Practice
Here's a practice pencil sketch of the tree across the road from us as we sat in the big picture window of the coffee shop this morning. It's a new experience for me to sketch on location. But sitting in the soft light of the big picture window with my back to the cafe and watching the cars and people go by just outside, I found it to be a very lovely experience.
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.
I'm at my desk tonight for another very snaily evening.
Tonight I’m finalizing the next snail for carving & also painting postcards to send out to some special peeps. I’ve got hot tea, a couple of beeswax candle companions, and an instrumental Halloween mix playing. It’s feeling extra autumnal around here and I love it!
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.
Mushrooms are in progress because snails need colorful wonderlands in which to roam.
Hand-carved stamp + micron + watercolor.
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!
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.
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.
I’ll tell y’all a secret... I illustrated my first envelopes 1.5 years ago. Mushroom drawings... that are still in my desk drawer. I had a blast making them and am still really proud of them. But I had a crisis of confidence about sending them out and so they’ve just sat there ever since. I have to move them out of the way every time I need a plain envelope to send a letter.
Well, since then, I found the lovely @naomibulger and this summer I took her Beautiful Letter course. It was so nurturing for the budding mail-artist in me that’s just been dying to get out. Now we have a printer for our home so I can print the lovely envelope templates in her newsletters and coloring book.
I have to say that while her course helped unlock my creativity, it was the envelope templates that helped unlock my confidence. After coloring her lovely fox template I felt confident that I could use what I learned while spending time with the fox to draw a portrait of my dear friend’s puppy. I did and then I mailed it! This feels like such a big breakthrough!
When Naomi was finishing up her coloring book she was taking requests for things people would like to have included in the template designs. For the life of me I couldn’t come up with a single thing to suggest. Since then, I have thought of a whole list of things I’m dying to see on envelopes, and at first I thought with regret that I didn’t think of them sooner to suggest for her to illustrate. But then it hit me that if I can draw this puppy that I can draw the others myself too! So now I have a whole list of things I can’t wait to put on envelopes and send out to the world.
Thanks to Naomi's support and encouragement through her work I'm finally drawing and sending things out instead of letting them languish in my desk. I am so excited about that and so grateful.
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.
More work on the same snail. This time pen and ink over a lightly stamped image. It's great practice for hand-control and it's also fun to play with smoothing out the lines some and adding some subtle variation.
I took the night off from responsibility, entertainment, you name it, so that I could write some postcards to very dear folks. And I have to say that my brain feels so much better for having done it.
These postcard images are all ours: either photos we took ourselves or photos from our vintage collection. I've mentioned before that I have a longtime love affair with postcards. Sending my own images out into the world in postcard form just takes that love to a whole new level.
When I send snailmail out to folks, I send a piece of myself - my thoughts, my heart, my handwriting - and adding my own images to that mix makes my heart swell! It's just one more way to give something of myself to show my love for the recipients.
Wow! I dreamt of my latest snail drawing being a stamp so I can use it on all sorts of things and Benjamin made my dream come true!!
We just did our first test print to make note of all the areas we want to touch up on the carving and then he'll finish it up for me. I'm so excited!! I already have a couple of projects I can't wait to stamp up with this lovely creature!
Another day another snail! Pencil on newsprint. It's the same reference pic as yesterday's first snail drawing, but way better this time! I love this lovely and noble critter!
I used one of the shells from my small collection as a reference which helped me settle on how to shape and shade the shell. It was very helpful to have a 3D model!
I hope to always be collecting snail shells for inspiration and reference, but always take care to find them myself, buy them from resale shops, or buy from reputable people who can visit with me about where their shells come from. I don't want any shells from snails who were killed just to harvest their shells!
My love for snails runs deep. Drawing them makes me feel closer to them and allows me to reflect on some of what they mean to me. Using a shell aided me in my drawing and imbued more life into the finished snail. I couldn't possibly imbue them with such life and love if those shells were obtained without respect for the life of the inhabitant that once called them home.
