It’s hard to capture the magic of BYM summer camps unless you go there, and we just finished our 5th summer at camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I teach art workshops and help in the kitchen (it’s our adult summer camp too—we laugh so much!), taking hot afternoon drives to the Shenandoah River to cool off, enjoying the sounds of camp (mostly from a distance)—so much singing, stories, art-making, wildlife encounters, kids who have been “too old” to skip for years but at camp they do, and while holding hands!

There are many trails around camp, one of which hikes you right onto the Appalachian Trail, so I spent some free time most days wandering around, getting a bit lost (whoops), and noticing how the birds, animals, bugs and deer are all different at camp from where I spend most of the rest of the year in Northern Michigan.

I can spend many hours wandering in the creek and woods, losing time, just being there, discovering whatever crosses my path next. It feels like the purest form of just existing without anxiety, expectation. This is where my paintings of landscapes come from—not a single trip out or a single place. But all the places and time I’ve spent doing this since I was very little.

We’re so tired at camp every day—but it’s such a joyful time! We laugh all day and evening together, share our lives with each other, every bit of troubleshooting and pivoting and pitching-in when the power goes out or the water goes out or the smoke rolls in feels like it’s for the good of the entire camp, not on any of our individual shoulders. I think this is what life is supposed to look like most of the time, and the feeling I try to capture in many of my paintings.

I hope you’re finding time to get outside a lot this month, whatever that looks like where you live!

Bear

I didn’t really have any expectations, and I was happily surprised by how many interesting and curious questions I got about my landscape paintings. I really love meeting people in person and chatting, but for some reason knowing what to say online feels really difficult. So I decided to just pretend we are all together now and keep working out some answers here to the questions I got in conversation with a lot of really nice and interesting people at the fair!

I’ve been calling this collection The Shape of Freedom, which really gets at the meaning behind a lot of my paintings like this, which are about how we are all a part of nature, and not separate from it.

I don’t think of these landscapes as specific places. Instead, I am painting what it feels like to belong. Each one can feel like a lot of places of home, and specifically the tangled up places of the natural world. I think on some level these paintings are about the obvious freedom of exploration, discovery and play. But there is another layer inside them that is about the freedom and liberation that comes from truly belonging, being tethered instead of loose—a concept that has always felt tenuous to me.

Trees as my parents. I feel the most belonging with trees. Creek beds and leaf litter and tall grasses and everyone who lives under logs are my family. A few years ago during a particularly difficult time, I was on a walk with Nutmeg, my dog (in the same area of woods where many of the first of these paintings surfaced a few years later) when I came across a familiar tree whose shape and contrast of wet bark against bright overcast sky called out to me to stop.

I could feel this tree, and the others around, telling me that I belonged to them. I felt an overwhelming closeness like a child with their parents—I stayed with the tree for a long time, feeling held by the tree the same way I held my children. In that moment I just knew that these trees were my parents. They had always been there, steadfast and unwavering—trees standing over me on all my walks, loving and accepting every part of what they see.

A few years later, while I was beginning to accept that long covid had changed how much my body could do, this same stand of trees had late winter sun breaking through for the first time in months and I just had to capture all the sensations of wind, light, relief, hope, freedom—and this kind of painting emerged from that. I was small compared to the towering trees and their deep roots, and all they are connected to, and I felt weak and unable to force my body to move like it used to—but I was also okay somehow. What if there is nothing wrong?

I make the figures in these paintings child-like to anchor them in that time in childhood before the weight of the world comes fully into our consciousness—while we are still present and believe we belong everywhere in a physical, uncomplicated way. Even in hardship and trauma, children embody belonging—I can remember feeling that, I’m moved by it still, and I feel awe and gratitude to witness this about children. Anything is possible in play—even unbelievably happy things during unbelievably hard times, when we can find access to this universal truth about being alive. These paintings are an antidote that came directly out of some of those times for me. If you’ve been through very hard times and loss, maybe not wanted to be here anymore at times, maybe these paintings can help you find that too.

I keep thinking of these paintings as being centrally about liberation, which is usually described as an untethering—from oppressive stories, policy, law, systems. But maybe underneath the process of becoming untethered, true liberation requires a re-tethering to something like a reciprocal belonging. Belonging to the Earth, to ecosystems, to each other. Belonging within our own bodies in and after illness, belonging as children. A wider family.

Now if you were really here you would have responded to me by now and I’d know if what I’m saying is making any sense or resonating with you, so I’ll stop here.

Thank you for being here! And please reach out if you have any questions about these paintings and prints for sale now only to you!

Bear

I remember being younger and listening to my grandparents get their stories mixed up. Not because they were losing their memories, they were both sharp to the end. I understand now that it was just because they had been fortunate enough to experience so many years of living that time was no longer a tight, clear line. 1995 would collapse into 1987 a little bit, that’s all. I remember teasing them and thinking things like, “Whew boy, these old people can’t even remember what year cousin so-and-so did such-and-such,” and I would test my own memories in my head, recalling easily every major milestone of my long 15/17/23-year-old life.

