Here's some nib and ink practice from last night. I can’t believe I never knew how great it is to draw with a nib until these last few months!
True, you can’t beat microns for portability, so they’ll always have a place. But I find nibs so much more gratifying. The way they scratch across the page and the way the ink flows off and pools in the dark spots. It’s so satisfying.
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. 💛
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.
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.
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.
I’m completely in my relaxed and peaceful happy place when I’m sitting next to Parsley.
He lives right next to my seat at our kitchen workbench. So when we eat dinner or play games, I’m sitting by him and being with him. Whether he’s sleeping or gliding or munching, I love being with him. I can feel myself relaxing when I’m near him.
Benjamin most often uses the workbench for his creative projects. I have two other desks that I split my work between. But when I’m hanging out with Benjamin I sit at the table with him, in my spot next to Parsley. This evening, I brought my paints. It’s the first time I’ve painted here. I always opt for the floor or my desk instead. But this evening has been a revelation.
There is nothing like painting rainbow mushrooms next to my sleeping snail. I felt such a deep contentment and found myself reflecting on how grateful I am. How I feel like this is what it feels like to be living my best and most ideal life. And how lucky I feel to be able to experience such deep and profound contentment in that.
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!