At the end of last year, I bought a hobonichi techo, which is a daily journal from Japan that is very nice and high-quality. The paper, while very thin, is very durable. And since there is a page dedicated to each day, I decided to fill it up creatively with whatever I wanted. The only rule was that I needed to create daily.
And so far, I have. I’ve missed a day, here and there, usually when I’m traveling. But I go back in and fill any pages I’ve missed. I’ve varied which times of the day I do this, and for the past couple weeks I had been quickly filling it out, out of obligation more than anything, right before I went to sleep in bed.
While this had worked before, it was feeling a bit stale, and I wasn’t enjoying it as much. But all the while, I’d really been starting to see a difference in my creativity. In this small journal, I was experimenting with mark-making, colors, and ideas, and working through them in this low-stakes and consistent way. I was shaping my creative identity and how I like to express the abstract thoughts in my head. And now?
Now that I have my sketchbook desk set up, I’ve been sitting down around mid morning. I open the window, let in the light and air. And I do whatever I want. I can more accurately use colors (instead of the low, very warm light I had been creating under right before bed) and also use wet media like paint. And incredibly, this hasn’t been enough. I don’t stop at one page: I will turn to my other sketchbooks and journals and keep creating. This has brought me so much joy and contentment this last week.
Overall, this has become one of my favorite parts of my day, and I cannot wait to see what this journal looks like at the end of the year.
From Studio Notes on April 28, 2025
Now that I’ve been back at home for a few weeks, I’ve had the time to intentionally cultivate more separated spaces for different aspects of my creativity. I’d like to share them and explore what makes each space unique and suited to what I’m using it for.
As I’ve shared previously, I’ve moved my desk to my living room in front of all my windows. There, surrounded by plants, I have a beautiful view of my lawn and field. I have a large desk that I can turn standing, and overall it is perfect for productivity. I am trying to incorporate using the pomodoro technique when I am working at my desk (25 minutes of work, 5 minutes break), so that I am getting up and moving. I have a tendency to get sucked into my work, which is good in some ways, but I want to incorporate more movement throughout my day. In those five minutes, the only rule is I need to get up from my desk. I can stretch, I can chug some water, I can clean a bit of my house. And then, when those five minutes are up, I’m good to jump back in. The main thing for the breaks is to do something that does not occupy my brain, so I’m still thinking about what I’m working on. That way, it doesn’t even feel like a distraction or like I’m getting out of the flow.
Next, of course, is my studio. I finally have it all unpacked, and it is laid out in a way that I can just jump in and get to work. There’s a lot of open space, and I can just go crazy in there for as long as I want.
However, I’ve found that there can be a barrier to getting into my studio. Mentally, I need nothing ahead of me in my day to go down and paint (for the most part). I need the openess and freedom to stay down there as long as I want, otherwise all I’m thinking about is the time. When I’m in my studio, I like to not look at the time at all. I rarely check my phone, and I don’t have a clock anywhere in the room. It helps me feel like I’m in my own world, just me and my paintings.
With all that, I’d run into a slight problem. I wanted to be able to just jump in and create, even if I only had ten minutes. But it takes that long just to get into my painting clothes, fill up my water bottle and grab a snack, and make my way downstairs to my studio. So in my current life, it’s not feasible for me to get into my studio to create every day. So what was my solution?
I’ve had this painting desk, that I got from my grandma who got it from my aunt, that is very cute. I had it in my previous studio, and was actually my main surface when I was just painting in my bedroom as a teenager. Since it was old and nearly falling apart, I could freely paint on it without worrying about staining the surface. But there wasn’t space for it in my new studio, so I was ready to get rid of it.
However, my family convinced me to keep it. So I put it in my bedroom where my other desk used to be. I brought up my sketchbook supplies: my markers, pencils, pens, gouache, and watercolors. I laid them all out, and I opened my blinds and the window, and I started creating.
It’s been the perfect setup. When I’m in my studio, I like to paint big, so I rarely sit down to work in a sketchbook. But with this, it’s a low-pressure, comfortable way to just work creatively. And it’s really brought a lot of joy throughout my days, as I can jump in and create with no prep work, and when I don’t even have much time.
