Tag: Sketchbook

April in the garden and the sketchbook, plus other news

Jen


Spring is in full bloom, and filling my head with ideas. Behold!

Out and about

The garden is up and running – largely without me, I admit. The daffodils are especially robust this year. (I wish I could say the same for the studio lighting or my poor old camera.)

jfries-daffodils-4.8.24-72dpi
JFries hyacinths 4.8.24 72dpi
JFries daffodils still life 4.2024 72dpi
JFries worktable 4.2024 72dpi

A little sketchbook tour

Inspired by the energy of the season, I’ve been letting all my ideas make their pitches. Those glorious daffodils again, this time in two vases. This year’s solar eclipse – from photos. We didn’t get totality over Massachusetts, so while I took a moment to observe the partial over my studio (safely!), I also watched the totality over and over, live on NASA tv. The little Medusa concept doodles happened because I am convinced Medusa and the Gorgons were solar mythic beings. Next, ephemeral springtime forest plants – North American bloodroot flower and fern fiddleheads. (Did you know, that part of the violin is both named and designed after the plant?) All of these sketches are plans for future artworks.

The color sketch was just testing out some watercolor pencils. I’m not particularly in love with this set, but the SATOR design is an idea in development for some typographic abstracts. The SATOR square is one of the oldest good-luck charms in western culture, found decorating doorways of ancient Roman buildings.

And finally, testing out different pens – a dip pen, a bamboo reed pen, and a fountain pen – the one in black. I sketched with a glass pen, too, but forgot to photograph it. I like them all, but I think the reed pen gives that Real Artist vibe, at least in these little drawings.

JFries sketchbook 4.2024 1st daffodils 72dpi
JFries sketchbook 4.2024 eclipse 72dpi
JFries sketchbook 4.2024 bloodroot 72dpi
JFries sketchbook 4.2024 ferns 72dpi
JFries sketchbook 4.2024 rabbits 72dpi
JFries sketchbook 4.2024 sator 72dpi
JFries pen tests 4.2024 72dpi

In Other News

New small paintings are ready. I’m just editing the photos. I’ll post them separately, and they’ll be added to the shop soon.

An Alchemy of Dragons is on a brief hiatus. As I prepare to introduce the second protagonist, Iarius, and expand my characters’ world, I found I need to corral an explosion of plot bunnies. I also realized I made some mistakes in the earlier chapters. So I decided to pause, rework some details, and get more of the story written in advance of posting. Maps are being drawn. Character portraits are being designed. A world-building wiki is coming together as I go along. I’m pretty excited about the upcoming improvements. Watch this space.

An Alchemy teaser.

-Jen

It’s been a minute and a year

Jen2 Comments
JFries doves border 1.28.21

Hello, all. I’m back after one of my long, unannounced absences, and I’m afraid I return with sad news. 

Our beloved cat, Leah, has died after more than a year battling cancer. The disease turned aggressive in late November, and she passed in early January, at home with us by her side. She was 17 years old. She’d had a rough as a captured feral cat in shelters before coming to our home some 13 years ago, but despite her post-traumatic phobias and neuroses, she was the sweetest, most caring and quietly affectionate creature you could imagine. Beautiful, small, delicate, she was our fairy princess, and few things could make us happier than to see her content and purring. We all miss her so much.

Immediately after our personal loss, of course, That Insurrection Thing happened. As you know, we are a rather political gang in the apartment attached to the studio, so it was a bit all-consuming to watch, in a state of grief, as a bunch of racists and fascists tried to overthrow the US government live on tv, and all the ripples that spread from that.

Also, covid-19.

Altogether, not a good time, and I hope you will understand that I haven’t done, said, or thought a single thing worth telling you about in over two months.

But tonight is the first full moon of 2021, and I am officially restarting the year as of now. 

Am I all healed up and ready to rock? Nope. I am tired, and foggy, and sad, my plans are a jumbled mess, and my calendar is mostly blank. But the fascists failed, and the days are getting longer, and I do feel just a little more … possible than I did just two weeks ago. It’s a flimsy straw, but I’m grasping it. In the past two days, I’ve started a new sketchbook for the year. I’m planning my garden. I’m gradually, baby-step KonMari-ing this whole place (ye gods, I’ve got a lot of stuff), and sorting it all out is giving me a ton of new ideas. Somehow, I feel vaguely like I can start moving again.

