Bought A New Sketchbook, One With Watercolor Paper. First Time I've Had One Of Those.

Bought a new sketchbook, one with watercolor paper. First time I've had one of those.

Made these stickers for someone incredibly cool that I’m pretty dang fond of. I’m making them myself on my plotting cutter. Drawings in colored pencil.

I’ve been thinking a lot about art and success and the way that we’re trained, in a way, to be insecure about our inadequacies. There’s very much this idea that if you’re not on your way to becoming the great leading artistic visionary of our era, you’re wasting your time. I would like to say I’m above this line of thinking, but I’m really not. I have insecurities and frustrations and annual artistic crises-of-faith at a pace of what seems like twice or thrice a year. 

But, I don’t think that artistic success is a make-it-or-break-it proposition. Doing well enough can be a form of success. I’m not exhibiting work on an international scale (although I’d like to be), and it feels like I’m laboring in obscurity a lot of the time, but I’m actually working in my industry (as an arts professor) and I have my own studio. 

I’m not solving world hunger and I don’t live in a Japanese RPG world where there can be only one chosen one. I’m making objects of aesthetic intrigue. I’m not where I want to be at the moment, but I can be patient and keep working away, and if I never quite get there, is it really the end of the world? 

A couple of Weirdo things in progress. The top one is an idea for a print and the bottom is going to be a figure. Weirdo is mine and she lives here: Weirdo Does Stuff

Experimenting with graphite wash. Water soluble graphite is weird.

Found oil pastels in a box in the shed and threw them at a wodge of cardboard to see if I still don't like using them. I still don't like using them. To each their own.