Dune 1 & 2

Last month we went to our first Dune meet-up, and through the course of the evening, I fell in love. Although I’ve known a handful of lovely artists while living in Seattle, I never found a community that felt like just the right fit. Dune felt like that fit right away.

Once a month, local artists get together over food and drinks at a local restaurant and spend hours scrunched on small cafe tables with drawing supplies strewn about. With heads tilted down towards their papers, people visit while they work. The cafe lighting is rather dim, music plays over the speakers or perhaps someone brings a guitar, and over it all is the rolling cacophony of conversational snippets about everything from Australopithecus to farting unicorns.

The goal is to complete an original work, there on-site, and each artist’s subject matter is as varied as the artists themselves. Most anything goes, and at the end of the night everyone submits their drawings and some cash to fund the printing of a zine full of the evening’s artwork.

The first week, Benjamin and I found a small two-person cafe table tucked behind a column in the middle of the room. It was a great vantage point to observe the flow of the evening and get the lay of the land. Last night we arrived earlier, so we were able to tuck into a corner booth, which is always my preference anyway. After we we’d finished eating and were well under way, three others joined us at our table and set to work. It was nice to meet some new people, and I especially enjoyed getting to see their creative process and watch them work.

My piece for the September meet-up officially launched my Space Snails series into orbit! I’ve had space snails on my mind for months and I’ve played with them at home, but I hadn’t sent any out into the world yet. I knew that I wanted my first Dune piece to be a Space Snail, and I had a lot of fun executing it in black-and-white with ink. (All of my studies at home so far have been in color). It was also a fun challenge to write a little verse to accompany the snail and play with some alliteration. And it was such a treat to see my lovely little space snail in print when we picked up our zines this week!

For this October meet-up, I wanted to feature our vehicle. We’re just days away from a major trip that we’ve been saving and planning for for 1.5 years. For the last couple of years we’ve felt our time in Seattle was waning and we’ve traveled around on weekend outings to assess where we might like to end up next. In the absence of that next-place appearing to us, but with it evident that it was nevertheless still time to leave, we planned some extended travel instead.

This piece ended up turning into a break-up piece and actually afforded me some closure for our Seattle chapter thus far. Without intending to, I wrote a piece to accompany this drawing. You can read it on my writing blog. Apparently, there’s a lot I have to say to this city. It feels good to be saying it now, but this just begins to touch on it all.

So in four days we’ll drive out of the city and into the forest. Then we’ll hop from forests, National parks, coasts, state parks and the like through 9 states through the winter and into the Spring. During this time we should get some answers and we’ll return from our travels ready to start building our next life chapter.

Snail spins slowly in space… 💛

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Tonal Sketches

One of my biggest takeaways from the weekend watercolor workshop is the benefit of tonal studies. Since tone is something that I’ve struggled with, I’m delighted to add this tool to my toolbox! It seems like such an obvious practice to me now, but all of the disparate pieces from my classes hadn’t settled together yet for me to figure it out on my own.

In my Drawing class last month we used thumbnails to help us determine our compositional arrangement on the page. Then, we would do our tonal studies with charcoal on our large notepads. But it hadn’t occurred to me that I could integrate the two. In both of the classes I took last month we worked with tone. In Drawing we used charcoal and in Ink & Watercolor we used ink washes. Charcoal is rather fragile and messy and ink takes time to dry between layers, so neither mediums were something I’d thought of doing quick sketch studies with.

Yesterday in class I just used a pencil to lay down mid and dark values on my thumbnails. But our instructor also mentioned getting loose, quick sketches with an ink pen and a gray marker. I like the idea of practicing in that way because it maintains the same level of committing to the page and not over-fussing that we discussed in Ink & Watercolor. The temptation with pencil is to spend too much time shading in areas, or erasing when something goes awry. It’s easy to fall into making a fully rendered drawing instead of a sketch-study for a future work.

Each class I take contributes a new piece to the puzzle of my Build-Your-Own-Adventure approach to my art education. So, using the thumbnails I first learned about in Drawing class, the commitment to putting ink to paper promoted in my Ink & Watercolor class, and thumbnails as tonal studies from my recent Watercolor class, I have a new practice that I am pumped about using both out and about and at my desk at home!