Well, I don’t know about you all, but at age 43 and it’s beginning to happen. Daniel and I are nearly 15 years into being parents, too, and I have to wonder how the intensity of parenthood affects the wobbliness of time and memory. Now when I think back to my grandparents in their 70s, with grown kids and grandkids, I’m impressed they remembered so much!

I think a lot about memory these days, which is just another way of saying that I think a lot about meaning. What matters. The idea that used to guide me—that there is a vast and infinite amount of time ahead of me to do everything I want to do—has mostly been replaced with a gratitude and guilt-heavy reality that this life is stubbornly short and I have precious little time to show how deeply I care about and love so many parts of it. For someone who prioritizes mostly by what’s right in front of me right now, this is hard.

Being in the forest or fields or riversides feels this way to me too. There is so much complexity to the organisms there, always someone dying, someone coming to life, someone transforming. The layers I use in these paintings are meant to contain all the layers from dirt and roots up to open sky, not necessarily in a tight, clear line. They wobble a lot too, collapse into each other, become a bit more magical than reality. I can’t wait to add little adventurers into this current batch of paintings—running, climbing and dancing free in worlds that understand complexity, where geopolitical borders don’t exist, where the ebb and flow of life and liberty does not even consider extraction or subjugation or hoarding power as an option. Just love, and gratitude and reciprocity.

I’ll be taking these paintings to the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts Fair June 5-6. I’m really excited to be at a market! I grew up as a flea market kid and though it won’t be the same (I miss all the old stuff and rows and rows of artifacts from so many places and people through decades of history, the peddler spirit), it’ll be really meaningful to connect face-to-face and meet everyone else there making a living with what they can do with their own hands and some tools.

I’ll have more time this summer to share more here: some more sketchbooking prompts and processes—catching more memory, meaning and joy—and also some classes I’ve been developing that maybe will be a thing you can participate in!

Thanks for being here. I’d love to know what your’e up to, what you’re making, thinking about making, all of it.

Bear

PS: I was listening to someone somewhere respond to a question about AI writing recently, and they lamented the death of em-dashes because AI uses them too much. Well I’d like to declare here and now that I’ve been over-using em-dashes (and parentheses) since I learned about them in my early editing days in the 2000s and I will not stop using them! Don’t let AI claim what you love—tools for helping not hurting!

Here’s the first one:

I was determined to try to keep my palette REALLY limited and try some of the more dramatic lighting that I’ve been studying from the Scooby Doo show, but ended up adding a bunch of warm colors in this first version. . . by the end there were a few other things about it that I just wish I had done differently and I thought It’d be a great exercise in patience and practice to just paint it over again!

Things I wanted to change:

Could I use a more limited palette!?!
The shadow/light sides of the bats
The face/reaction of the baker having their hair pulled
The chocolate cookies(?) and wafers under the bats-just didn’t love those/the color
I also realized by the end that I was working on different techniques for the light glow around the actual hanging lights, and I could do those over again!

Here are some process photos of the second one. I like to take photos of my in-progress paintings (for all my work) because looking at them later through a small phone screen really helps see value/color/detail clarity I’m too close to while working on them.

I think something I’m still pushing through is my preoccupation with literal light. I want to play with that more. Below you can see that on the little creature who lives in a cage in the bakery I started to push those yellows evvvverrrrrr so slightly toward orange, which I liked and met my desire for more color on that side of the color wheel without widening the palette so much.

I have a sense that I’m just always off a bit with my ideas and details when it comes to illustrations for picture books . . . I wonder if they are completely readable . . .

Right now I’m enjoying this process and it feels like I am learning a lot each time, I can feel the struggle of pushing through uncertainty and little experiments that I’m not sure about yet—I hate it and I love it!

And the final: I ended up with a bit more orange/vermillion than I had set out to use in my challenge for myself, but overall it is more limited palette and I like it.

There are still some things about this that I don’t love—mostly little details that I just haven’t drawn or painted enough to really know how my favorite way is yet—like those cloths over the teeth and ghost berries jars, what the heck! But I love how the lights turned out, esp. the ones in the crocodile hold, and the painterly gradients on various things, the glow around that giant skull, the darker mugs and many other little details. And I absolutely LOVE the character putting candies into the oven, the oven and floor!

This is the process of learning who you are as an artist! You’ve got to make a lot of art, and noticed when things are just delightful, even when they are small pieces of a larger thing you don’t exactly love. Those small pieces can carry through to your future art, while you keep experimenting on everything else!

I’ve been really delighted by revisiting big childhood influences lately. Here are a few studies I’ve done over the last couple of months on the dramatic lighting, limited palettes and fun backgrounds in the show Scooby Doo, Where Are You!

