Secret Sketches/Photosᯓ★ (𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝒔𝒑𝒂𝒄𝒆, 𝒖𝒈𝒍𝒚 𝒅𝒓𝒂𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔!)

Hi, going back to my roots a little by doing a blog-style post with images throughout, instead of a gallery post. If you're like me you will probably choose to skim (or ignore) the text and only look at the images, maybe reading the captions when you feel curious about something. Regardless of how you want to consume this post, I hope you enjoy!

Photos from my little sunroom office. It's tiny, narrow, and hard to get a picture of with a fixed 35mm lens, maybe honestly better photographed on an iphone? Or maybe just better saved for video format. I'm trying to find a way to put all my author copies of books on this shelf, but not even half of them are on there yet and I'm fearing it's taking over the whole bookshelf. I want to use this shelf space to keep some print stock (this is a new thing, coming soon, whenever I get around to ordering the first batches!)

It gets a lot of natural light, and I have a pretty view of unique chicago homes, and lots of very big very old trees.

Some semi-fugly sketchbook pages! I like about 20% of what's going on here. On the second image (above) Leigh and I were drawing pokemon from memory, as well as random things, both assigned to us by friends. We were having a 50/50 split of fun times and terrible times, I think.

I swear to god I forgot how to draw once I entered the Chicago Field Museum. I am so out of practice drawing from life, when in college I felt like it was hammered into me daily and I became a drawing-from-life-supersoldier. Like my brain used to be chemically altered to quickly process what I'm seeing and translate it onto the paper. I felt rusty, insecure and so stupid that I was laughing out loud at myself at times. As an aside, I think going to the field museum JUST to see things would have been a good idea at first. I'd also like to go back and maybe focus in on 2-3 things to draw or paint. It was borderline overwhelming to see thousands of a taxidermy specimen and fossils all at once and then try to pick some to draw??! impossible.

Speaking of, as I promised to one patron, here's me looking goofy excited with Quetzalcoatlas:

 And here he is more zoomed out, for reference:

I'd love to go back just to paint Quetzalcoatlas for hours. Maybe next time I'll print my ipad and do some digital painting if I am feeling crazy!!

I got some much needed Creek Wading Time in with Leigh, Jess and friends when I visited Ohio a couple weeks ago. It made me realize how much I do miss Appalachia (for nature reasons, exclusively). I'm glad I've found some spots in the midwest that can fulfill that need. I am an outdoorsman at heart, and I don't think living in the city will be something I do for the rest of my life--but for now, I'm happy to be able to leave the city and have some nature time.

Some sketches that show a little bit of ideation process, trying different things out, maybe giving you some insight as to how I go from idea to final(?) The top image is some sketching for the coasters I just completed for this year's Nucleus Portland coaster show, and the bottom image is some very minor character exploration for a couple of prints I'm finalizing!

Finally, a crop of a book jacket I'm working on! This project has been quick, which I like--especially for book jackets, because it's essentially one or two illustrations, so I'd rather have a tighter time constraint to just power through and get it done.

I think I'll cap it there. I have a vlog coming out in a couple weeks with some more fun moments from the last month. I'm heading right back to editing that after this! And in a few hours, I have a date with someone I know little to nothing about. HAHA.

Okay, talk to you soon. ᯓ★

-JG