Any finished artwork will most likely require an understanding of some combination of the following: color theory, tone, form, paint properties, perspective, and more. Any way that I can find to break things down into separate pieces is helpful for my learning. I can make more progress when I practice each of them separately and then integrate them together once I understand each of the pieces better. Otherwise things get messy very quickly! Any time I can limit some variables I’m grateful (For example: drawing only in black and white without color or painting my pre-stamped snails). These tonal sketches are yet another way to break down the process into bite-sized pieces. Instead of having to figure out tone and scale and form and perspective and paint all at once, I can figure them out one at a time!

For these, I started with a rough outline first (the 60-second pencil plan we used in Ink & Watercolor). Then I started examining my reference photo strictly on the basis of tone (as I did in my Drawing class with charcoal). This resulted in some lovely sketch renderings! But what’s neat is that I didn’t set out to ‘draw.’ I just sketched in some rough outlines and then filled in tone values as I practiced observing them.

I know this may sound really simple and to some it may seem that I’m belaboring it a little. But 2 months ago I thought I couldn’t draw. Last month’s classes taught me that maybe I could. Two weeks ago I couldn’t decode my supplies list for watercolor class, and now I understand the varying tools and supplies. All weekend long I felt like I couldn’t paint, and yet I did manage to get paint onto paper in a way that conveys subjects that are recognizable. I’m continually surprising myself and I’m so enjoying these simple revelations that help me glimpse behind the curtain and see how to break these processes down so that I can keep practicing and growing in my art.

Weekend Watercolor Workshop

I’ve just finished a weekend watercolor workshop and I have to say it was a challenging couple of days. First, I want to highlight all that I gained from this class because while it was a frustrating and challenging experience, I also learned a lot.

One of my biggest takeaways is how to select papers. When I signed up for this course a month ago, I couldn’t even understand the code-language that the supplies list appeared to be written in. With the help of a friend to figure out paints, I selected supplies the best that I could and arrived at my first day of class. It turned out I’d misunderstood the criteria for selecting the recommended paper, but I had an opportunity to try out the preferred paper and compare it to the 3 samples that I’d brought. I went out that night and got the softer paper for the second day of class. I learned what it is, where to find it, how to tear my own sheets into smaller ones, and how it differs from the other papers I’d been using. This is a big and exciting win!

We began the first day with a useful exercise for understanding the reactivity of my paints with one another. Having the ‘wrong’ paper worked against me in this exercise so I didn’t get as much blending information as I might have hoped. That afternoon we painted fruits and vegetables. I spent my time with a charming nectarine whom I very much enjoyed but also now consider my friendly nemesis. (Friendly in that we’re on good terms. Nemesis in that we haven’t come to any sort of understanding with one another yet). I painted the nectarine 3 times, and I’ve written more about that experience here. I learned about the benefits of letting pigments blend softly into one another on the page and to be on the lookout for places where I can add softness to an edge to help give an object more dimension or to make a shadow look more realistically diffused.

On Day 2, we shifted to landscapes and brought photos to use as reference. Despite bringing my own photos, which should have helped spark some excitement, I felt zero interest in painting landscapes. Truly, the only photo I wanted to paint was a lovely, brambly snail. We started by sketching out tone-studies. I started with the lovely snail, but felt I should at least attempt a couple of landscapes so I sketched out a couple of those, but my heart wasn’t in them. I did decide to give one landscape a go, with limited success.

The challenge of the Sunday afternoon portion of the class was many faceted. Frankly, I was feeling pretty brain-fried and exhausted toward the end of this weekend intensive. It was a lot of practice and learning for a medium still so unfamiliar to me. I felt like I’d had very limited success and not a lot of breakthroughs during the weekend, so I was on mental-overload. And the more friend I felt, the more stressful the environment felt. There were a couple of times when I’d start to proceed on my landscape in the best logical manner that I could think of just to bravely get paint on the page in a not-too-terrible fashion, and the instructor would rush over and exclaim dramatically and attempt to fix things on my page. I was already feeling daunted by the page, but these moments added additional reluctance to put brush to page because I was so worried about messing up.

