To 2023! 🎉

I bought this fanciful party horn at a greeting-card store and have lost track of when.

Doodle by yours truly. Mechanical pencil, Paper Mate Flair Medium and Arteza Bold 1.0 mm pens, and sketchbook paper. Digital filter used in larger version seen below.

It doesn’t have a year on it and the store is now out of business. It has golden paper that shimmers and a fluffy frill of ebony feathers that I think gets prettier with time.

It’s a little crooked (in real life and in my drawing) but holds a lot of hope and cheer.

Each time this calendar year we get to start over, to reset, to look ahead in art and in life, and that feels fitting and good. Thanks for all of your camaraderie and support.

Here we go, 2023! To all that we’ll create and experience in the year ahead!

"Take a Break" Word-Art Doodle ✍️

I haven’t shared one of my doodles in a while, and this rushed season seemed like the perfect time to post this one.

Whether it’s a fifteen-minute tea or coffee break; an hour with a book; a week off from work; or an afternoon of baking, or streaming movies, or catching a nap, or writing, I hope you also put a thing (or ten) on pause to savor a little break. You deserve it!

Here’s my initial doodle (using pencil and fine-line black pen) from my sketch pad. Yep, I also used crayons on this one. You’ll notice some pencil marks here and there that I didn’t erase well enough (oopsy!) and that the curve of my T and my second line’s k got some extra ink that was inadvertent. Handmade things are perfectly imperfect this way. 😁

Then, I scanned the initial doodle, cropped it, and experimented with adding filters for the background and the doodle itself.

Art & Interview in Bait/Switch 🥳

A true delight to get to participate in Bait/Switch, an innovative, inspiring “call and response art publication” where creatives are given a piece of art as a prompt to then create a new piece of art.

I had the best time creating my cyanotype, “On the Move,” and had a blast talking art, letter-writing, and more with multitalented editor and executive director Lu Valena. Check out the latest/fall 2022 issue for the work of wonderful creatives here: clickety.

Extra props and a very special shout-out to powerhouse of art and dear friend Christine Tierney. Many thanks for your encouragement to submit to Bait/Switch and for the marvelous poetry and life conversations. Such a joy to be publication twins with you, and kudos on your group show! 🥳Check out Christine’s gorgeous collage art and interview in the issue as well as her fabulous poetry book, chicken+lowercase=fleur .

To continued artistic inspiration!

New Month, New Projects Popping ⏲️

Hello, September!

I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately: how we organize it, how we anticipate or dread it, how we save it through the things we make and the things we share, how it is ever-malleable—both jet-speed propulsion and gelatin slow and everything in-between.

So, I made this thematic pen-and-ink drawing. Writing the interconnected and interrupted “ticks” was relaxing. There’s something very meditative about making something by hand, even something imperfect, as this doodle most certainly is. 😁

Also, my new class about writing historical fiction and time-travel stories, Leaping Worlds, is accepting registrations and will start Friday, September 30th. Can’t wait! Clicky above for more deets. I’d love to work with you and a friend. 📝