Quietly.

Message.

You'd find me blooming by the riverbed.

My dreams in the last week have caused me to wake up exhausted nearly every day. I dream frequently and vividly, this is nothing new, but the content recently has been strange. Last night I dreamed of tornadoes (this happens often, as I'm terrified of them). In it, they were so violent that they were somehow lighting the clouds on fire for brief moments, so the sky was swirling and erupting in red, and I was so scared but stood snapping pictures.

I've also had multiple dreams about tulips, which is the most mystifying thing. I don't hold a particular fondness for the flowers, or at least I didn't until the dreams started happening, but now I keep collecting photos that I find on tumblr and drawing them, as if drawing them will somehow help me figure out why my brain keeps having them pop up. In the dreams, they are always yellow with streaks of red. They're not being given to me, I'm not in a field, they're just there, and I don't feel anything other than "Oh, that's nice," in the same way I would if I were to see them in the waking world if I were walking down the street.

Blue tulip.

I love Sundays.

Weekend.

Last week's birthday? One of the best of my life. The week took a lot out of me overall, a lot of things happened, the biggest of which I can't talk about here. The things that I can mention include a 24 hour stomach bug, my first Celtics game, an old friend, lots of familiar faces, love, hugs, and not very much sleep.

Now I'm having a very quiet Sunday evening, practicing drawing things that I am not very good at.




Oh yeah, and this is happening too!

Distance and time.

All drawing and writing is coming and going in waves these last days. Here is a little bit of the first pages in my limited edition Sketchbook Project. The theme is distance and time, hence the post title, but I approach themes VERY loosely no matter what they are. Which may or may not be cheating.




Next week I turn the big three-zero, which is something I've been a little terrified about since I turned 29. Many, many people say that your thirties are the best decade of your life, and I hope they're right. I have some fun plans in the works for the day, including good people, a Celtics game (technically the night before my birthday, but it will be my first!), a bit of reflection, pretty dresses, downtown Boston, and hopefully some mild shenanigans and delicious beer.

Related to the latter: I'm enjoying trying new kinds of brews in the last couple of months. Not as impressively as Courtney's Febrewary experiment, but it's making me extend beyond my stout-comfort zone in a most delicious way.

Untitled.

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.

Limb from limb.

This is the last day off I have before my Sketchbook Project needs to be mailed in, which means this is the last chance I have to work on it. Here is a peek at some of the pages that haven't been scanned yet.





The process has taken many different phases. Now, towards the end, it is frustrating and painful. I'm doing my best to extract every last bit of emotion in order to finish it with something substantial, but the entire thing has been created at such emotional peaks that at this point I am just worn out.

The cutoff.

It was bound to happen. I was running on such heavy emotion for about two solid months, drawing and writing every day, pouring as much of it out as I could.

I hit a wall.

It's all right. Except for the part where my Sketchbook Project needs to be postmarked by the 31st and I haven't gotten far past the mid-point (somehow, I'm not feeling discouraged). I've done a lot this month, dragging myself through the mud, while maintaining my life and projects. I'm not going to beat myself up for feeling utterly drained the last few days. I'm actually doing a good job of not beating myself up at all lately. Turns out it's fairly simple, and the trick is to keep telling yourself, I am a human being and I am doing the best that I can.




From the top left:
1. Pineapple on top of my sketchbook while I'm trying to draw.
2. View from the train on my commute to work.
3. The first real snowfall of the year, as I was walking home.
4. Christmas eve tattoo. I don't think I've posted this here yet. One more session to go, for the color.

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.

The unfortunate truth.

This drawing isn't very good. But that's fine with me.

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). ♥