Some late night snail drawing practice.
I'd like to be able to proficiently draw snails, so this past weekend I collected several line drawings of snails to keep on my phone so that I always have a gallery with me to practice from. That way, no matter where I am, if I have a pad, a pencil and my snail inspiration, I can practice drawing these lovely creatures.
I have a passion for postcards that dates back to probably around age 7 or 8. I mean a true and deep, undeniable, bonafide love for postcards.
It's a treasured ritual of mine to send postcards out to family and friends when I travel. And if you really want to make me feel loved, just send me a postcard from your own travels. Postcards are my love-language! Most recently, postcards have also been my salvation in keeping up with my beloved correspondence even when I've felt stretched thin. They really are the best.
For years I've dreamt of having postcards made from our personal photo collection, and I finally did it!! They've arrived, they are gorgeous, and I'm completely smitten! A few of these are already addressed and ready to be sent on their way, but I had to get a family photo first to commemorate the beauteous achievement of this long-held desire. So many great trips, places and experiences held here in these pretty bits of paper. I can't wait to send these lovelies out into the world!
I've been super into stylized trees lately. For a few months now I've been collecting snapshots of trees that pique my interest throughout the city. I've also been getting picture-books from the library and studying how other illustrators choose to stylize their trees and other plant life and implementing bits and pieces into my own creations. A dash of an idea from one book mixed with ingredients from other books to inform how I sculpt a limb or how I shape a canopy.
I'm trying to think as much out of the box as I can. That's why I'm so drawn right now to highly stylized fauna. What are the shapes that make a tree? What are the colors? If I strip down all the detail what do I have left? And then how to I re-insert detail in a way that compliments the stripped down approach? I love thinking about this stuff.
So these trees, and others in my sketchbook, are informed in part by trees in my neighborhood, and in part by brilliant illustrators who inspired me, and in part by my own dreams of wanting to build the things I see in my head and make them real.
It's an incredible feeling to walk through my neighborhood and see the trees I've collected in photos the have become muses to draw from. Spending time with them in observation and then in drawing creates an uncommon intimacy. They pop out at me in the landscapes of my walks now because I know them. I readily notice how they evolve as they pass through each season. It's also gratifying to pick up a book that impacted me and flip through it and remember how it contributed each little understanding of form or texture or color as I integrated those ideas into my own work.
I'm grateful for a neighborhood of trees and bookshelves full of books. My well is full!
This is an envelope I made for my lovely friend. It's marker, colored pencil and acrylic on a kraft paper envelope. Orchard on a Starry Night. The plum tree is my very favorite. You can't tell from the photo, but the plums are ever so slightly raised and rounded. I delighted in running my fingers over them.
I received this gorgeous rabbit journal cover as a surprise from a dear friend today. And I recently picked up the perfect pencil pouch while shopping with another dear friend. Ever since I've carried it with me daily so that I always have my topmost favorite drawing supplies with me at all times. I'll be adding this rabbit to my every-day-pack just as soon as I fill it with paper. I'm grateful for items that feel great in my hands, pack up small and inspire me with their whimsy and beautiful illustrations every time I see them in my bag or pull them out to use. And I love that I have the thoughts of great friendships tied up with them too.
The must-have things in my personal drawing kit besides paper (which will happily now be rabbit-wrapped) are my mechanical pencil & eraser and two ballpoint pens (because I just can't bear to not have a backup if i need it), followed by a black and a brown micron pen, a black felt tip pen, a black brush tip pen, a 6" stainless ruler, my prismacolor ebony pencil and its accoutrements (a protective pencil cap, a pencil sharpener, and also a tortillon, which isn't shown because I spilled water on my bag this week and am only just realizing I forgot to replace it in my kit).
I also have colored pencils and markers and paints I enjoy using, but this is my daily on-the-go must-have kit that packs down small and is an uncomplicated, simple joy to use.