When I’m alone at home I’m not afraid of the page and I have a curious explorer’s mindset with my paints. But I was all tense and controlling throughout my landscape experience and it shows in the painting. I know what I would change about it in a second iteration and how I would make those attempts, but it wasn’t something I felt like doing in class because I was tired, I couldn’t loosen up, and my heart wasn’t in it.

So I turned to my snail, which frankly I wish I’d followed my heart and started on from the beginning. Painting that snail was my happy-place and it got me through the rest of the afternoon. It wasn’t the assignment, but it gave me a safe way to play with my pigments and experiment with translating my values study into paint and to work with the paints on the page. Mostly, I felt like the instructor didn’t know what to do with me, and I didn’t know how to execute her suggestions to me, so it kind of felt like an impasse. I felt like a dummy for a lot of the weekend because I could hear what she said, and it could make sense conceptually but I still found I didn’t know what to do with any of the information to execute it. The snail allowed me to continue to be physically present in the room and finish out the class while giving myself a mental break from all the stress and confusion I was feeling around expectations and my limited understanding.

But now that I’m back home and I’ve had a good night’s sleep, I feel ready to face my old nemesis the nectarine, who I intend to paint again today. I feel ready to try the landscape again and do the things I wish had gone differently in the first one. At some point, I’ll probably finish the snail just for fun.

So I learned a lot in this class, even if I don’t feel like I have any tangible watercolor work [that I’m proud of] to show for it. Thanks to this class I will become a diligent sketcher of tonal studies and can’t wait to see how that helps me improve. I also learned through this experience that I have no interest whatsoever in being a painter. All I’ve ever wanted to be is an illustrator and painting just isn’t my medium of interest. Watercolor is how I want to lay down color, but I want to do that as part of an illustration, not loosely on the page in suggestive strokes of skies and clouds.

Once I realized that, it made sense to me why I was so drawn to the snail and why I found the landscape such an uninteresting subject to paint. So while I appreciate the experience that I gained throughout the weekend, I think part of why the instructor and I didn’t know what to do with each other is because she wanted to make loose and suggestive watercolor painters out of us, and I just have no interest in painting for painting’s sake. But I didn’t realize that until yesterday evening after the class had concluded. Perhaps if I’d figured it out sooner, maybe I wouldn’t have felt so vexed and confused by her instruction and I could have opened myself up to the process more. Meanwhile, I’m back getting back into my curious explorer’s mindset and back at my own desk where I will be taking all the learning I received through the weekend into my future practice.

Last Ink & Watercolor Class

It's now been a week since my last Ink and Watercolor class. I haven't posted my summary of the class sooner because I fell into an internet hole for a few days in which I did nothing but work on finishing up this website! I've also started an online watercolor course, so that's been keeping me busy as well. But I'm delighted to be sharing this summary with you now, because a lot happened on this last night of class!

The agenda for the class was to take a still-life to completion: 60-second-pencil-plan, contour outlines, ink-wash layers, watercolor layers, and final hatching. I brought the same snail to class wanting to practice drawing it from behind and challenge myself by trying to sort out foreshortening for the first time. The goal was to have the snail appear to be climbing up onto the cassette-tape box.

The infamous tape that gave me such trouble and resulted in the snail's wonky eyes. Also, notice the pencil lines suggesting where the snail should have gone to appear properly grounded. I do love the gorgeous texture on his skin though!

Oh mercy, it seemed like from the beginning it all went off the rails. I thought the cassette tape would be a good exercise in a basic shape (two rectangles) with some added interesting detail (the round and square cut-outs, for example). Boys as I wrong! First off, I once again got befuddled by contours as they relate to holes. Contour lines are something I can stick my pencil-tip behind. I continually draw the wrong side of 'hole' contours because I'm SEEING the line in the back (it was distinct! It was dark and black!) and not the one in the front (which doesn't even appear to be there. It's more like the absence of something!). But the back line, no matter how pronounced, is not a contour. So I had to white out my mistaken back line in the toothed tape-holes and add in the front line. Holes like that get me every time.

