In December and January this past Winter, I drew pet portraits for my family. The drawings came to life in Procreate (ipad) as I layered colors and line work on top of photos given to me by relatives. The drawings had my sense of color, my interpretation of line, light and shadow. But they were tight, I was scared to use my loose punk art style on these presents. I wanted them to like the drawings, for them to look like they were done by a competent adult artist. My style in truth is loose as hell and sometimes sloppy. I love to color outside of the lines and have white outlines between colors and ink. I love minimalism and a la prima paintings. The energy of the moment, wabi sabi. So when I realized I felt this way, that I had played so conservatively with my drawings that it wasn't even "my style", I decided to find my style. I knew it when it happened but I couldn't call it up on demand. I wanted to be able to make a career out of my true hand work. My loose line...

Art Journaling Inspo for Spoonies (who love cats) is a zine that aims to give journaling and art inspiration to folks with limited energy - who also may love cats! The black and white version of the zine is below, available for download. Link to Download directly: https://drive.google.com/file/d/150O6w1LIhWopCqaWlhmgm9QtpjaOltMM/view?usp=sharing See my complete Zine PDF Collection in my Ko-Fi shop (free +): https://ko-fi.com/birdbo/shop Author's note:  I still plan to add color as per my previous post, but this version looks so cool and also functions as a coloring book. It is also easier to print while using less ink. I'm looking forward to learning about how to create my color layers properly for Risoprinting in case I can make that happen!  Scroll below the PDF viewer for the alt text. Alt Text: (All pages feature quirky black ink drawings of my cats.) Front Cover: Art Journaling Inspiration for Spoonies (who love cats) Each new page of your journal is an opportunity to p...

Wandering through Space to find home again. Stuck in Your Art? When it comes to a blank notebook, why do we run from our personal reality and weirdest truths in pursuit of something “correct”? What if your weird thoughts are the best ones to put on the page? My weird is zoomed out concepts like “Big History” and “Deep Reality” (I only made up one of these two phrases). I am an animist at the same time, believing that the further into Science and conscious experiences we wander, the more absurd reality shows itself to be and the more alive all Existence seems.  In exploration of these concepts, I have gleaned an ability to experience different perspectives, what I call “zoomed in” and “zoomed out”. I believe the ability to wander between these points of view can be an asset in your attempts to discover something new to express in your art, something honest and true. Zooming in and out You’ve awed at the spectacular photographs of our planet Earth, as seen from Space. You’ve seen pho...

  'Medieval Manuscript Marginalia meets Risograph Splatter' This is 'Medieval Manuscript Marginalia meets Risograph Splatter,' a mock up that combines the inspirations for my next zine! Semi-transparent color shapes will be placed around the page to balance out the weight of clean text.  Each of the pages will be both a poster and a social media asset showcasing quirky design and awareness of typography and page layout design rules. I want to combine hand-drawn lines with vector shapes and clean font as a delightful showcase of the zine's inspirational creative guidance. (Zine text in last post.) Career development I'm hoping to use this zine as a portfolio piece for marketing, as I shift toward a career that allows me to use what I have learned in my attempts to create art businesses over the years. Every time I've come up with a business or book idea I have researched more about marketing and communication - including illustration and visual design, websit...

A proposed cover for the zine that fits the interior pages I'm aiming for. Below are the previous two dummy drafts that helped me pick out my words This current zine iteration has Bird and Cat talking to the viewer, but I want something completely different and more decorative than narrative! Here is the interior copy: Make Art Easy! It's OK! Your blank page is a safe place to coach yourself through those intrusive thoughts. Practice courageous curiosity. Try to use grace with yourself. "Beginner's Mind" -- treat yourself as you would treat a child who is just learning to draw or write. Be gentle and patient. Consider the value of the making process itself rather than only counting a finished project as "Art." Consider blending writing and drawing for new modes of expression.  Lined or dotted paper can help reduce fears of preciousness or perfectionism. Blank paper covered in doodles might be the juice you need to brai...

    Everything starts somewhere, eh? So here we have a new blog to share my drawings and writing. Me and social media, well we have a sh*tty relationship with each other.  I need a place to express myself in a way that I can discover new patterns in my work and observe skill improvement and style development. I want you to see that too, because seeing one artist's journey is a great way to relate to your own process over time. As ever, I plan to share ways to make art easy - especially on a regular basis in a journal. Because doing so, both in the keeping of a journal and in the sharing how-to, has saved my life over and over again. I'm currently in year 5 of drawing comics, and I'd love to have a place to keep them as the ideas grow and change.   I'm also in year 5 of making zines, though I did make some attempts in college I only got serious about finishing them in 2020. I took a break when I was too busy with work, and the past year has been a trip getting back in...