Discovering a Tree Character

2/9/26 photo reference and imagination

Looking for more ways to avoid doomscrolling, I watched a new video from Steve Mitchell’s Mind of Watercolor YouTube channel. Although I’m not using watercolor much lately, I often find Steve’s approaches to sketching, painting and mixed media inspiring. In this video, he draws an imaginary tree character inspired by fantasy book illustrations.

Scrolling through my “trees” folder of photos, mostly taken on neighborhood walks, I found one with a spectacular twisted trunk (at left). This tree seemed to be a character already – all I had to do was exaggerate its shape a bit (but not much) and add a face. The face was easy enough to draw, but I admire the way Steve “sculpted” the face of his tree more dimensionally. I’d like to work on doing more of that.

Another fun challenge was interpreting the “light logic” for the imaginary areas of the tree and the face. Since the reference photo was taken on an overcast day, I didn’t have much to go on, so I had to squint hard, choose the light direction and make it consistent for the parts I imagined. Steve seemed to be working from a variety of references and maybe mostly imagination, but it’s obvious that his vast experience has given him a strong sense of light logic. I wish he had talked about this challenging aspect of imaginary drawing, but it probably comes intuitively for him.

2/10/26 photo references and imagination

The next evening, I tried it again (at right), this time with two reference photos: a different tree and an Earthsworld face. Working on making the face more dimensional was definitely easier with a reference photo (and it was extremely low pressure to use the reference for inspiration only and not have to think about resemblance). As with previous experiments in drawing from imagination, I want the result to look convincing as a 3-dimensional object in space, even if the subject is obviously fanciful.

Anyway, these are a ton of fun, and I plan to do more. They work my imagination, which is always hard for me, especially in the evening when I’m tired, but most of it is comfortable and familiar. 

Isn’t it amazing that these tree trunks are not fantastical at all – they are real! The trees are both outside my immediate neighborhood, so I’m not sure if I can find them again, but I hope to someday draw at least one of them realistically from life.

New Types of Exquisite Corpses

 

More haiku exquisite corpses by Mary Jean, Roy and me, this time in horizontal format.

At our last art play date, Roy, Mary Jean and I tried two new takes on the traditional exquisite corpse idea that we’ve been having so much fun with. In addition to the haiku we wrote alongside the sketches, we tried a horizontal format this time. That enabled more versatility in subject matter rather than the traditional figure (above).

A second variation in the game was prompted by the set of Legion Stonehenge paper sample pads that I still had from a review I had written for the Well-Appointed Desk. I was going to give them away at the recent Gab & Grab, but then I had the idea that we might be able to have fun with them. The sample format is the same as artist trading cards – 2 ½ by 3 ½ inches. What if we made exquisite corpses in separate parts that could be mixed and matched afterwards? We each made a figure with the head, torso, and legs on separate cards. Then we mixed all the cards together and reassembled. A fun and funny twist on the “artist trading cards” concept!

Two variations of exquisite corpses using Stonehenge paper samples

Pencilvember Finale: Museum Aquarelle

Slightly exaggerated smiles for Bug and the first cat below.

As with all art challenges, it was rewarding to participate in Pencilvember again, but I’m happy and relieved to be done! For my final week, I used my favorite watercolor pencils, Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelles. Even in their dry state, their ultra-softness and thick cores were ideal for the fast and loose quality I was going for with these 20-minute sketches. I thought adding light washes to intensify values would help me in my quest for speed. However, as much as I like using watercolor pencils for foliage and urban scenes, I don’t like the way applying water takes away the texture of fur when I’m drawing animals (unless I have time to wait for the water to dry so that additional dry layers can be added on top). I ended up using water very sparingly.

This is a good time to talk about the Bee mixed media sketchbook I used throughout Pencilvember. It has a lovely tooth that takes colored pencils beautifully. Although I didn’t use enough water to really test it, the paper had no problem taking the light washes that I did apply. I also appreciated the 8-by-8-inch square format, which was ideal for pet portraits.