I also got hopelessly muddled on keeping my tape-box lines sorted in my head. In my Observational Drawing class, our instructor insisted that we draw all of our shapes through our other shapes, just to make sure we're staying on track and things end up in the right place. At the time he gave me that feedback, I admit I was unsure. But since then I can definitely understand it! It would have helped tremendously in this case. I ended up with a back, top-left corner of a tape box that shouldn't have been there because it lined up incorrectly with the lines it appears to join up with.

The front-edge of the cassette tape actually turned out to be terribly tricky. I got so bogged down with misdrawn lines and made quite a mess of it. So by the time I finally got the cassette to an okay state, I'd quite forgotten about my snail's lovely eye-stalk tentacles. That's why they look so goofy, because I had to work around the tape that I'd already inked in.

So I'm still working on seeing things 'front-to-back.' More often than not, I get carried away by working on the 'next-nearby-thing' rather than assessing my front-lines again. So, in this case, I started with the mushroom (a front-most thing) and the orb (which stood alone), then went on to the tape box (the next-nearby-thing to the mushroom), making sure to not finish all of my lines so as to leave room for the cassette tape and snail. What I failed to catch, however, is that I needed to leave room for my snail's tentacles too.

I must be more careful about keeping an eye on ALL PARTS of my front-most objects, not just the one I start with and not just a portion of the one I'll be getting to next (like leaving room for the snail's head, but not his tentacles). This is a good reminder to keep my image working at all the same rate and not get too bogged down in one area, as my Ob. Drawing instructor was always trying to help remind me. By getting so bogged down in the tape, I lost sight of the snail, which was actually my primary subject and interest in completing this piece.

So everything was off to a terrible start and honestly I felt like a big storm cloud was settling over me. I admit I was grumpy about it! I thought more than once about starting over, but felt like that defied the intent of the class (to let go of perfectionist tendencies and just be in the sketchbook and being flexible with how it all manifests as it goes along). I even pulled out a sheet of tracing paper I had tucked in the back of my book from a former project. But again, it didn't seem in keeping with the intent of the class. So instead, I took notes on the tracing paper about my process and my challenges and resolved to write about it later. Meanwhile, I finished inking and then took a quick break and called Benjamin to fuss about the disastrous consequences on my page. (Sometimes just fussing to Benjamin can help me feel better. He's a very patient person and I'm grateful he let's me fuss! :-D)

I came back in and worked on my ink-washes. I tried really hard to see the tonal qualities. Even though I didn't like the drawing, it was still a great opportunity to practice applying tone. I really applied myself and am largely happy with how that part turned out. I can tell I'm making progress with tone and ink-wash, so that was encouraging! But I decided not to take the drawing into full-color since I was hardly invested in it after so many mishaps during the contour portion.

The second contour-drawing in which I spent more time with my pencil-plan. The snail looks properly grounded here, like he is firmly stuck to the ground while reaching up to climb onto the cassette case. Also, his eyes are properly alert in the direction he is headed!

Instead, I turned the page and started the drawing again. This time I spent more than 60-seconds on my pencil sketch. I used what I learned in my Observational Drawing class and worked harder at forming my shapes. I drew all of my lines through each of the objects to make sure everything lined up. I used some tracing paper to trace my snail. I took a photo of it to have the camera flatten the image for me and laid the tracing-paper over the snail to see where I went wrong.

After trying to sort it out myself, I asked for feedback from my instructor about how I could have made my snail look properly foreshortened (since again, that was the whole point of this piece for me) and he helped me see where I'd made assumptions about what I saw and helped me see what was actually there instead. (You can see those pencil corrections on the first drawing. The snail's body should have been wider on the left side). I used all of that information to inform my second drawing, which I had just enough time to contour and which turned out much better than the first! (I've written more about how I'm finding a happy medium between my two classes here).

Then, I went back and did a little half-hearted hatching and final contours on the original drawing, just to have something to show at the end of the class. Of course it would have been lovely to end class on a high note where I felt like I'd improved wondrously and had a final drawing I was really proud of! But honestly, this feels more authentic anyway. It's an accurate reflection of where I'm at in my learning and the most significant takeaway from this last class in my opinion is that I used my agency to pick and choose what I wanted to get out of that class.