Where does this thin trickle of unexpected energy come from? Maybe the moon. January’s Ice Moon is ushering in a wave of snow storms and a deep freeze here in scenic Somerville, and I do feel as if those gusts of wind are blowing away the last, clinging dregs of 2020. You know, psychologically.

So, belatedly, happy New Year. I hope you are all warm and keeping well and looking forward to better days. I make no warranties or representations for what 2021 will bring from my studio, or when, or how. I offer no schedules or projects on deck. No promises = no apologies, that’s my motto for the moment.

So let’s just go forth, as it were, and see what emerges, shall we?

Winter 2020/2021 Photo Journal

JFries december merganser 1.28.21
JFries mourning dove 1.28.21
JFries moth 2 1.28.21
JFries moth 1 1.28.21
JFries moths in progress 1.28.21
JFries sketch #1 1.28.21
JFries January 2021 Ice Moon 1.28.21

In Memoriam: Leah the Bedea, Our Princess, forever loved.

JFries Leah 4.11.19

Sketchbook Visit: They Say Practice Makes Perfect

Jen

Working on the words aspects of a couple of projects, which is not very visual as processes go, so I thought this week I’d share a glimpse into my sketchbook.

I’m training myself to do more drawing. My poor book – I made it at New Year’s, for encouragement, using a variation on the Japanese tetsuyoso binding – and now it’s being filled with mad randomness. I think I have too much on my mind.

  • Book Nerdery: This binding was a bit of an experiment, combining coptic and tetsuyoso techniques. With the tetsuyoso binding, covers are usually glued on, but to make the book with no adhesives at all, I adapted the Coptic binding method of attaching covers. I like the way it worked.
  • The tetsuyoso binding lies flat effortlessly.
  • Tulips in a vase. My first attempt in years to render flowers realistically. Pencil.
  • It is Balloon! I have no idea why I decided to draw a hot-air balloon from imagination, but I do rather like the effect of the trees in the background. As you can see, I write in my sketchbook as much as draw. Pencil sketch with watercolor and ink.
  • Initial design sketches and notes for the first three Estuary Birds, Mystic River project.
  • Sunflower and brown marigolds in a blue jug on my desk. The more I look at it, the more I like the marigolds. Watercolor and ink.
  • A white pine bough. My first attempt with a bamboo pen, just trying to get the feel of the tool. It might be my favorite sketch of the year. I should do more like this. India ink with bamboo pen.

Journal sketch, Daedalus, and last season’s mums

Jen

I found these little chrysanthemum flowers floating loose in my journal from last October. They looked like suns to me, so I made this collage sketch, with another of my collection of fortune cookie messages, musing on the dangers of ideas, as in the Greek myth.

Daedalus's Promising Idea
Daedalus’s Promising Idea, collage with pressed mums

First art of 2018, journal and mushrooms

Jen

I heard somewhere once, many years ago, that at a certain latitude, if the sky is clear and you look due north at an unobstructed horizon, at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s night, you will see Sirius, Orion’s dog, at its apogee, with winter’s Orion setting to the west of it, and his mortal enemy, spring’s Scorpio rising to the east of it, and the two constellations will be equidistant above the Earth. So the story of Orion the Hunter, lover of Artemis, killed by the poisoned sting of Hera’s scorpion, marks the passage of winter and the new year.

I don’t know if this is true, but I think it should be, and already, the sun is setting a little later, haven’t you noticed?

This little journal collage is my first artwork of 2018. I’m calling it The Future of Orion, inspired by this video from the European Space Agency: Youtube Link.

The little snippet of text is my New Year’s dinner fortune cookie message. “Your fate is in no one else but you, in no hands but yours.”

Plus, I made some little crumpled-paper mushrooms – my first attempts – out of napkins. Super ephemeral, but I rather like them. I’ll play with these a bit more.

Happy New Year!

  • The Future of Orion
  • New Year's Day work table
  • Paper napkin mushrooms
  • Journal and mushrooms