It’s too bad the paper seems to come only with a wire binding, which is my least favorite to use (this book was given to me by ArtSpot of Edmonds when I participated in the store’s benefit for PAWS last summer). At my desk, it was fine, but I don’t like carrying a wire binding on location or the way the pages rub against each other (especially with pencil usage).

On the other hand, a wirebound sketchbook has one benefit that I hadn’t thought of when Pencilvember began: Several of my subjects were pets of friends. If I had made the portraits in my usual hardbound sketchbooks (or even a staplebound Uglybook), I would have been reluctant to tear pages out. The spiral binding made it easy to pull sketches out and send them to those friends as a surprise (and it always makes me happy to imagine the recipient’s delight).

Mona Lisa smile for Whiski

See notes below on how I experimented with color to help me sketch the raccoon's black fur. 

Here are a few more things I learned toward the end of Pencilvember and in my final week:

• While still using photos as my main references, I tried giving imaginary touches to some of these. I used to think drawing from imagination meant that I had to pull everything directly out of my head; I now know that’s nonsense. Pros use lots of reference images, and so can I.
•  One of the challenges of mixing imagination with realism is maintaining light logic. When I used multiple reference photos with varying light sources, I had to choose a single light source and imagine how it would light the imagined part so that it would be consistent with the rest of the image.
•  The raccoon (my own reference photo of a visitor to our back deck a couple of years ago) gave me an opportunity to try an experiment on the fly. One of my challenges with black fur is showing the distinction between the local dark color and shading on that fur. As a quick shorthand, both in execution and in helping me identify the distinctions quickly, I used green first to quickly indicate the local color. Then I used dark blue to shade the black fur. I like both the effect and the ease of thinking this through in a limited time. I know I could also do this by varying the values of plain ol’ black, but somehow that requires more thinking! (Besides, a green and blue raccoon is just more fun, don’t you think?)

I deliberately used unnatural colors for this challenge to keep myself from getting
fixated on trying to "match" reality, but in Mookie's case, she really did have pink ears!

I can always use more practice, but these two solid months of drawing animals during InkTober and Pencilvember have given me the confidence to get back into commissioned pet portraiture much more quickly and efficiently – and that was my ultimate goal with both challenges. Win!

 Although my intention was to show the pencils I used each week, I kept forgetting. So here they all are. It always feels so good to have pencils in hand! Thank you, colored pencils, for an enjoyable and instructive Pencilvember!

Derwent Lightfast

Caran d'Ache Luminance

Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle

Faber-Castell Polychromos

Vintage and contemporary Prismacolor

Pencilvember: Small Breakthrough (and Luminance Illumination)

 

In every challenge in which I have given myself a specific drawing goal (not just the use of a specific medium all month), I usually hit a creative breakthrough point. In a month-long challenge, it often happens around the third week. I think it just takes a couple of weeks to warm up and push past any resistance before a breakthrough can happen. Last week I finally hit that point in Pencilvember: I pushed past being descriptive and moved more in the direction of caricature or imaginative drawing.

The lioness returns from hunting with hungry, squabbling cubs in tow while
the deadbeat king of the forest has been sleeping all day.

In truth, however, I should probably count all of InkTober before that as part of the warm-up. I had hoped to be more expressive and less descriptive when using a brush pen, too, but I never felt like I got there last month. It took a couple more weeks using colored pencils to finally loosen up my always-challenged imagination.

Awakened from her beauty sleep.

Although the first two dogs probably look fairly realistic without much caricature, I exaggerated some of their features. Those tries gave me permission to push harder with the lioness and the two kitties that followed – and what fun they were! I’m pleased to be hitting my goal while staying within my self-made time limit of 20 minutes.

Full of her own beauty.

The last dog’s (below) reference photo was a bit frowny, so I used a second reference photo to help me with the grin and tongue. I’m starting to learn that I can (and should, if necessary) use multiple reference photos when making imaginary drawings. I know pros do this all the time, but as a “realistic” sketcher all these years, I sometimes forget that I can use reference images in whatever way I want to help me do what I’m trying to do. The challenge with multiple references is that the lighting will not be consistent, so I must rely on my own knowledge of light logic if I want the lighting to make sense. (More on this next week in my Pencilvember finale.)