Sometimes the most important thing is to push through the imperfections, but I'd done that all of the previous weeks. That wasn't what I felt like I needed practice on. Instead, I needed to figure out how I could make the best use of my time in that class and so I chose to really focus on dialing in my practice with seeing tone and layering washes and for that to be the sole important purpose of that first piece. I chose to start the drawing over again, discarding the '60-second-rule' for pencil-planning and instead seeing how I could begin to integrate my learning from my two classes to create a better piece. Then, I asked for help in improving the one skill that I'd never practiced before (foreshortening) and couldn't see well on my own.

This to me actually has all the hallmarks of a successful class. Success won't always mean that I end up with a final drawing that I'm proud of. But showing up, problem-solving, knowing how to prioritize what's most important to me, and asking for help when needed are all indicative of much success indeed!

This whole course was wonderful. It gave me the courage to put things on the page. It inspired me to keep my sketchbook on me and take it all over. It introduced me to the Urban Sketchers community. It encouraged me to not over-think it, to cut myself some slack, and to just keep drawing. Truly a successful experience.

Final Drawing Project

Today is my last Observational Drawing class. I wasn’t excited about this class going in, but as it unfolded I can honestly say it was such a great class and I’m so very glad that I took it. I thought ‘still life’ would be such a boring subject, but I’ve actually enjoyed it so much! I thought black and white would be boring too, but it’s actually been super rewarding and fun! The first couple of weeks felt frustrating and discouraging, but things started to gel in the third week. And after we covered charcoal in the fourth, I was hooked!

This is my final project. A ‘self-portrait still-life’ filled with objects meaningful to me. So I chose a snail (obviously) and one of Parsley’s plants; my address book for all the letter writing I love to do (not to mention the snail stationary that I make!); a pen for the letter writing and drawing both; and watercolors because of my love for vibrant rainbow colors.

Five weeks ago I thought I couldn’t draw... and look at me now!! I honestly can’t believe I drew this. I didn’t know I had it in me! It’s the best drawing I’ve ever done, I truly enjoyed the challenge of doing it, and I am so proud of it!

First Snaily Still-Life

From Ink & Watercolor class last week: an insulator from my dad’s collection, a pretty rock, a snail, an old bottle of stamping ink, a small piece of jewelry, and two shells.

I’m very happy with how this one turned out. My studying of color in the days before class helped me be able to better mix colors to match what I was going for which was so rewarding! I still had to ask for helpful reminders about how to mix brown and black though. I don’t have those memorized yet (although by now I can remember brown. I still can’t remember black).

I spent the most time on the snail, because obviously it’s the most important part to me. It was my second go-round with a sparkly rock and it went much better this time. It was my first time with translucent glass and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out except that I accidentally painted over my highlights in my insulator. Good grief! But that pitfall paint over all my highlights in my ink bottle so I’m super pumped with how that turned out!

I spent a lot of time trying to really see the lid on the bottle and it turned out much better than past attempts at similar items. While the pink shell isn’t even discernible (it’s on its side, you’re looking into it’s hole), the yellow one turned out better than I expected upon first contouring it, so that was a pleasant surprise.

I still need to work on color-mixing (the snail’s body turned out darker and more yellow than I wanted) and tone, but it’s encouraging that each week I can see measurable improvement!

There's only one class left. I will miss this class when it’s over, but these still-life exercises have been so helpful that I suspect I’ll keep doing them at home. It will be a great way for me to continue working on seeing contour, tone, and color - which are all areas that I need a lot more practice in!

First Rainbow Slug

Yesterday afternoon I made my first rainbow slug. It’s a surprise for a friend who prefers her snails without shells! I had a lot of fun working the design out and especially loved painting it. I started with a rough print of just the body part of one of my snail stamps just to get my guidelines going, then I planned out the rest in pencil and finished it up in ink. I gave it 'rainbow' status by adding watercolor. I have to say that the more time I spend with watercolors the more fun I keep having with them!

