This week, I was mostly working remotely, while on a trip to visit friends & family. I do like this advantage of digital art — I can create anywhere my laptop is — but I’m eager to get a mark-making tool back in hand.

Meetings & Making

Before I got on the plane, I wanted to address a pair of large collages I had lying around, waiting for inspiration. It came in the form of India ink.

Unifying the darker values with a big brush full of ink was just the ticket — at least until the next step occurs to me.

Somewhere at the end of last week, I did have a scribble entry I didn’t share.

Like the collage repairs above, scribbles in ink are satisfying. This round, they’re executed in sepia.

Speaking of dark values, I keep visiting my urban posters during studio meetings, and warming them up.

I’m going to try each of the base photographs I took of these ripped-up posters, and see how they look together. So far, I like the dark value distribution, the warmth and scribbles added on top, and the idea that while this is based on a photo, like my earliest work, it’s abstract like my latest efforts.

It was a great week again for the Paris Collage Collective: a beautiful poppy image from Anna Meshkov on Unsplash.

I tried integrating the poppy stems with various scribbles, and was most pleased with the middle one.

Even while travelling, I try to make art every weekday, and usually I do bring some kind of reduced toolkit. This time, I prioritized my camera, to grab some images of houses that ring a bell for me. I grew up in a house that looked like these, and I’m looking forward to popping them in as layers, as I process what feels like home to me in my new city.

I’m heading back to my home studio today, to give those brushes and inks another workout. I was reminded, while meeting up with a high school art buddy, that it’s not easy to keep art in your life. She reminded me of that, years ago, when I was working too hard, and I’m grateful. How do you keep a creative practice going, even with minimal time or materials?

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