I’m curious about how to make an environment feel mysterious but still safe. In the illustration above there are also heavy influences from the attic in Casper (live action from 1995, also a big impact movie for me) so I may have had to watch it for work :)

I’m curious about what makes it so that I could watch the same thing over and over again and continue to be delighted and even surprised by them (which is as true now as it was then). It feels good to enter a world where everything will be okay in the end, no matter how much mischief you get up to, no matter how big the haunting is, where characters are familiar like old friends.

These studies aren’t something I made to get anything right or even copy the frame from the show perfectly. I was just having fun and staying loose while pushing myself out of my comfort zone. So when I wanted to reach for more varied hues, I didn’t, and when I wanted to draw something to make it look better, I didn’t. All of these were just paint onto paper in one of my fav. Sketchbooks that have many layers of things glued in and painted and drawn in already.

You can see the game scoreboards through this one. I didn’t choose this on purpose, I just flipped to a page and started in to see hat would happen.

Watching this show back after 30 years, I’m awestruck realizing it could be a big reason why I loved being inside drainage pipes, following dark passageways to see what I would find, blindfolding neighborhood kids and “taking them to another planet” that led to forts and adventures in trash dumps and abandoned structures I couldn’t have perceived as anything else but my playground at the time. I really loved breaking into abandoned houses, and likely would still do if much of my time wasn’t accounted for.

As an adult and artist, I am far from finished with the world of Scooby. I have so much more to learn here!

Were you a Scooby-Doo kid? Casper? Not featured here I also have dived into David the Gnome recently too. Pinocchio, Bambi and other early Disney are on the list, too. If anyone wants to meet up live to make studies of these I’m for it!

I’ve been thinking about my sketchbooks as surrogate body-brains for myself lately. Places to hold my thoughts, memories, obsessions, delights, fears, all of it. Since my default mode is generally to not slow down enough to think through things, sketchbooking a full thought all the way through is only really something I’ve done during a larger project, in which the sketchbook becomes the place to work out what the heck I’m doing somewhere else.

I also realized that if my kids ever looked at these sketchbooks, a lot of what they’d see was fear, dread, helplessness, desperation—things I jot down as I listen to news, history, science podcasts and books, trying to make connections and put my thoughts and feelings somewhere. So they were lopsided, and though I don’t think my kids have any interest in my sketchbooks these days, they may at some point, as most adult children do, dig through all my stuff when I’m dead and try to figure out who I was when I was their age now. Plus on the off chance they do look around now, I deeply believe it’s my job as an adult to show kids how to be a hopeful and happy adult even when it includes complex mental health and family stories! I want them to see that life is good, we can find courage, love and beauty in the world, no matter what is going on. So I have set out to make more pages like this one of Bad Bunny at his dazzlingly inspiring concert earlier this month! What I didn’t realize is how much I, myself, needed these pages ✨

Recently, my family has been navigating how to handle a kid at school who has a history of harassing other students, and in particular using a lot of slurs and targeted bullying based on gender, ability and race. It all came to a head a couple of weeks ago when my kids and a group of their friends got a slew of texts and calls on a Friday night, outside of school. All families involved communicated and reported the incident to Michigan’s Okay2Say, and to the school principal. What I’ve been learning in discussions with teacher friends is that, while bullying and harassment has recently become really important to school administrators, teachers and districts across the country in general, no one has a clear path about what exactly to do about it. Suspension is not used as much, because it doesn’t work. In our case, the principle held a reconciliation circle, which our kids and their friends chose to participate in because they hoped to be heard—to poke holes in the kid’s story of denial. The kid treated the whole thing like a joke (I’m not sure how this could have gone any other way), and to our knowledge there have not been consequences for him.

We’ve been frustrated. The kids have told us that they have lost trust in their school and the district as a whole and have given up trying to seek justice around this kid. This kid has been reported in the past, and for almost two school years they’ve told adults they need more protection from him. They are in 8th grade, and they are looking at the world around them with clearer eyes than ever.

This feels very similar to how current events with ICE are blowing the sand from our eyes as a nation. Just like in our schools, even though we understand without a doubt what our government’s intentions are, there is still no clear path forward, and the people we elected to protect us continue to choose not to.

One thing I know for sure is that we need to be able to hold the complexities of our history. We cannot find our way through when we reach for simple binaries, platitudes instead of honesty and don’t understand why and how things came to be. But I still have ADHD—Sometimes I hear myself talking and already can’t believe how reductive I sound, how what I am thinking and feeling is so much more complex and thoughtful that what I’m saying.

Most days I feel pretty behind on daily tasks and responsibilities, tired from the emotional and mental load of work, parenting and continuing to improve my physical health from long Covid—I feel helpless at doing the more that I want to contribute to our world. Sketchbooking is one way I’m practicing at an individual level to do better AND finding a lot more energy and hope there — who would have thought!

