I woke up grumpy this morning. Why? Because the calendar says November now. Because this, ultimately, means that I now have to jump from enjoying autumn and Halloween and all the best things about this time of year and into the frenzy of bullshit that is holiday marketing, shopping, decorating, wrapping, and everything else. It was bad enough when I was just a normal person with a normal job and all I had to worry about was the idiotic ads and emails pushing me to buy, buy, buy. But now, as a retailer myself (though not a typical one, anyway), there’s the push on another front to sell, sell, sell…

Do you write morning pages? I remember reading about them in some bullet journaling communities a while back, which I then discovered were linked back to The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. The Artist’s Way is a multi-week exercise for creative types, which I’ve attempted off-and-on over the last few years. I struggled a bit with the exercises overall, but the morning pages have relatively stuck for me. Not every morning, mind you, but I’ve found they’re fantastic for those days that I try to settle in to get some work done and then struggle to focus, or think of what I even need to do, or just have too…

I spent time since my last post working on profile sketches. My side profiles have been, historically, pretty damn awful. I’m not saying that to be down and deprecating on myself – it’s just what any artist goes through. You suck at something until you practice and you stop sucking. I decided to dedicate some time to really kind of learning more on it – figuring out proportions better, trying to figure out why my faces all looked so flat, etc. And wouldn’t you know it, something just clicked and it made sense so much more. (I haven’t practiced since this, though, so I’m not sure that the breakthrough really…

This paper is definitely not meant for paint, but is handling it a lot better than I thought it would. I’m not as practiced with acrylic painting/blending/layering, but I don’t think I did too terrible overall. I’m trying something new, now that school is back in session for the kiddo, and trying to wean myself off social media in favor of things that are more productive, constructive, or creative. So this morning, instead of getting onto my laptop to check email and wind up scrolling for far too long, I spent about 2 hours total sketching out and then painting this. And then I went off to clean the living…

The other day, I made myself a cup of tea at work. I was out of coffee, feeling run down and coughing, and really needed something warm to soothe my throat. While still August and technically summer, there’s a crisp-ness in the air that always lets me know fall is on the way, and a cup of tea sounded suddenly like the most enticing thing in the world. Anyway, I tried some acrylic paint in this cheap Rae Dunn branded sketchbook I picked up on clearance at TJMaxx. I greatly dislike the Rae Dunn style/brand and find the single word style emblazoned on every damn piece insufferable, but I couldn’t…

Keurig pod coffees produce coffee-flavored tea. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Today is one of those days where I want nothing more than to be in bed, cuddled up with my cats and a book to nap off and on while I weather this cold that’s coming on. Unfortunately for me, with adult responsibilities and all, I’m at the yarn shop bored out of my mind. Sure, there’s always something to do – knitting to work on, shop planning and ordering, etc. But my body wants rest, so I’m muddling thru my day today.

When the drawing prompt is “staple” and you’ve watched Office Space more times than you can count, you draw Milton. Kind of excited with how well I managed to do on this one. There’s some things that aren’t quite right, of course, but compared to 3 years ago when I first started trying to draw? Leagues better!

I hit a milestone this month. 4 decades, to be exact. I’ve been telling people for months about how excited I was for this birthday – and I meant it. And it turned out to be the best damn birthday I’ve ever had. Most years I spend my birthday feeling very blah, full of feelings and moodiness. I think, in hindsight, it’s because most years my birthday has felt like an afterthought because it falls on the 3rd and, inevitably, coincides with everyone else’s holiday weekend plans for 4th of July. (Or, in my family, long holiday weekends meant my parents trying to knock out house projects, so my birthday…

Like pretty much any neighborhood in Ohio, we have lots of squirrels. They, for the most part, keep to themselves, but sometimes they steal food from our garden. It’s fine, really, because we plant a LOT of food and rather than get annoyed by nature nature-ing, I consider it the cost of living on this planet alongside our furry feral friends. When I moved my desk setup in the home office to face the back window, I knew it would likely inspire me to do some drawings. I assumed I’d see butterflies on flowers, or maybe some unique birds that happened to be migrating through the area. Perhaps I’d come…