A Morning Hike with my Nature Journal

On a recent hike in Raccoon Creek State Park, I stopped to sketch a favorite sycamore tree.  The autumn light filtering through the forest caught on the white bark of the sycamore, setting it apart from the dark, shadowy hillside beyond.

Just 15 minutes of sketching deepened my experience of walking in the woods.

The day before, I had been helping David to photograph our friend Joe's artwork.  Looking at my drawing, I can see the inspiration Joe's work imparted.  I admire the way he captures the life in a tree, and the way he sets off a subject by sketching in the shadows behind it.  

Without being conscious of my decisions, I was drawn to sketch the shapes the sycamore tree  highlighted by the dark shadows behind it.

I now realize that I had what Julia Cameron calls an Artist's Date on the day I helped with David's photography project.  And, Joe's artwork directly inspired and improved my artwork.

Anytime we take ourselves out to see something that fascinates us, to see another person's artwork, or to experience beauty in some way, the encounter affects our creativity.  We may feel inspired.  We might create in a new way, or even take on new subjects.  I find that it's always worth the effort of fitting an artist's date into my life.

What artwork or beauty would you like to see?  I hope you put it on your schedule and have an artist's date of your own!

Drawing My Favorite Things

I have two Black Cherry trees on my hill that I love to look at and draw in any season.  Sometimes, when I go out with my nature journal, I try to find "something new and interesting" to draw, as if drawing old favorites is bad or wrong.  My Hobgoblin (inner critic) shouts that these favorite subjects are unimportant, and overdrawn.

Yet, often artists develop their craft by working in a series, taking one subject and drawing it in different seasons, in different light, with different materials, etc.

I recently read some wisdom from artist Louise Fletcher, who reminded me that the things we love are important to our art, even though other people might not appreciate them and so we feel they are unimportant too.  

We often downplay the beloved subjects our muse is just begging us to draw or paint. For me, it's scraggly weeds, little treasures like acorns and leaves, and these two Black Cherry trees.

Emboldened by Louise Fletcher, I sat in the grass Saturday and let myself revel in the beauty of these tree friends.

I used only a black colored pencil, studying the wriggly branches and the light and shadow in the scene.  A flock of starlings swooped through, so I included them in the drawing to express this season of flying leaves and migrating birds.

Simply sketching a favorite scene like this one brings me joy. As I draw, I observe closely the way the tree limbs twist and branch, the way the leaves flutter on the wind, and the shapes and shadows of the brush around the trunks.

 What do you love that you may have overlooked as being unimportant?  I hope your favorite subjects get to be the center of your creativity!

Art Journaling with Inks

A couple of chilly days and the way my big Sugar Maple tree is beginning to change colors gave me the first blush of viscerally knowing winter's coming. In winter, I miss being able to walk freely around in nature and sketch without my fingers numbing.

I decided to work in my art journal to express these feelings through art.  That's the beauty of art journaling -- you can let things out onto the page, perhaps make discoveries about your thoughts and feelings, and then move on.

I created a page spread for my board book art journal with Black Walnut ink, India ink and touches of white acrylic ink, reminding myself that winter has beauty, too.  I worked on a package insert with information in a variety of languages.  You can see other art on this paper in this blog post.

Sometimes as you create freely, a symbol or word will rise up.  For me, it was a heart with a + inside that showed up in an accordion fold insert.  I find the more quickly I create, the less I overthink and the better I like the result. I wrote what spilled out -- advice to my future self.

I glued the insert down to the edge of the page.

Here's the finished result.

I'm still not looking forward to winter, but I have put my feelings into my art, and I've chosen to try to live in the moment and relish autumn's beauty.

What have you been thinking about lately? Is there an anxious thought working on you that might find release in an art journal?  It's worth a try.  The only cost is time and a few art supplies.

Wishing you healing energy from your creativity.  

Mark Making Experiments

Igor Adameyko, Gerd Günther, Wim van Egmond, Benedikt Pleyer

Last week, in an email from the New York Times, I discovered this gif of microscopic life.  You can read the article here: Videos of Microscopic Life

I'm getting ready for the start of my Pencil Drawing Workshop at the Community College of Beaver County, and we'll be talking about mark making.  I find images like these spark new ideas for me.  After watching this gif, I quickly filled a page in my sketchbook.

Practicing making different marks is a good way to keep your hand in drawing practice, to exercise your imagination, and to generate new ways to express texture & shading.  Different types of marks make your art more interesting.

Look at the way that varied marks create texture and vitality in this drawing by Vincent Van Gogh.

Wow! Van Gogh's landscape fairly vibrates with life!

Though Van Gogh used a lot of straight lines and cross-hatching, look at how vibrant his Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin (1888) is.