If you aren’t connected to a local way to pitch in yet, check out Indivisible, where you can find a local group, and prompts for calling your reps and senators. We are all drops in an ocean making a wave together!

I was accepted into the KIA Arts Fair this June. I’m feeling nervous and thankful for a real deadline, without which I mostly spin in circles until I hit a wall and reset 🤓 I’ll have all this winter’s paintings there that haven’t already been spoken for, plus some more.

Here’s to continuing to find bravery, staying close to what gives you energy and hope and imperfectly trying to make the world better! If you’re not sure what to do, start in your sketchbook.

Bear

I like the the idea of edgewalking. It feels like a call to perceive the many realities that are true at once, it conjures bravery to be at home in the inbetween, despite pressure to choose sides and get dug in with rigid ideologies. I’ve been reading Teaching to Transgress, by Bell Hooks, where she shares the idea that eduction and learning are a practice of freedom. Bravery and sacrifice in small ways everyday are the honest hard work and purpose of ending the systemic economic projects of oppression we are all bound up in. It’s one of those books that makes very clear that we are already capable of so much more collectively, if only we could stop the self-surveillance-social-punishment mechanisms we’re taught—to fit in, to uphold the status quo, to value things over people, to make sure power stays comfortable at our own expense.

The kids and I have had a few Hamilton songs in our playlists over the last couple of years, which, along with this conversation I happened to catch recently, and of course much of the news this year (and other interviews and conversations), have me thinking a lot about two contemporary American projects. Both got their footing at the beginning of settler colonialism in the US: One that dreamed of a brand new idea for a nation’s government that would protect all of its citizens as equals, including powerful storytelling that if we keep working we can one day see this reality in the “greatest” country on earth. And the other project where only some thrive (economically, and so politically) on hierarchies, torture, enslavement and powerful storytelling that would conflate imagination with science (for instance, that skin color was an indication of inherently lesser or better versions of people, or that the concept of gender was science based on body parts).

I’m edgewalking these simultaneous realities of my country. And I’m back to painting a new collection of abstract landscapes, very much based on the natural world I see all around me in Northern Michigan, which I look to for metaphorical and spiritual guidance in how I might be helpful in the first of these American projects, while actively getting in the way of the second of them.

In the paintings, I imagine the people and creatures edgewalking — they are on journeys to discover and find adventures of the hope and struggle that what they don’t know will become clear if they stay open and keep learning. Way will open.

There are paths in each painting that contain many routes, ways to see space as outside and inside, on top of and underneath. I’m aiming to find balance in value, color and shape while creating a place to experiment with how we see ourselves in the world. The process of getting there involves trying to capture what it feels like to be in the wind on a hillside, in the understory or overlooking Lake Michigan, but I’m messing with the perspective, mixing up what’s on top and bottom and inside—adding caverns of texture and tunnels of color, light and darkness.

✸ These Small & Large landscape paintings are available for sale now
[Update: all paintings have sold out.]✸
I will be working on a limited number of 6x6in, 8x8in and 12x12in paintings; two 30x40in and one 30x30 left. If you are purchasing a painting as a gift, I will send you a hand-made card you can give until the painting is ready.

✨ Young Illustrators Studio was featured in Voyage Michigan, a small business magazine! Thank you to the person to sent them to me :) It has been really amazing to dig through so many profiles of small businesses happening in Michigan, what an amazing movement to be a part of—hiring small businesses for the goods and services we need instead of going corporate!

If you feel yourself rushing & grasping like I do sometimes: Tara Brach’s talk on grasping, fear and generosity is keeping me company right now as I rush around feeling anxious.

Art Mail! Thank you for being here! If you are a paid subscriber, keep an eye on your mailbox because I had some fun crafting little presents for you! Your support means so much to me, and helps me to continue to do my work. If you would like to become a paid subscriber (for $5/month), I have a few leftover and would be very happy to send :)

This month’s sketchbooking

I’m inviting you to sketchbook moths with me—references are here so you can jump in! I didn’t draw anything with pencil—just went right in with paint! I love my sketchbook for reminding me that layering over and over and not drawing lines first is the way I “draw” best. My materials list is at the bottom of this letter, along with the short writing experiment I read in the video! 🎨

I do like to draw with pencil, mostly in other flatter sketchbooks. I often use pencils to make studies—to learn what a thing is made of. But I’m learning to remember that the end work I like best comes from paint or multi-media scribbling and layering, no bounding lines.

Do you want some Art Mail?

Today at a friend’s art salon I made a few accordion sketchbooks and a moth stamp to go with this month’s theme! I’d love to gift them to a few paid subscribers! If you’d like one, please let me know! The paper is Canson Mixed-Media and the covers are cardboard from a box of Pho.

