Eagerly waiting for fall

Hello friends !

Another month(ish), another season-themed email! August has been brutally hot here in British Columbia. Working outside left me with very little energy to do much, and I’ve delayed starting up this newsletter.

Since I have been bouncing between recovering from the hot days and trying to escape art slumps, today we’ll explore the little green sketchbook that I started showing in Spring Blossoms and April Showers 

Slumping

We start from after our trip to France, to a slow descent in a bit of a slump. This is usually where I take to messing around with new things, different mediums, trying to let loose, etc - anything that might help take me out of this kind of slight block (which is often a symptom of something else for me, namely tiredness).

We then have a few pages popping up with some formless and aimless sketching which I think is important in its own right — just messing around with no expectations, trying to get unstuck.

If you’re an artist, you might feel that pressure to have every page of your sketchbook be a masterpiece, and it’s hard to remember that sketchbooks are meant to be messy, experimental, and rough. It’s even harder to allow ourselves to follow through with it! I hope these help 🙂 

And then we slowly came out of the slump!

The bangers

Oftentimes the curve from slumps to awesome art goes like this for me:

So as I reached a potential stopping point when scanning this sketchbook, I stumbled upon the unexpected bangers that took me out of the slump. I had forgotten most of them which made it pretty awesome to go through.

Some study material also unlocked these:

The sketches inbetween

Of course it’s not all linear and there were a few cool little undeveloped ideas in the mix.

Summer art

I still managed to do some fresh art this month!

Starting with sort of redoing the color on this sketch, after seeing that the print wouldn’t turn out that good and getting lost into it again.

And a first foray into Procreate’s charcoal brushes which made me want to get back to physical charcoaling.

I also finished one of my sketchbooks! There’s more I haven’t shown but here are the last few pages :

Tool of the month!

A new little subsection to highlight my favourite tool this month! I often get hooked by a tool (or a few) and use them a lot for a while, so I thought I’d share them! If you know me, it’ll come as no surprise since I love stationery and often acquire new pens and tools to try out.

Here are the two favourites this month:

•  monami Plus Pen 3000 which are just a delight - very thin while able to have a broader stroke and some nice colours! I have a Blue Celeste and an Orange. they feel similar to Staedler’s triplus fineline but slightly elevated.

• the Crayola broadline markers (yes, the “ultra washable” ones for kids). I saw an artist use them online and was curious to give them a try. Fun, easy, bright colours, I love a cheap tool.

What else ?

• I’ve gotten more and more into sewing, a greatly addictive creative outlet!

• New prints in postcard format, in the shop soon:

  

Inspirations

• I watched Sinners (more great costumes!!) and have been listening to the soundtrack alongside the Doom Eternal soudtrack.

• A bit of a dry reading spell but I read Self and it was fantastic.