Currently Browsing: Resistance
Project Friday: How To Deal with Crappy Days in Your Visual Journal
Here’s a question I’m asked frequently: How do you deal with crappy days in your journal? Not long ago a student explained to me that when she kept a written journal she would often write about the stress and frustration in that journal, but then never look back at it. She felt that her visual […]
Letting Things Go, Even in the Pursuit of Goals: The Little Journal That Got Away
Note: This post was originally scheduled to run at the end of December 2017. Due to technical issues with the blog I’m just getting to it now. If you read my blog you’ll know that I keep track of the number of pages that I create each year. I do this because it is a […]
Moods and Momentum in Your Daily Drawing Practice
The sketch in today’s post is the first sketch I did on the day following my November 19, 2017 fall (torn tendons and ligaments, and small fracture in left foot). I think you can tell from the sketch exactly how high my frustration level is as I sit up with a pen, my foot in […]
Why Drawing Practice Matters and What Your Line Can Tell You
Readers of my blog know that I love observing my process. I can’t help myself. Even during emergencies. I think you can learn a lot about yourself and find ways to always sketch. On November 19 I fell in a friend’s foyer. I was rushing across the foyer to my fanny pack to change my […]
What Do You Have on Hand?
It has been hectic here lately. I notice I’ve been getting grumpy. It’s not because I’m busy. I love being busy. It’s because I miss the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen (and the Pentel Colorbrush Pen cousins). All my projects involve other media right now. They leave little time in the day for my tired eyes to […]
Maintaining Momentum and Fun in Our Daily Practice
If we want to create a daily practice, whether it’s exercise, diet, thought, or art related, we need to make sure that we contain elements of fun in that practice. It’s those elements of fun which keep us coming back to the practice. And ultimately it’s the fun that we bring into our work that […]
Use What You Have Out
I have a lot of students who tell me they don’t have time to sketch. They tell me they have to make a space to work or they have to get supplies out. They tell me that they don’t have time to make background textures. They also admit that they are doing about 15 other […]
Happy New Year—Make 2017 A Year of Sketching
Left: Pentel Brush Pen and light washes of gouache on a Canson watercolor board (9 x 6 inches) with Montana Marker background. Reginald D. Hunter is a comedian/entertainer. I cut one finger pulling boxes down (paper cuts!!!) and cut another picking up something sharp. Typing slowly. But that’s OK because all I wanted to […]
Project Friday—Improving Your Drawing Practice with Repetition, the Right Tool, Being Invested, and Celebration
Above: Practice sketches in a 6 x 8 inch journal using a thick, soft, solid, fiber-tipped black brush pen and Montana Marker (background) as well as a large, fat-leaded Lyra metallic pencil. I’m feeling around to sense the nuance in the pose, the angle of the eyes, the negative space that first attracted me, to […]
Project Friday: Just Get Something Down on Paper
Above: Selfie made with bold Uni Posca pen (orange, the tip is about 1/4 inch wide) and a Sakura Pigment Medium Brush Pen (solid tip). The drawing is in a 9 x 12 inch Dylusions journal—which I cannot recommend for structural reasons specific to how I work. I'm sorry, but when I've worked in it […]