New Art Class for Ages 8-10

& How do you make “marketing” from something so hard to define as human nature?

Lately, I have been working on curriculum for a new drawing & painting class for kids, and struggling with not really knowing how to do the “marketing.”

Trying and re-trying to come up with what to say in a video got me thinking:

There is purpose and meaning in the simple, routine act of making, fixing and solving things. Humans have evolved to work creatively—to tinker, improve and craft the world around us with iterative effort.

On one level, I teach a lot of complicated, layered art skills with targeted practice inside fun projects. But on another level, there is something else I hope I pass on to students in my classes: I continue to choose to keep art in my life because of how the practice itself transforms me, and cultivates qualities that ripple out into the rest of my life. Making art habitually, both in thoughtful ways and in rambunctious, impulsive or even chaotic ways with no end game in sight, has helped me create habits out of following delight, staying curious, struggling through to satisfaction and trusting that surprise and adventure are waiting for me when I keep my mind flexible and open, instead of rigid and afraid.

In the US we are bonked on the head constantly with materialism, gentrified images of life, capitalism-as-culture that is distorting our instincts. Our drive to manual and creative work is often redirected into systems that exploit our energy, treat our attention as commodities and measure our worth through profit only.

I feel this misalignment a lot. I crave the manual, imaginative work my body and mind was built for, but struggle to find a space for it outside the machinery of making everything a business—whether for money or attention, which is easy to misjudge as approval and safety. It’s why I am mostly not on the internet these days unless I’m looking something specific up. I no longer spend much time browsing.

It’s the same misalignment I feel in trying to “market” my work or classes on social media.

Art is an outlet for the deep instinct to create that is gnawing its way to the surface whether we provide a positive path for it or not. The action of working in the materials over and over again becomes a place to put feelings. I begin each new piece with irrational, naive hope and excitement, only to be tossed into the depths of doubt, uncertainty and helplessness in the rotten middle. I’m pretty sure I literally growl and whine a lot at this stage. Possibly my family has seen me flop around complaining more than once, they know to help me laugh about it by now! But these evolving puzzles only I can solve make me believe in miracles—every time I mix a color that transforms my work, or finally get the angle of a wing and every time I finish a painting I really love! I’ve come to trust in the constant surprises I will be gifted if I just stick with something hard, or give a subject I am utterly uninterested in a chance to breath.

In my classes I want to pass on an excitement and commitment to this way through challenging times. Art as a refuge! Art as a workshop! Art as a puzzle lab! Art as experimentation station of risk taking, absurdity and joy! Art as self-driven, hard-earned accomplishment!

Materials I used in the moths video

Creatures of the Moon

(A fun writing meditation I worked on throughout my moth month, that you can hear me read in the video.)

At night, when the noise of the world softens and visual edges blur for us diurnal creatures, moths begin their quiet work.

Fragile wings come to life, covered in soft, dusty microscopic scales.

Lepidoptera — The Greek name for moths — translates to Scale Wing.

The moon’s steady, distant light gives moths a fixed reference in the sky, orienting them during flight by creating consistent angles that help them differentiate between up (light) and down (dark).

Bogong moths sense the Earth’s magnetic field and fly by stars on their twice-yearly migration.

Throughout time poets have compared the soul to a moth, and many superstitions tell us that the presence of a moth in the right circumstances is an omen of death. In Sufi mysticism, the moth that burns in the flame becomes one with god—losing yourself in the light isn’t tragedy, it is the only way to truly see it.

For a moth, living fully can’t be about length — so what if it’s about the flame we dare to let guide us.

What does it mean to fly toward light — when we could burn up?

Maybe moths aren’t omens of misfortune—maybe they teach us how to live with uncertainty.

About the space between fear and surrender.

Most of us will hover there at some point — drawn but afraid — knowing we could be undone by our own ambition.

If the alternative is to stay in our little cacoons, wings untested,

Then fear becomes our guide.

Instead of our curiosity, instead of the hope of that light.

Did you know there are estimated to be more than 160,000 species of moths on Earth?

Some mimic bark or dead leaves, perfectly built to cozy in, but they, too, still fly toward the light.

Others shimmer like opals — their scales bending light.

The Luna moth has no mouth and no stomach— it lives just one week, enough time to emerge, stretch, follow light then let go.

Maybe moths aren’t warning us about death.

Maybe they’re inviting us — to fly open-winged into the unknown.

To let beauty and terror exist side by side.

To trust that light is worth the risk.

Every moth begins as a small, grubby, hungry earthbound critter.

And then, one night, every one of them opens their wings.

Not knowing how long it will last.

Not knowing what will happen.

Only that the light calls.

Maybe, if we are lucky and we are brave, the light will remake us too..

