actual footage of me watching the presidential debate last night.
Exhausted
two tired parents
Local Bakery
My local bakery is closing. I’m not sure if it’s because of the pandemic or because the family decided the time was right, but it’s happening and I’m pretty sad about it. I was a regular patron, and I have some fond memories tied to the place. They knew me by name and I felt so welcome in there.
I recently saw the owner baking a baguette in our library’s online Storytime about bakeries. I decided to grab a frame from the video and do a quick sketch last night.
Rain
Cozy weather is here.
The food bus
The school district delivers lunches for the kids on a bus while my oldest is distance learning.
basketball
super quick one last night
Nana and Grandpa's house
Been thinking a lot about my grandparents lately. Grandpa still lives in Cajun country Louisiana.
Flow
Lively morning
Music, school and a wild toddler while breakfast is served.
First day
Joe preps our oldest for school
Distance
Self care in 2020
Joe’s playing ghost of tsushima.
And I'm getting a history lesson.
Welcome back to the internet
I'm back online… more or less. At least I'd like to try to be back online. Going off grid to work on projects during a pandemic is too isolated. So here I am, ready to make things again.
What I've been up to
Hi world. It’s been a while. I’ve been making more art lately, ironically in the face of both the plein air show I was going to be a part of and Rose City Comic Con which I was tabling at both getting cancelled in light of the pandemic. It’s a bummer, but I do have one piece of good news…
I have a standing desk! Which is a big deal because my now 3 year old is a terrorizing monster when I’m trying to work. Who knew toddlers would find a magical drawing device with a screen attractive? He is relentless and now that the desk is raised up he pretty much leaves me alone, which has been a game changer. I’m now FINALLY working on a comic proposal with my good friend Kelly Garrett to submit to Webtoons, which Im very excited about because the story is solid.
In other news i got into something of a street art battle with some local hooligans. Graffiti is very rare in my small town and out of nowhere there’s been some tagging going on. My fence got it, so I decided to paint over it with an illustration. It took me weeks and about a quarter of the way through, it got tagged AGAIN! I’m still a little worried my dragon will get sprayed over but for now he seems to be staying. You can see some green grafitti around him from the second incident, so I’ll have to brainstorm new ideas to cover that for sure.
I Designed a finalists soccer tournament t-shirt for my husbands workplace, they’re doing a big tournament later this year. He works at Nike headquarters so I’m pretty excited to have athletes on campus walking around with my shirt.
and finally, I’ve been doing some digital plein airs while walking around my town, although I haven’t done one in a couple weeks. There’s a specific spot I’d like to paint but it’s tricky to get to, so we’ll see if I end up doing that one.
I think that’s all I got! Good to be making art again for sure.
Drawing flowers in sharpie
Sometimes when I send a print out I draw on the cardboard I use to keep it flat. Today it’s the flowers on the dining table.
Today was a lot. I think many people know the feeling these days… These flowers are the only art I ended up creating, but that’s ok. For now, that’s enough.
Are Digital Plein Air Paintings possible?
Hi from the Oregon quarantine. I went out yesterday to get away from the kids for a bit. For context, I was solo parenting for about 3 weeks due to a business trip, one during which I was supposed to meet husband for 2 weeks in the netherlands, but it was cancelled because of the spread of COVID-19. It was all kind of a bummer, except that husband is home, and that is wonderful. So I was desperate for a break. I ended up at the coast, thinking I could avoid the city, it was sort of successful?
While out there I did a plein air painting on my samsung tablet. I use Photoshop sketch. It reminded me of the old debate we used to have in college about whether digital art was as valuable as traditional art. I think Digital art is wonderful, a miracle tool to eliminate more of the translation between brain and paper. Kazu Kibuishi said it best when I asked him advice at a con once, which was that your drawing skills shouldn’t get in the way of your ideas. He said I should be making a finished idea EVERY DAY, and at the time I thought he was insane, but as I’ve gotten older his advice makes more sense to me. I was able to do a plein air painting without lugging around my eisle or dealing with oil paint, and isn’t that a good thing?
In college there were many people who detested digital art, even illustrators. One classmate even used Alex Ross as their example for “traditional art that couldn’t be replicated.” I pointed out to him that Alex Ross was a digital artist, and found the interaction really interesting.
I’m entering a plein air competition this summer. I will be using oils, not my tablet, because I think it goes without saying that digital plein air will not be accepted. I don’t even have to ask, and I understand why traditional paint is more appropriate for this type of thing.
But if plein air is supposed to be the raw capture of what your eye sees in person, rather than memory or from a photo, I reason that doing it on a tablet is just as effective as paints.