Encyclopedia of: Birds, Failures, Should Haves, Could Haves

So Tuesday has come and gone, and I'm happy to say that my Sketchbook Project was dropped into a mailbox to begin it's journey to the Brooklyn Art Library, deadline met.

Thoughts on the project: I am proud to have finished this year. I would do it again (and will be, as the Limited Edition sketchbook is due in April). I don't love all of the pages, and that's okay. Some of them break my heart, and that's okay too.

The process was less-than-strange. I treated it as I would any of my other sketchbooks, not thinking much about how other people would be seeing it as each page was finished. I did take care to choose mediums that would last as the book is passed through multiple hands, but as far as content, I ended up immersing myself in it as though it would be without an audience.

Which is why posting the scanned pages on the internet has been a little scary. I'm no stranger to putting my sketchbooks online, but it's always been different. More filtered. If a page is too personal, I don't scan it. It's that simple. But this one? It feels exposing in a whole new way. One that I haven't yet felt with showing other sketchbooks, or even wholly at gallery shows. I have even written and rewritten this post a few times, unsure of how much I should or should not be sharing. There is an odd twinge of guilt in creating something out of memories that do not solely belong to you, and the guilt increases tenfold when you show that creation off.

So, finding myself out of things to say, here are some of my aesthetically favorite pages from the book. You can see them all here, or on my Art House page.

Stems and bones and stone walls too.

The last two pictures are the center pages in my 2012 Sketchbook Project. The postmark deadline is January 31st, and I'm excited because it looks like I'm going to complete it in time (as I've mentioned, I failed at the 2011 project). I've put the Limited Edition on hold for now, but will be diving in as soon as the 2012 is finished.

I won't be explaining the pages, or the sadness that stretches across many of them. It is what it is. My sketchbooks have always been something of a journal. This one is tricky though, since it will be going on a nationwide tour and it's being posted online as I complete pages. I am having to learn how to balance honesty while maintaining a certain degree of privacy and anonymity (mostly for the sake of others).

The pages after the first three shown above are less.. lost-sounding. It's hard to post them and not apologize for them.

Concerning time (in which I talk and share photos).

Truth be told, I've never been very good at updating this blog. Talking about myself and the things I create makes me a little uncomfortable. It's much easier for me to just make things and snap a picture and upload it wherever. But it's more than that too. I only started drawing regularly again in September. Before that, I was working six days a week at a job that didn't make me very happy, and that unhappiness spilled over into every other aspect of my life. I allowed for all of this to last a long time. I allowed my creativity to take the backseat to my job and my relationships for a year and a half.

My life now is incredibly different compared to.. well, anything it's ever been, really. I left my job in August and started working at a tattoo shop. (Let's pause for a moment: Upon hearing that, everyone asks me if I'm tattooing. No, I'm not. But I hope to earn my way to that point.) My job is wonderful. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's frustrating. But it is an amazing thing to be around artists all day -- and not just artists, but good and inspiring ones. I am learning a lot from everyone there, and I'm very grateful for that. My commute is long, sometimes two hours. I have little time for anything outside of work and the commute itself on my work days. But somehow, that's okay. It doesn't make me feel drained. At the end of the day, I get home and I'm still excited about getting things down on paper.




Leaving my old job meant being able to leave the awful north shore town I lived in. I miraculously found a lovely apartment with a kind roommate (and a large cat), in Somerville, MA. It's a great neighborhood, a great space. Thing is, when life changes, it usually changes in a big way. I don't know if it's this way for everyone, but usually when several good things happen to me, something bad and difficult usually occurs as well, and last month I lost someone very important to me. I won't talk about it here, even though I want to. I want to talk about it all the time, as if speaking about it will somehow pull the pain out (although we all know it doesn't work that way). I am still struggling with the empty space, each day, and it is proving to be one of the harder things I've fought against in a long time. Even writing this seems to be exhausting, but if I were to talk about life here and not mention it, it would be very dishonest, because whether I like it or not, this change will be something that continues to shape me. And probably my art too, as I am throwing myself into it further as a result.

And so it goes. I am working on two Sketchbook Projects. The 2012 and the Limited Edition. I'm dreaming up ideas for new projects, planning collaborations. I'm finding new things to pour my heart into. If you've read all of this, you are a champion. I will leave the rest of this post in pictures.

On life:



On loss:



Sketchbook Project:


I will do my best to share more, very soon (especially because there isn't even a finished piece in this post and I haven't scanned anything in a while - yikes). ♥

Yes, let's.

I've got a thing for goldfish lately. No reason. I just saw a pretty picture back in October and now I can't stop thinking about them. Of course I didn't actually get around to drawing any until Tuesday night.

My favorite sketchbook is running out of pages. That will be a happy and sad day.

November.

Quick sketches.

Sketchbook Project, page one.

The motion of things.

Firstly, the rest of the zines will be sent out very soon! I'm sorry for the delay. It's looking like I'm going to have a quiet Christmas with Pineapple, so if I don't get the rest drawn on before then, that's when it will be happening.

And I'm really only posting this (very bad, and not at all proportional) idea sketch from one of my journal pages so this post isn't boringly image-free.



The good news is, I've figured out why I haven't been inspired for any solid periods of time this year. The bad news is.. well, I'm not quite ready to share that part yet.

Semi-random post.

I uploaded a handful of journal pages to my flickr this evening.

Usual disclaimer: My art journals are my messy doodle areas.

Stress relief.

Click to see the larger image.

Here's an update:

Everything that I've been drawing lately sucks. To the point of extreme frustration. And I've been trying to remedy this by only working in my art journals (in other words, not doing anything super detailed or time consuming), but even all of my sketches suck and I kind of want to throw my journals out my window and into a snowbank. Where hopefully some wild animal will come along and decide to pee on them. Repeatedly.

Journal pages.

I don't know if I'll be turning this sketch into a finished piece.

Hi, I still fail at art.

If you haven't yet, would you mind voting for my Threadless design? There's only 2 days left. And I'm not feeling very optimistic because apparently everybody hates the halo (or doesn't know what it is). Which further proves my theory that everything that I like about my art, other people dislike, and vice versa.

Forgive me, I am a big crankypants. And I've more or less dropped off the face of the earth.



The funny part about this is, the most enjoyable part was the script. Which isn't even very good, but compared to my typical script skills, it's a vast improvement. I say this is funny because I was just messing around. Yeah.. basically no effort was put into this entire page.

Pages.

I apologize for my lack of posts. All shows have officially passed, and I can't really show you guys commissions/tattoo designs, I hope you understand. So for now, here's a little peek at my art journal:



There's a few pages that I haven't scanned, but I have a flickr set for this particular journal here.

Secret:

It looks like I'm doing another show at ellO in March - consisting of animals/skulls/things that I lovelovelove drawing more than anything. Ahh, so excited!

A new favourite possession.

Last night I met Lindsey, who is the cutest and sweetest thing (I demand that you go spy on her journal and look at her crafty projects!), and she gave me this wonderful journal that she made out of an old book. I am completely in love with it and have all of these neat little ideas floating around in my head for what I am going to do with the inside pages. I painted and drew on the cover a bit.




This is the back. I wrote, "We made a graveyard out of the bone-white afternoon" - a line out of a Richard Siken poem.




The feather is maybe a centimeter big..


..and the skull is a half inch high/about an inch wide.