Buuuuuut, I actually spend a lot more of my day-to-day life working, caring for others and property, pets, and . . . well, worrying, than hugging trees (unfortunately). I am worried about our federal government being weaponized to silence dissenting opinions, it’s disregard for the foundations and rules that are meant to work toward liberation for all people, that the gerrymandering the Republican party is undertaking will undermine our midterm elections. I have a lot of worry for queer kids and especially teens/young adults—many of whom are going back into the closet right now, many of whom are witnessing more and more violence in their communities. I worry about my kids. I worry about my health. I worry about money and the economy and inflation and our betrayal of our country’s principals, which isn’t new, but feels like a lot of responsibility right now to not forget the hard-won safeguards that make this a better time in history for many many people than there ever has been. I worry I am not doing enough to help.

Making landscapes in art is like an anchor of steadiness and maybe a kind of certainty in bigger, longer uncertainties, that helps me remain standing. So I’m sharing some process for the current landscapes I’m making this fall!

If you want to hear an interview of with Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff talking about the importance of the midterm elections, and how we got here, go to about 1hr 14min of this episode of Pod Save America. (But also the whole episode is great!) I find hope in knowing what the next steps are, and that there are people working hard to achieve them.

There is also a great new episode of the Ologies podcast out now on Rebellions and Social Change, which gives a wide view of revolutions through history. Understanding how the mechanisms of human politics have moved throughout history is empowering and hopeful. We have tools, we are smart, and we need to urge each other and our elected officials to be brave right now. We have been through several very scary times in our political history before, and our country has always chosen to progress forward more than backward. If you want some art to accompany you with making calls, my friend Emily made this great little resource too.

I have a hope that these landscapes help me hold onto. They remind me that hard work and bravery are like the Earth, which withstands and persists and still nourishes everyone. Like in the landscapes—anchors to a longer view of life and existence. One that isn’t ever in a hurry to exploit or dominate.

I’m really excited to be working on a new mural for Above Crystal Lake, a cottage on a bluff overlooking Crystal Lake in Frankfort, Michigan.

This cottage and the property around it has been a family-owned property for five generations, and the mural will include birds observed and recorded by the great aunt of the current owner, and some of the flowers and the silver dogwood tree that were a part of 100 years of memories on the hill.

Here I’m sketching some of the birds I might include in the mural. I’ll be attempting to record parts of the process and posting here! I even painted part of it live a few days ago and I might do some more of that.

In the kidlit world, the only updates I have is that the August theme for KT Literary illustrators was Pet Portrait and I’m happy to report that, with several suggestions from Daniel, this illustration came out looking a whole lot like the inside of our dog Rascal’s heart and mind!

Lastly, I’ve got loads of sketchbooks filling up this year, and I think I’ll start in on another set of paintings, likely mostly small and medium abstract landscape paintings. I hope some will be finished by the holiday season, and more into next year. Please let me know if you have any interest in a painting, and if you have a particular size in mind. Not exactly looking for commission work, but since everything is wide open at this point I’ll be able to create from requests a bit!

Thank you for being here, and let me know what you’e been making lately!

Bear

Hello! We’ll meet live via Zoom to make art this Thursday. Come as you are, whatever experience you have or day you’ve been through :)

K✨✨This meetup is for adults, and is not part of Young Illustrators Studio! ✨✨

We’ll be painting a crested seriema bird, which I saw and took one kind of okay photo of at the Royal Ontario Museum back in April. And let’s chat about noticing to remember what’s good, and trusting the process.

Thursday, June 12

6:30pm-7:45pm Eastern

I’ll share the meeting link to paid subscribers on Thursday. This meetup is free so if you want to come, message me for the link :) (I change it each month and don’t post it to keep it more secure).

Come, relax and have fun. This session will not be recorded or posted anywhere, it’s just for us to be right there then :)

I will have a down-facing camera on for anyone who wants to following along step-by-step. We’re gonna be playing, so bring whatever materials sound fun to you! I’ll be painting with acrylic and acrylic gouache, and maybeeeeee some collage papers and pencils…

See you there!

I’ve posted references for you to make art from here!

We saw the cormorants for this painting (sold) in a tree overlooking Fern Lake recently on a family walk. These birds have webbed feet like ducks, but sit up in trees in flocks with their webbed toes hanging over the branches. It’s very delightful to me and makes me laugh! I also think on a deeper level, it is an astounding act of understanding who you are. These cormorants are a representation of what it might be like to belong to a community that knows who it is, where it’s going and that it belongs.

Lately I’ve been practicing noticing, and pausing, and noticing more. I’m not naturally a details person, but I want to explore them more, in life and in my art: The shimmer of morning light across the countertop; the way Daniel’s guitar playing drifts through the house at night; the way the kids hang around him, simultaneously eager for his goofiness and riddles while seeming to not be interested or ready to make fun of him any moment; the joyful moment I realize it’s past 8 already but the sun is still high because summer is right around the corner. I do notice all these kinds of things, but I think I’d be happier if I spent time with them, like I did when I was a little kid.

