I can use it for art making soon.

The idea is that each bin houses only one art method’s supplies. So bookbinding stuff goes in one bin, paint making in another bin, acrylic markers in another, watercolor in another, and so on…
I am really looking forward to getting fully set up in the studio and making some art. Continue reading →

Studio Clean Up

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I’ve been posting about this on Threads and BlueSky, but it needs a whole post.

We bought our house almost 20 years ago. One of the things I decided I wanted in any place we’d buy was a studio space. We fell in love with this house and a section of the basement was divided off from the rest of the basement, it even had a workbench and shelves. Perfect.

I used it, and it appeared regularly in my videos, daily. Up until I went to grad school. Then I was too busy to use it. Though it still was used to stash my supplies. Then I started my new career and it was used less and less.

It became a dumping ground for all things art supplies and tools. Over the last few years it’s really piled up. We also had a pipe burst on the other side of the basement. Continue reading →

Values Journaling Check In

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My values journaling session at the end of 2024 led me to really think about what I want and need from life. I realized through that session that I wanted to put a focus on my own art making and art career.

As a result of this I started to look for artist residencies and grants and opportunities to be more involved in my local art scene.

I missed out on most of the residencies for this year, but I will be applying for residencies next year. I was able to apply for and get into a printmaking workshop as professional development for my DayJob. More on that in another post. I am treating it like a mini residency.

I also missed out on most of the grant opportunities for 2025. I will be looking at grants for next year and the year after that.

I joined a local art association. It has not raised it’s membership cost in many years. It is very affordable. The association is also offering studio spaces inside of the association building. I can also run classes and workshops there WITH association approval. I’m exploring my options.

Joining the art association has been interesting. I joined in on the spring show and won 3rd place for mini art works. I can now say I’m an award winning artist!

Following up on all of this, I have not used my studio space at home in many years. Probably grad school. Due to lighting it has always been more of a storage space. But through grad school and covid it has become a dumping ground for all art supplies and it’s an abysmal mess. The whole basement is a mess.

​With my next few days off I’m starting the process of cleaning and organizing the studio space. This means I need to also organize the whole basement. There are bike parts in the studio and art supplies in the non-studio part of the basement. There’s a long reach pruner and kayak stuff in the art studio.

I need to set up a charging station for all my outdoor supplies and get it out of the art studio. (The saw and pruner are in the art studio due to an easily accessible outlet.) I’ve got a table that I used for potting up plants that is now covered in tools that I never put away plus parts and pieces of various stuff that needs to get organized and put away.

Last night after work I brought the speaker out, turned up the music*, and cleared a path through the studio space. I need to really get into the stuff and get some bins to really organize the space though. Getting the path through the space was the most important first step. From that path I made some piles- garbage, recycling, good but donation, and move to a new location.

I also realized this spring that I have seasons with the materials I like to use. But overall I’m a huge fan of watercolors, gelli plates, and bougie oil pastels. So you’ll see more of all that. I also happened to get a whole bunch of en plein air supplies that will work with a lot of my favorite materials so I’m working on some set ups that will work with my bike set up. I will attempt to remember to take pictures.

Honestly I’d like to know when I got so bad at taking pictures of my progress.

One Hundred and Two

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I’ve completed a few hundred things challenges over the last few years. I’ve always done them in my own way. I know that I can’t and won’t complete a daily challenge or mostly ever be able to complete a monthly challenge. But when I do a challenge in my own way, I can get it done.

Yesterday I hit 102 in my own personal challenge- 300 Vehicles. 

I don’t think I wrote about it here, except in a post that I hid away in my drafts. I got some news that has forced me to speed up some of my “focus on art due to values journaling” plans. A direct result of this was to put in an application for a pop up gallery show at a local art gallery and art association. It’s a long story and I fear not one I can share here.

Anyway, when I was putting in the proposal for the show I had to decide on a number of images like those I was already making, that would look cool on the gallery wall and be impressive (to me.)

For whatever reason I settled on 300.

Why 300?
100 is a challenge that most of us can do.
200 is only double that and would look okay on the wall.

300 though, that’s kinda crazy. It’s not a bananas number like 1000. It’s enough that the small gallery will look filled and the walls will be packed.