Parsley's Big Adventure

I took a couple of days off from work strictly to work on creative projects long-held in my brain that I haven't gained any traction on. I got Parsley out of his home to join me on my desk while I worked, and I proceeded to not get a single thing done because I couldn't stop marveling at him and watching him and delighting in him and filming his every move!

We had the very best day together. He snailed all over the place! He explored the top of the desk, the underside, the edges of the tabletop, and up and down the legs. I had a cassette playing, one with some random piano instrumentals. At one point Chariots of Fire came on, and I admit it was the perfect Parsley soundtrack. He just looked so majestic and lovely making his slow u-turn on the table leg to head back up while that song played in the background, accompanying his adventure.

I now refer to that tape as Parsley's Soundtrack. And that song especially promises to evoke memories of our shared day together for a long time to come! I may not have made any progress on my snail-art ideas... but I sure did enjoy some extended hangout time with my most beloved muse. 

Colorful Snails

This past week I’ve been exploring some new ideas with the stamps and these are some of the fun things that have materialized. I had fun with inking patterns and texture on a black and white motif. I finally put brush to paper on a free-floating cosmic snail I've been thinking about for a while. I stamped over watercolor washes and cut out rainbow snails. And I stamped a multi-colored snail-postcard from our collection of hand-carved stamps. I'm really delighted with how everything turned out and now have even more ideas for future tests... particularly in black and white and a new spin on the cosmic snail motif.

Reflections on 2017

I’m grateful for 2017. And as I’ve rang in the new year in Texas and am waiting to ring in the PNW new year via text with my favorite human, I’ve taken some time to look back on 2017 and consider how I’ve grown and all I’m grateful for. Here are my 2017 highlights with my art:

> To begin with, I started this IG this past year as a means to give myself accountability with my creativity and to have a place to track my progress and not forget the pieces that keep adding up to increase my skills and confidence.

> This year was a year of trees and snails. All through springtime I got to know the trees in my neighborhood and was forever snapping reference snapshots for my drawings. I was enamored with their changing beauty from pre-spring into summer. I sketched trees: both realistic and highly stylized. However, few of those snippets ever saw the light of day because I met Parsley and detoured straight into snails.

> Meanwhile, I launched my first postcards out into the world with mine and Benjamin’s original photography. I also recommitted myself to my love of photography: shedding the insecurities that I’d let build up due to being married to a professional photographer. I recaptured the passion of my youth, dove headfirst into my own interests and style and got back into film photography with 3 new-to-me film cameras of varying sorts.

> I took Naomi Bulger’s Beautiful Letter e-course and was inspired to take long-desired steps with letter-writing: both in art and audience. I have an address just for pen-palling now so that I can expand my reach to others who need the gift of caring mail.

> I grew in skills and confidence in my illustrations. I applied all that I learned in the few classes I took in 2016 and kept practicing. Towards the end of this year I began a self-paced at-home course that is helping me even more with skills and confidence.

> And all the while, snails. So many snails. Benjamin and I dedicated ourselves to shared creation of art this year, and nowhere has that been more apparent than with snail art. He’s carved stamps from my drawings, and he’s done photo shoots for me to use the images as subjects for my drawings.

> I’ve used the stamps for making watercolored postcards and stationary sets. Both of which I’ve been sending out as my stationary of choice through this season.

This past year held so much richness, beauty, bravery, and learning. I hope for more of the same in 2018. I have big hopes for 2018 and look forward to seeing what unfolds. Here’s to the new year and the adventures that await us. May we all find daily blessings to be grateful for. 💛

Snaily Thank-Yous & Nibs

I sent some snaily thank-yous out yesterday evening. I busted out my nib and ink for the first time in almost 2 years and not only addressed the envelopes with it but wrote both notes with it too! I'm pretty pumped about that. My ink-cup was all dried up, so I had to clean it out and refill it with lovely, silky new ink. My bathroom sink looked like a squid threw a major tantrum in there and inked all over the place!