Let's try our own mark making, inspired by the video of microscopic creatures.  I hope you'll join me and sketch your own version of this!

I started by holding my pencil -- a 7B -- at the end to loosen up my lines.  Try it!

I loved this little character, and made lots of loopy lines to create a second one.

After blowing out a candle, I noticed the way the smoke rose up, wobbly and curly.  It inspired the swoopy lines at the bottom of the page.  I smudged the soft pencil marks to make them more smoky.

For more control and different marks, I hold the pencil closer to the tip.

But I'd never get the long, flowing lines of these branching marks by holding the pencil that tightly.

Next step -- now try a page of marks that imitate Vincent Van Gogh's.

For a touch more inspiration, here's a link to a wonderful YouTube video by Ed Lax of a simple mark making exercise: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZVim6ECWss

Happy Creating!

Watercolor Sketches on a Lake

Over the weekend, my husband and I rented a pontoon boat at the Raccoon Creek State Park Boat Rental.  The weather was gorgeous and sunny.  

As we motored slowly around the lake, I made slapdash sketches of the scenery.  Above is the boat rental seen from the water, with colorful kayaks stacked up along the shore.

The sunlight and cloud shadows created beautiful effects on the trees and forests surrounding the lake.  The distant hillside was in a cloud shadow, while sunlight shot through the near trees on the left.  Days when the lighting is dramatic like this, I love to create art that zooms in on these high contrast areas.  

In artworks, areas of contrast attract the viewer's eye and create visual interest.  You can capture boldly contrasting values and colors to create a more dramatic composition.  

For instance, greens and yellows dominate this painting of the boat rental.  The red & blue-violet kayaks along the shore catch the eye because they contrast with the colors around them.

When I started painting these two scenes, my only goal was to play with my paints for the joy of it. I simply was present in the moment, exploring with my brush.

Trusting the process and going out to sketch, you make discoveries, try experiments, and find new ideas to explore.

As messy as these sketches are, I love them.  They represent a snapshot of the afternoon -- an escape to the lake with David on a gorgeous afternoon.

 Sketching in this way can foil the inner critic's voice -- you know, that voice within us that demands we make masterpieces.  

Our job in sketching is simply to "take notes" on the scene before us.  We are focusing on ways to represent what we find fascinating in the world.  We are not bound by reality.   As artists, we are not cameras!  We can omit parts of the scene, change colors, remove trees, or whatever we want!

Remember: When you are sketching, your job is to explore what you find fascinating.  If you do that, you have succeeded, no matter what your sketchbook looks like to anyone else.  

I hope you'll take lots of opportunities to make sketches this autumn!

Happy Creating!

Artist's Date to a Cyanotype Show

David and I attended the opening of the show "The Light Divides and the Story Multiplies" in Pittsburgh last Saturday night, and I came away with a wonderful sense of inspiration and fresh possibilities.  

Each of the 6 artists used cyanotypes -- the same system that makes sun prints -- to create their art.  (You can read my post about making basic sun prints here.)

Dan Hendrickson, photographer, artist and curator of the show, printed a digital photo using cyanotype and added layers of watercolor to create Archaeology of Venice, 2024, above.  I love the dreamy effect of adding the watercolor and gouache to the print.

The beauty of attending the opening of a show is that you often get to meet the artists, learn how they made their art, and what inspired them.  We got to speak with Christine Lorenz about her use of dried wild strawberry leaves to tone her cyanotypes.  I was fascinated to learn new uses for the plants I love.

One artist I didn't meet, but whose work inspired me was Michele Randall.  Randall took ocean waves as her subject, using photos and the ocean waves themselves to create her cyanotypes.  

Randall created Flotsam and jetsam, 2024 above, and the work below 

I love the way she added gold and white inks to her prints.  In her artist's statement, Randall notes, "I am interested in drawing attention to the sublime beauty and fragility of the ocean against the backdrop of environmental threats.  I want to invite the viewer into a moment of contemplation and impart the nostalgia of an unblemished world."

Cathleen Richards, an artist and boutique travel agency owner, melded her love of travel to Jordan with cyanotype printing in her artwork Worn by Time, 2026, above.  

Richards printed digital photographs of the ancient city of Petra, and a historic tile mosaic floor onto a linen blouse, then added embroidery in the traditional style of the region, imbuing the garment with her cherished memories, weaving deeper connections into a simple shirt.

I hope you make the time to visit The Light Divides and the Story Multiplies before it closes October 30, 2026.  For more information about the show, visit The Associated Artists of Pittsburgh website here: https://www.aapgh.org/

Experiencing this art opening sparked fresh ideas for me about using photographs to make cyanotypes, and adding layers to prints.  I felt so excited about new art potential that I woke up at 4:30 am unable to sleep any longer!