These things have a way of tethering me to meaning and purpose, despite the deep gnawing angst that I am not or ever where I’m supposed to be . . . A feeling I assume will always linger. . . When I remember to notice, I remember that being fully alive is in every small moment as much as it is in all the big exciting ones.

On a practical level this all started because I have been increasingly frustrated at how little I remember, and based on what we know about the brain, multi-tasking and how many podcasts and audiobooks I listen to I’ve become certain that my memory problems have to do with A LOT of intake, and not enough presence. I came across the idea to journal what I’m learning, and since I never went to art college, I’ve begun to do this as I read through Gardener’s Art Through the Ages, 10th Edition, one of the books ChatGPT looked up for me as a foundational art college book. If you have other suggestions let me know!

In the meantime, I’ve been making art about ducks because I keep seeing so many. I started to try NOT to see them, and they keep showing up, to this day. So in they go into my sketchbooks!

There have also been a lot of willow blossoms, dangling maple flowers, dipping and diving ducks across in my path in every direction, a few snakes, feelings that well up strong then fade away if I just let them be there instead of trying to avoid or get rid of them, red winged blackbirds singing and swooping low through last year’s cattails, wild oregano growing from a sandy trail and, of course, dozens of cormorants sitting up in trees. This practice has me slowing down and quiet and thinking about remembering. Next year this time, five years from now, what will I remember from this spring? I have a few photos to share as prompts for you here, (I’m trying something new by putting references in separate posts so they don’t clutter these blog posts).

This idea to record what you notice in a sketchbook is not a new, but I’ve never really done it much. I mostly use sketchbooks to practice things I want to be able to draw and paint, regardless of where the idea comes from. So it feels really fresh and inspiring for an ever-moving, never-contented brain/body like mine to find a way for something like art to lure me into being more present, and it might just work. Taking notes like a field biologist of yesteryear (and one of my childhood dream jobs).

I’m lucky to live so close to wildlife and natural landscapes. I feel grateful for it many times a day. I can smell the forest in my back yard, because my town is so small that I am basically in the forest in my backyard. And I’m noticing this is what I notice most. I don’t naturally notice people things. I think natural things calm and smooth me.

Having ADHD, I don’t arrive at this rhythm easily. My mind is often in ten places at once, chasing sparks of interesting facts and histories, and spiraling down rabbit holes. I can tunnel into hyperfocus and miss an entire day of light. Or I can flit so quickly between tasks, interesting articles/podcasts/books, conversations, that nearly nothing sticks. So I feel really clunky in this practice, but as I see it grow it feels really satisfying!

If you would like to join along in noticing until Summer Solstice, I’ll be noticing a few things into my sketchbooks or some surface each day. You can share but that’s not why we should do it (unless that helps motivate you, it does for me)!

Find some prompts here!

I hope you’re doing well, and whether you are or not, join us in about 40 minutes 🥰

Becoming Art Live Meet

Thursday, Feb 20 · 6:30–7:45 PM (Eastern)

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Hello! I’m so glad you’re here :) This month’s them is objects, things, odds & ends—making a daily practice of just drawing what’s already around us!

We meet live virtually to make art each month! Come as you are, whatever experience you have or day you’ve been through :)

I will anchor our art-making with theme, materials, subject prompts, and demo some ideas. You can follow along or you can just go with whatever comes to you. You do not need to be “an artist” to do this :) We’re playing.

Third or Fourth Thursdays of each month

6:30pm-7:45pm Eastern

Google Meet link is sent to paid subscribers automatically an hour before our meet. But this meeting is free so if you want to come reach out for the link :) (I change it each month and don’t post it to keep it more secure).

Up next: Thursday, January 20, 2025

Our sessions are a chance to feel supported and relaxed and have fun. Cameras on or off is up to you. Chat or don’t chat and just move through the prompts. Sessions are not recorded or posted anywhere.

If you have any skills, techniques or themes you’d like to explore, please send me your requests! (Anything goes—gesture drawing, zine-making, collections of beetles or a running fox, color mixing, collage, painting, whatever you’re loving or curious about we can work into the schedule!)

I will have a table-facing camera on for anyone who wants to following along step-by-step. Ask questions, show your ideas and progress, get feedback, let’s collaborate and share!

See you there!

The most obvious result of having a daily practice at anything is skill building—that part we can expect. But sometimes the BEST part isn’t what we set out to do initially—it’s something surprising that the practice itself shows us about ourselves.

February’s prompt is all about objects. Photo references for you to use are below (I’ll be using some too, they’re just from around my house :) Use your sketchbook to draw, paint, collage and otherwise create the things that are all around everywhere we go: chairs, books, forks, markers, furniture.