I recently ordered several new nibs and a new nib-holder and they arrived yesterday. I'm excited to start playing with them later this week. I’m using them as my reward for finishing up one more pencil drawing (which I haven’t started yet. I’m in major procrastination mode). But my old nib and pen weren’t part of that deal, so I could play with them all through the evening without any internal conflict. (Heh, heh. :-D)

It felt great to be nibbling again. So I'm sending more snails out this evening by the light of my desk-lamp. Even though it's only my second evening back with the nib, I felt so much more at ease with it. It’s coming back slow and steady! I haven't used my mushroom stamp in a while and was perplexed to find that it and my original snail stamp have aged weirdly (they’re all speckled in the recesses where they shouldn’t even have ink!). So that’s concerning, but fine, because they still stamp no problem. It’s just part of the learning process as I get more into handcarved stamps and work to understand what they need to be happy.

These envelopes feature a couple of our latest snail stamps! As per our usual routine, Benjamin carved them for me from my drawings.

New Snail Stamps!

There's a new snail stamp! Actually, there are four new snail stamps ready to go for upcoming projects. I’m spending the evening brainstorming project ideas and putting stamps to paper to see where it takes me. I'm thankful for Benjamin and his awesome carving skills! We are having a blast on this collaborative project.

Hibernation Mode

This is an accurate reflection of my life right now. I’m in straight-up hibernation mode. It feels like it came on me suddenly and all unfinished desired projects or ideas just stopped right where they are, which has been a nice (and needed) mental vacation.

I’m grateful for friends who understand how much I need alone time, especially in this season. It means so much to me to have this season of quiet space to myself for a while.

A Very Snaily Evening

It’s been a very snaily evening. After finishing the mushrooms, I finished up a first draft of the next snail drawing. I’m pretty sure I chose the most challenging pose to start with from last weekend’s photoshoot. But even though it was hard, it was a great reminder about focusing on shape and scale and drawing what I actually see instead of drawing what I assume a snail looks like based on preconceived observations.

Anyway, it was tough. But I’m pretty pleased with it. I’ll be tweaking and refining it before it goes to the carving stage, but it’s a great start!

I started a warm-toned watercolor snail to wind down afterwards and I'm really digging its look so far.

Meanwhile, Parsley has woken from his slumber and has been snailing around and is a delight to hang out with while I work.

We’ve also welcomed two new snaily houseguests! They are both still snoozing away. It’s always a lot to adjust to a new home, so I expect they’ll take a couple of days to adjust to their temporary digs. I’m just so delighted they’ve come to stay a while and can’t wait to get to know them better.

A Successful Snail Photoshoot!

We had a photoshoot with Parsley this weekend in our DIY tabletop studio and got some truly great shots! I have so many ideas for snail art and this shoot was the first step. I’m so grateful to Benjamin for such great photos!! More snaily-good times are around the bend. I’m so excited!

A Zany Tropical Leaf-Eater

I had a zany tropical leaf-eater in mind when I conceived this critter: a snail that could easily enjoy the safety of camouflage in its leafy home, but also totally rock it on its own with its awesome vibrant hues. I'm very happy to have snails to color until things calm down and I have time to draw more. This daily snail is a stamp with watercolor pencils (and a water brush).

Tomorrow we have a photo shoot planned with my snail, Parsley, and I’m really looking forward to it! Here’s hoping he offers lots of lovely poses to use as references for my drawings! I know he will love the outing and enjoy the adventure of having so many fun things to climb on and explore. I can’t wait to spend some quality time with him.

Bridging the Gap

Another day another snail!

I have a whole range of ideas for more snail art. Since I don’t have the time to make them all come true right now, I’ve been coping by journaling my ideas during my breaks at work in conjunction with stamping and coloring snails in the evenings. It helps bridge the creative gap until I have the time to put more things into action. This critter is a stamp with Prismacolors.

An Edgy Rainbow Snail

Another day another snail.

This time it's an edgy rainbow snail! Colorful but roughed up a little. Cheerful but with some gritty texture. I guess it’s kind of how I feel about life. Lovely and awesome but also messy and imperfect.

Also, the expression marks around his head make it feel like he’s startled or exclaiming about something which I love. Snails keep quiet, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have feels about stuff!

This hand-carved stamp features water-color, prismacolor, and ink.