Material notes: These sketches were all done with Caran d’Ache Luminance. Following nearly a week of using Derwent Lightfast, I immediately noticed significant differences between them. While both are extremely soft, Luminance feels strangely “dry” compared to Lightfast. Although I’ve never thought of Lightfast as being “creamy” or “buttery” the way Derwent Drawing colored pencils are, Lightfast are, indeed, creamy compared to Luminance. Huh! Given how much I usually love Caran d’Ache’s premium products (and how mixed my feelings are about many Derwent products), I daresay I prefer Lightfast!

Amtrak to Centralia

 

We completed three Haiku Exquisite Corpses on the train ride to Centralia. The haiku read as follows (from left): "The universe flows on/Farms and rivers, trees and houses swim past./What gift awaits me?"
"We rock and roll southward/Shakes and bumps the train ride goes/Rolling through time and space."
"Autumn trees pass by/Universe of many faces/Our destination is clear; our future is not."

About 90 miles south of Seattle, Centralia is a charming town with historic buildings and quirky shops. Years ago, a small group of sketchers made an excursion out of it by taking the Amtrak down. I felt like doing that again, and this time I invited Roy and Mary Jean to join me. Neither had ever been to Centralia, let alone taken the train there; that made the excursion seem fresh again.

Our day began at King Street Station in Seattle, where we all arrived early enough to sketch inside the station before our train. Ever since we turned the clocks back, and the days suddenly got drastically shorter, I’ve been thinking about sketching nocturnes – one of very few benefits of the Big Dark. (The workshop I took last month using white pencil on black paper also helped put me in the mood.) I wasn’t quite ready for black during the day, so I chose a dark maroon-colored Uglybook to get into the nocturne mood. It turned out to be just right for sketching a capital at the top of a column and some globe lights inside the elegant station (below, left). 

Left: King Street Station details; right: light fixtures at McMenamins Olympic Club

I also sketched a few people in the waiting area (below, right).

(All day, I hopped back and forth between the maroon book and my daily-carry green one, which means the pages are out of sequence in relation to my story. I’ll try to tell my story in chronological order, but you’ll have to look back and forth to see the corresponding sketches. This is a drawback of using multiple sketchbooks that I’ve learned to live with, though it’s inconvenient at times like this.)

Hand of a light rail rider on my way downtown and King Street Station passengers.

With a nearly two-hour train ride to Centralia, we had plenty of time to sketch on board. Sitting in the lounge area where we could face each other over a table, we played our favorite art game: Exquisite Corpse! Roy has been interested in writing/drawing haiku comics lately, which gave me an idea for adding a twist to our game: After drawing each portion of a corpse, we wrote one line of haiku that did or did not have to relate to whatever we drew. If you recall the rules of exquisite corpse, each participant continues drawing a figure without seeing what the previous artist has started. Similarly, we couldn’t see the line(s) of the haiku that came before, so we had to trust the stream of consciousness that would surely result, both visually and poetically.

The reveals were amazing (top of post)! We were stunned by how beautifully the words, ideas and images flowed, despite being made without seeing what came before. Making our corpses was probably the part of the day I enjoyed most with my creative friends!

The first thing we did once we reached Centralia was head for lunch at McMenamins Olympic Club restaurant (part of the hotel of the same name). I knew from previous visits that the restaurant is full of fun décor to sketch. I liked the way the page of lamp fixtures looked next to the page I had sketched at King Street Station.

After lunch, we walked around sketching in town, which is quite small. I focused on the cool, old sign at the Fox Theatre first, then found a lamp post to sketch in my nocturne book (both below).

Fox Theatre, Centralia

Centralia street lamp

To finish off our afternoon in Centralia, we went looking for dessert. When I asked the server at Dawn’s Delectable Desserts if they offered affogato, he didn’t know what it was. I saw that they offered both ice cream and espresso, so I described it. After receiving manager approval and learning how to ring up my unconventional request, all three of us were happily served affogatos (and the whole staff learned how to make them). My job there was done!