As I began this daily practice for myself starting in January with making Muppets everyday, I began to see the practice was pointing me where to go, and I haven’t been this excited about my art making process in a while! It is showing me that I can ask why I’ve always avoided doing work of objects like this. Do I just think it’s dull? If so, what do I need to bring to it to make it exciting? My overall goal is to have a wider visual vocabulary for building interiors and worlds for books, and to merge my more instinctual process with figurative work—so how do I make the process or materials engaging enough to want to stick with it? Where is the nuance that catches my delight, which I should be putting into my work?!

Maybe you have subjects you feel the same way about? If you have ADHD you may be very familiar with the feeling of frustration at not being able to simply sit down to do the work. Here’s what I’ve been doing:

I’m leaning into being very imprecise. I hate having to perform precision in my art for the most part—like, I have a body-level repulsion to the act of planning out drawings and then painting them in. But as a self-taught artist I’ve essentially studied what other people do and tried a lot of it, and A LOT of illustrators plan out drawings and then paint them in! So with this activity I’m letting the impulse to not do that lead me, letting go of a need for “results.” You can see in some of these drawings how happy-hazard some of my brush strokes are even on figurative objects. You can see where I was shaking a paint marker over and over again because it gets a bit clogged but then there are splatters all over the page because I didn’t protect it. I am just trusting the process of going over and over things, so I’ll keep adding to these if they seem like they might have a story in them. I can see really “ugly” places in most of these but I feel set free by this process to simply keep working on those instead of having figured them out in the first layer or two already!

What will you let go of and what will you lean into this month? I can’t wait to see!

Here are some references if you just want to jump in with your pen and napkin right now without activating any critical thinking! Bring what you’ve been working on to share at our next live meetup on Feb. 20!

Those words can describe all of us, if we are brave. Let’s make art to activate curiosity, practice and creating, which will shrink anxiety and worry and help our nervous systems have a break!

I’ve been doing a 10-minute minimum practice making muppets every day this month, and it led me here—to want to focus in on taking the abstractions I’m good at and love already, and experiment with/practice making smaller, more figurative details in environments for my picture book characters, without losing everything I love about my abstract landscapes. I know it seems odd to jump from Muppets to landscapes and environments, but that’s how this works: make art every single day in a focused way, and whatever is supposed to surface will ✨

I’ve collected a set of references this month. These are taken from Mapcrunch excursions and from the unsplash royalty-free photos sections and I chose them with shape in mind. Big to small, visually restful to detailed, so we can pick and choose from different places things we want to add to our environments. Try them with one material and then another, then overlap multiple materials. Sketchbook for a while. Make a mess first THEN go into more intentional marks. This is my plan at least.

(I will post a demo of this process sometime later, the expansion of my kids classes here is taking center stage these days! :)

We meet live over Google Meet to make art each month! Come as you are, whatever experience you have or day you’ve been through :)

I will anchor our art-making with a thought prompts like a poem, passage or theme and materials or subject prompts, and demo what we’re making with a second camera you can pin to follow along!

Third or Fourth Thursdays of each month

6:30pm-7:45pm

Google Meet link is sent to paid subscribers + anyone else who messages to asks for it (I change it each month and don’t post it to keep it more secure).

Up next: Thursday, January 23, 2024

Our sessions are a chance to feel supported and relaxed and have fun. Cameras on or off is up to you. Chat or don’t chat and just move through the prompts. Sessions are not recorded or posted anywhere.

If you have any skills, techniques or themes you’d like to explore, please send me your requests! (Anything goes—gesture drawing, zine-making, collections of beetles or a running fox, color mixing, collage, painting, whatever you’re loving or curious about we can work into the schedule!)

I will have a table-facing camera on for anyone who wants to following along step-by-step. Ask questions, show your ideas and progress, get feedback, let’s collaborate and share!

See you there!

Hello and I hope the new year is starting off great for you!

I just never felt like I was done with trees from November, so in today’s demo I’m going to show you how I painted an apple tree we found last fall while apple picking in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park. I’ve added the image we are working from below. And you can find more tree reference images in black and white in the trees post from November!

This paint-along works for all levels, and we start out with a test of some color mixing and painting to warm up! It’s a 20-minute relaxing painting with no sketching so it can turn out in many different ways.

We first add some medium values, then follow up with lights and darks to mimic the light that can hit so many leaves at once and create the uneven and complex texture in a tree. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I will respond :)

Materials (you can use any equivalents you have):

• Round brush #6 (I used Princeton Velvetouch)

• A small piece of mixed-media/watercolor/cardstock paper—The size of one page in my tree zine is 3.5” x 5.5” (pretty small!)

• D894 Primary White

• D139 Super Opaque Black

• D135 Sepia

• D131 Burnt Sienna

• D012 Vermilion

• D070 Leaf Green

• D061 Green

• D093 Cobalt Blue

Reference: