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Limited Palette Portrait
This weekend think about limiting your color choices so that you can maximize your color mixes. Here’s a portrait with the colors I used listed. Four pigments resulting in a lot of different mixes. When you mix with a limited palette your color mixes have a relationship to each mix that is also on your […]
Mixed Media View of the Backyard: Expanding Your Visual Vocabulary
It’s always a great idea to take a moment and look out the window. Our neighbors at the back of our yard have a lush growth of ferns at this time of the year. I turned the page in my journal and sketched on this pre-painted background—the verso page background was in the same vein […]
The Creature of Chronology Takes a Break
In my March 28, 2026 post “IFJM: Sometimes Projects Creep Up on You,” I discussed, in response to people asking about a public celebration of International Fake Journal Month, why there wouldn’t be one this year. Then I set about thinking how to encourage people who wanted to do one anyway. I ended up setting […]
Found Some More Grids
Sometimes life can seem very quick, agonizingly slow, and full of all the wrong things—all at the same time. If your life feels like that it’s important to pick up your journal and start writing notes about your life and activities; and to keep drawing (or start drawing if you haven’t already). These activities will […]
End-of-Year Journal Wrap Up
Blog readers know I like to do an end-of-year wrap up. I look back at my journal productivity. It helps me see an overview of my creative practice and formulate new goals and directions for the future. I also can see at a glance what is happening with my practice and how I might need […]
Ink Only? Paint It? Or Let It Go?
Everyday we make choices in our journals. The simplest for me is stop at ink only? Paint over the ink (opaquely or transparently)? Or leave the texture alone all together? We get to make a different, individual decision every time we turn a page in our journal. Long ago I was more strict in my […]
What Filling a Grid in Our Journals Tells Us
I’ve been sharing a bunch of journal grids lately on the blog. Let’s get right to it—filling a grid in your journal tells you at a glance what is catching your eye in the world. For me, in this grid, it’s obviously noses. Now if you look at one of your grids and you see […]
Epiphany About Journal Grids
Don’t be surprised when you start keeping a journal that it will alter your life in many ways. It will help you weed through choices personal and professional. And it will remind you what matters to you artistically and creatively—if you listen. No detailed post today because of a family emergency. But “Epiphany about Journal […]
Working with My Non-Dominant Hand
In January this year I was working in the kitchen. I just moved my right hand at one point while swinging my body in another direction and I caught the top of my hand on the underside of the counter overhang. Ouch. Is there a “funny bone” in the hand? Of course I put ice […]
In Context: Palette Choices for a Triad
You can click on the image to read the text on the page. You’ll learn more about the pigments I used and why; more about my choice of subject matter; and about a brush I wish to replace—but that looks unlikely as it is no longer listed on Cheap Joe’s website and they haven’t answered […]