A sleepy train passenger and Dawn's Delectable Desserts (out of sequence in this spread because I thought I would have more to sketch at the cafe to fill the left page, but we didn't have much time before it closed).

After closing down Dawn’s at 3, we waited for our train at the historic Centralia Station (built in 1912), where I found another lamp and an architectural detail to sketch in my nocturne book (below).    

Centralia Station details

An entirely fun day with good friends!

The excursion was a birthday celebration for me, and Roy and MJ both surprised me with sketches they had made! Thanks for making my birthday special!

Planet Grief’s Orbits

 

6/26/25

I think about grief often lately. Process-oriented as I am, maybe thinking about it is a natural reaction to feeling it.

Coming into the middle of an NPR interview, I heard the author make an analogy that resonated. Since I was driving, I couldn’t take notes, and I regret that I missed both his name and the title of his book, so I can only paraphrase what he said:

Grief is like an orbiting planet. At first, it orbits regularly, frequently, continually. As time goes on, the orbits become wider and wider, so the grief comes around less frequently. But it never stops orbiting completely.

The moon takes only 27 days to orbit the earth; Neptune takes 165 years to circle the sun.

5/8/25

These widening orbits are familiar to me from when each of my parents and my sister died. Twenty-two, 16, 14 years later, the orbits are wider now, yet occasionally the planet appears. Unlike the moon or Neptune, its revolutions are unpredictable, prompted by the unexpected.

I understand that kind of grief because it’s a response to death, and that topic is easy enough to study and analyze, in terms of resources (a quick search on Amazon brings up more than 60,000 publications with the term grief in their titles, usually associated with loss from death). The more challenging study of grief is when it’s related to loss of something other than death. *

I know that people who have lost loved ones at a young (or younger than expected) age feel a loss for all the years they thought they would still have together. I feel that too, so perhaps my grief is not very different in that regard.

10/8/24

Yet every time I visit, I am reminded that I haven’t lost him yet, and I should be grateful for whatever time we have together now. Appreciate the present. Stop grieving for what hasn’t happened yet, I tell myself. But it’s too late for that: I began grieving years ago, long before we even had a diagnosis with a name. It began the moment my denial ended. As I watch him decline, each day brings new losses to grieve.

The orbits are tight, frequent, continual. Accepting grief is easier when I understand that although the orbits don’t end, the circles become wider.

Someday, I will have to start over again, fresh.

11/28/24

(These sketch journal entries, some quite old, didn’t have enough context to write about at the time. Somehow, this post seems to give all of them context enough.)

*A couple of years ago when I was still part of a support group for caregivers of people with dementia, the moderator had recommended a book: Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief, by Pauline Boss. After reading it, I read a second book by the same author, Loving Someone Who Has Dementia: How to Find Hope while Coping with Stress and Grief. Despite their titles, which sound like they would address my experiences directly, I found both disappointing and mostly unhelpful. I suppose everyone’s mileage varies.

8/4/25

Exquisite, Confused Corpses

 

3/31/25 Exquisite corpses by Mary Jean, Roy and Tina

Exquisite corpses live again! Mary Jean, Roy and I got together to work on more exquisite corpses, which we had so much fun with last time. This time we chose an ocean theme. Somehow, though, we got the rotation mixed up, so we each ended up making both the head and the “feet” on the same piece! It was still a ton of fun, and we’re going to continue with more.

Afterwards, we had lunch at nearby Geraldine’s Counter, where our friend Allan Carandang has a show of intriguing paintings.

Some of Allan Carandang's paintings at Geraldine's Counter

Exquisite Corpses Live!