It’s a stretch for me. I KNOW I can do 100. Can I do 300?

I hit 102 yesterday. 

To complete 300 I need to make 1.75 images a day.

I’m usually making 2 or 3 with some weekend days 5.

One weekend day I did 10!

The process for the images is simple- I tape postcards up to some sturdy chipboard, a little heavier than soda box carton. Each postcard is taped with a little bit of a thicker margin at the bottom, probably 3/8th of an inch. With the other 3 edges getting 3/16th of an inch. I then sketch on site, en plein air, each car. 

The media used for the sketch is a little different. I use colored pencils, mechanical colored pencils, and inktense colored pencils. The Koh-i-noor giconda magic colored pencil has been a real favorite. But inktense have been adding a lot of really nice base color to the images.

This is key to the process, the sketches are done QUICKLY. I try to spend no more than 5 to 10 minutes on each sketch. I am looking for vibes not realism. I’m looking at light and shadow.

When it comes down to it, I can less about the vehicle itself and more about the shape, shadow and light.

After I complete the sketch it gets shoved into my bag and I start another, if I have time.

Then I add color in studio. I’ve been playing around with a lot of different paints. Beam paints* have been giving me some really nice granulating effect that I REALLY adore. I also have been leaning back on my favorites Holbein paints.

After painting I let the images dry and then I layer on some more colored pencils, some Neocolor 1 or 2s, then some china marker, or Stabilo Woody. I’ve added in some ink too.

Over all I’m really liking how free I feel as I make these images. I also really like that they go from a sketch that feels rooted in realism to something even more loose and free.

Anyway, here is number 100:

*Beam paints are really quite amazing but a little pricey. That said I really like their plastic free aesthetic and devotion to less toxic practices. It also makes me REALLY want to attempt to make some of my own paints and inks.

Still Learning

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May has been a doozy. I had to take an unscheduled break from videos and writing due to a family member being in the hospital. I have necessarily made that person a priority but whew, it really threw a wrench into my life and various plans.

So a quick recap:

I had planned on applying to a residency for this August. I wrote out the various pieces of the application and missed the deadline. Instead I will do my own DIY Residency. More on that in it’s own post.

I applied for, but have not heard back, for a show at a local gallery. I’m not sure when I’ll hear back or IF I’ll hear back. I’m going to reach out to the gallery and see.

Despite not hearing back from the gallery I am proceeding with completing the 300 Vehicles Project. If I don’t hear back from the gallery by the end of June I will list all 300 images here on Ko-Fi or Instagram.

I did manage to get the 3 pieces I had framed from the 300 Vehicles series to the Danvers Art Association May Show and one of the pieces won 3rd place for the mixed media (or miniatures) category! I can now say I’m a multi-award winning artist!*

My work place is finishing up the final touches on our big art show and event this week. I’m really thankful for having 2 3 day weekends in a row, one before and then one after the event. I usually get in 3 or 4 times my regular daily step count. It’s a bananas amount of work. But such a good time.

My art that I donated to the auction to raise money for work, sold for a larger sum than any of my pieces I’ve ever donated. What a nice boost and what a great way to help support the kids I work with. 

I started to make my own watercolors and gouache with foraged rocks. I made my first lake pigment from Red Maple leaves. The rock pigments are great the red maple pigment is… okay. 

​Many of these updates will get their own post at some point, but most especially the paint and pigment making. I’m fascinated by the process of breaking up rocks and adding gum arabic and making images with it. It’s been part of my residency proposals. Which I suppose is another update all on it’s own- I’m going to be applying for residencies for NEXT summer. It’s a commitment to ideas and plans and frankly a thing I struggle with. But it’s something I really really want.

*I won an Honorable Mention in the Bangor Daily News Political Cartoon contest in 1990. My cartoon was featured in a special insert in the newspaper. The cartoon was about book censorship… Go figure.

Quick note, I’m posting this concurrently on the blog instead of my usual month out wait. I’ll go back to regular month long wait between the post here for supporters and posting for free to the blog. I don’t know why I feel like it’s necessary to post this NOW vs wait, but I’m going forward with it.