I decided to use this photo of the morning light glancing over a meadow.  I love the contrast, the long lines of light & shadow, and the textures of the wild plants catching the sunshine.

I needed a black-&-white negative to create my cyanotype.  Luckily, Jacquard, the company that sells cyanotype supplies, has a free & easy-to-use photo editor here:  

https://www.jacquardcyanotype.com/

I created the negative above, printed it on a transparency specifically made for my printer, and used it to create the sun print below.  Note: it's important to use a transparency made for your type of printer.  The wrong material can melt on the drum and ruin your printer.

The weather was overcast, and I set a timer for 15 minutes, but I overexposed the print so it looked more like nighttime & moonlight than morning sun.

Inspired by Michele Randall's ocean prints, I added acrylic ink marks to my dry print.  I like the result -- like lightning bugs flashing in the dusk.

I exposed a second print, above, for 5 minutes so it looked like daylight. When it was dry, I added watercolor washes as Dan Hendrickson had.  I love the effect!

These are test prints, and I plan to make more photographic prints the next time the sun comes out.  I had some difficulty with a warped drawing board that I used under the paper, negative and top glass. It's important to have the negative pressed right against the paper to make a clear contact print, otherwise the image goes fuzzy.  I have found a level board to hold the paper flat against the top piece of glass.

My mind percolates over loads of different photos and images that would work well for this project.  All from attending one art opening.  I can see why Julia Cameron recommends that artists take themselves out on "Artist Dates" routinely.  

What sort of art date would you like to take yourself on? Make a list!

Wishing you a deep well of inspiration to fuel your creativity.

Making Tiny Watercolor Paintings

I have a friend who likes to paint small paintings.  Jenny works on watercolor paper cut to fit frames she already has, starting at 2" x 3" and 3" x 5". Inspired by Jenny, I cut up some 140# watercolor paper and played with a garden flower watercolor theme.

The first two sketches I simply made up, imagining a bright summer day in a garden.  Phthalo blue for the sky, permanent rose and Azo yellow for the flowers, and mixtures of Hooker's green & phthalo blue, as well as sap green & Azo yellow for the greenery. All done wet-in-wet.

Later, I sat out in my sunny garden painting zinnia blooms.

I started with a Faber Castell XS permanent pen, then painted the flower.  For the background, I painted the area around the flower with clear water and touched in watercolor, letting it blend and flow.

Below is a Sacred Basil plant growing among the zinnias.

I love tiny paintings!  

They take very little time to complete, and you can try out an idea quickly, then move on to something else. It's easy to make a series.  

These little paintings would add a beautiful spot of color in a small space in my home, or become a beautiful card to send someone I love.  

Jenny has a box of her paintings and rotates them through her frames.  It's a great way to celebrate your creative explorations!

Happy Creating!

Playing with Inks in my Art Journal

I was cleaning up our paper recycling box and found a stack of product safety inserts on thin paper with tiny print warnings in dozens of different languages.   I love working on paper with text, especially in a foreign language.  So I pulled the pages out to create on.

I grabbed my inks: India ink & Black Walnut ink, as well as a white wax crayon & a black grease pencil. 

In the page above, I drew with the white crayon and the black grease pencil before painting with ink.  The crayon resisted the wet inks layered on top, leaving white marks shining through. I finished the page with the walnut & India inks.

It was fun to paint using the chocolate-colored walnut ink I made years ago.  (You can see that post here.)

After the walnut ink dried, I layered on rich, black India ink.    

I enjoyed simply playing with these supplies.  One trick that helps me create freely is taking paper that's trash and turning it into something more fun. There's zero pressure to have "success."  It's trash.  

I glued part of one of the papers to a new page in my board book art journal. I added a pocket made from an envelope a bill came in.

 

I used Yes! paste to glue papers down, and washi tape along the edges, adding marks with a grease pencil & India ink. Mark-making relaxes me. It's an easy way to connect with my creative intuition.

I added a bit of blackout poetry with text encouraging the reader to "Discover what's inside."

I like the way the dark India ink around the page balances with the lighter values and the way the straight lines of text contrast with the curvy, organic lines of my painting.

I created a tiny artwork to fit inside the envelope pocket.  The little circles were inspired by a photo on a package of frozen peas we'd had for dinner the night before. 

You can get your inspiration from the most mundane sources!

I finished the page by writing a quote that spoke to me: "Attention is the beginning of devotion." -- Mary Oliver

I think I've always had an affinity towards upcycling papers and other materials into art.  

It can help to discover what sorts of materials, art supplies, colors and marks make you feel at ease, invigorated or playful.  Pay attention to what makes you feel most excited about making art, and follow that trail your intuition leads you on.

I wish you Happy Creating!