 

Exquisite corpses by Roy, Mary Jean and me

Mary Jean, Roy and I always have a lot of fun whenever we get together for art play dates, but last Friday we kicked it up a notch: We made exquisite corpses! Begun by the Surrealists, it’s a drawing game in which each player draws one part of a figure, then others add to it without seeing what the previous players have contributed. Obviously the drawings must be done from imagination, which is always a tough stretch, but Roy and MJ have a way of inspiring me. Maybe the game itself freed me to lower my expectations and just have fun with it. Indeed, we all had a ball and were delighted by the amazing results! These are not the last of the corpses we’ll see!

After the corpses came to life, we settled in for NA beers from Project 9 and burrito bowls from Mexican Seoul. Project 9’s large tables are especially suitable for collaborative projects like ours. Since we’re all more comfortable with urban sketching than with imaginative drawing, we all relaxed into our comfort zones with more sketching. We all agreed, though, that giving our imaginations a kick in the butt was good for all of us!

Exquisite collaborators!

3/21/25 Project 9 Brewery

I Smelled Something

 

1/5/25 Autobiographical comics from imagination

Here’s an autobiographical comics page I drafted a couple of weeks ago. Although they look rudimentary, making all these sketches from imagination took some doing. My intention was to eventually redraw the strip in ink and maybe add color afterwards, but by the time I finished, I ran out of steam. I never went back to it, and I’ve decided to call it good.

I think what happened here is the main reason I am a sketchbook sketcher and not a maker of “finished” works (the kind intended to be framed and hung on a wall). Some painters see all of their sketches as nothing more than preparatory studies for future works. Not me: Done is done. Once the fresh spontaneity and immediacy of a sketch (or first draft) are achieved, I lose whatever motivation I might have had initially to see it through to a more finished state.

My only regret with this strip is that I didn’t draw directly with ink the way I always do on location. I don’t have the same confidence when drawing from my head as I do from observation, so I feel like I need to be able to erase. Developing comics from imagination also takes more planning so that the strip follows a logical story arc. I could probably accomplish that step with a storyboard of small thumbnails instead of making complete drawings as I did here. Drewscape, my autobiographical comics hero, draws from his imagination directly with ink. Someday I hope to have enough experience under my belt that I’ll feel confident enough to do that, too.

Natalie’s Birthday Party

12/31/24 Macrina Bakery, Maple Leaf neighborhood

The card I made for Natalie
(drawn partly from imagination and inspired by
a photo of her wearing these holiday accessories)

On the last day of 2024, Natalie invited me and a few other friends to her sketchy birthday party at Macrina Bakery. Friends, sketching and cake – what better way to usher out one year and greet the next? I'm grateful for all of it.

Productive and Creative, After All

3/18/24 (memory)

With all that was going on in my life (and in my house) in 2024, I had been feeling a bit disappointed that I didn’t explore creatively as much as I usually do (either in media or in approach). But reviewing the year’s sketches for my Top 10 Memorable Sketches post reminded me of my on-location comics, which were a major change in approach. My interest in the comics style also led me to try autobiographical comics using my imagination, which is always a big stretch for me. Early in the year, I made a lot of pet portraits as a fundraiser, which was a rewarding and challenging project. It’s been a productive, creative year, after all.

Currently my studio is in a transitional mess of partly filled boxes and ongoing dishevelment. It’s hard to relax and create here because I see so much stuff I still need to sort and haul downstairs (which will be Phase 2 of my big downsizing plan). Looking ahead to 2025, I can’t wait to get my studio move completed so that I can get back to doing more drawing (maybe even painting) at my desk this winter. I’m shooting for the end of January for completion (though that might be overly optimistic).

9/29/24 Greenwood neighborhood (This was the last of my street tree series
for the year.)

My tradition for last-day-of-the-year reflections is to include sketches that I didn’t get around to sharing at the time that they were current. Interestingly enough, many are experimental in nature but also one-offs that didn’t go further, which made it difficult for me to form any coherent thoughts or ideas around them.

Wishing you creativity and fulfillment in 2025!

10/30/24 A collage/random paint splotch exercise inspired by Drewscape

11/9/24 Aegis resident

12/18/24 pale primary triad (photo reference)

11/11/24 metallic Neocolor I in Uglybooks (photo reference)