With the warmer weather, I went on my first couple of camping trips of the year, and they were incredible. Filled with good times with family, great food, and lots of hiking. And through that, I’ve come to a conclusion. If I want to consistently make art plein air (which means on location), I need a simple setup that fits in my pocket. Of course, there is something truly amazing and fun with having a whole painting kit, packable palette, and a larger-sized watercolor sketchbook. However, there is something so simple and easy about pulling out my pocket notebook and doing a quick, low-pressure sketch with my brush or fountain pen.
If I need to capture a scene or subject quickly, I will use a brush pen. I prefer a smaller nib, but with a more flexible tip. Or, if I have a subject that is completely stationary, with many details, and plenty of time, I will use my very fine-tipped fountain pen.
With this setup, I’ve been plein air sketching more and more, not just in nature either. I will pull my little sketchbook out anywhere, and I love drawing people. It is so hard, and a real challenge, as people move a lot. (I’ve found it’s easiest to draw sleeping people and people on their phones, cause they move a lot less).
This is such good practice, too, for accurate sketching. Since I’m just using ink, and usually have to work quickly, I’ve grown a lot more confident with my brushstrokes, and more accurate as well. It’s also an incredible way to memorialize a moment: I can look at any sketch, no matter how messy or “bad” it is, I am immediately transported back to that moment.
With this pocket notebook, I’ve been working really hard to always have it with me. So not only can I sketch a tree that’s caught my eye outside the grocery store, but I can also keep track of any ideas that cross my mind, important notes, everything. It’s combining my great love of creativity with my journaling obsession, and I love that.
When I get around to actually plein air painting, not just sketching, I will let you know. But for now, I am absolutely loving the simplicity of this setup.
From Studio Notes on March 9, 2025
I’ve never realized before just how much sunlight affects me and the world that surrounds me. As the days are growing longer once more, and the constant cloud cover is breaking up more and more, I find within me a renewed energy. It comes out in my journals, in the free-flowing of ideas, and in my canvases. More light, more energy, and more movement, coming alive with the green shoots in the field.
I’ve always tended to lean more towards playing with light in my paintings, and now as I reflect on this energy and lightness, I realize that I’ve always been this way. I tried to convince myself out of it in the past, arguing that winter was my favorite season: I love snow, I love being cold, I love the dark cozy nights curled up under a blanket with a good book. But, as I experience the changing of the seasons with more intentional mindfulness, I realize that, like everything in this world, there is a balance, a cyclical nature to it all. These trees and plants need winter to survive, but they also need spring. They need the sun. Just like me, and everyone else.
I want to explore this more moving forward. My studio has a garage door that opens up into a beautiful view of the field, and it faces south, towards the sun. Which might not be best in terms of consistent light (you always hear you need north-facing light for professional painting studios), but it is best in terms of letting in that energy, that lightness, that movement into my studio and letting it dance with me and upon the canvas.
I also moved my desk to face the bigger windows in my house, and that simple change has drastically increased my productivity and ease of working on my tasks at my desk.
I want to carry intention with noticing the light and how it makes me feel, and see it in my paintings, and dare to explore it further. This is the season we are in, right now, and I realize I owe it to the authenticity of my work that explores the natural world, to heed the seasons outside and inside.
From Studio Notes on March 9, 2025
Through rereading The Creative Act, one of the areas of thought this week we covered was Inspiration. Now, inspiration is not the end-all-be-all of a creative practice. In fact, only relying on inspiration is a sure way to have creative block, de-motivation, and more. However, when inspiration does strike, it is telling you something, and you’d better be ready to heed its call.
Now, I have a little story to tell about inspiration this week, how I heeded its call. And this all started with (surprise, surprise, I know) a book.
Wild Dark Shore is my favorite author, Charlotte McConaghy’s, newest release. It came out on March 4, and I don’t know for sure, but there is a good chance this book changed the course of my life.
Charlotte McConaghy weaves through her novels strands of human connection, character growth, and raw emotion against the backdrop of a changing, dying planet, tied together with themes of grief and trauma. And yet, despite the darkness, hope and light shines through in the beauty of the natural world and the wildlife within it.
When I say I want to be a novelist, I mean I want to write novels like Charlotte McConaghy. She has three published, and each one has a hold of my heart and speaks to my soul. And through reading her latest, I felt a fire of inspiration.
It struck me, and I had to get it out of me. And now it looks like this:
A solid plan to self-publish my own chapbook, within the next few months.
A rediscovered want to take apart and put back together a rough first draft of my novel, To Swallow the Sea.
The need to explore these themes and emotions on the canvas, in my paintings.
So thank you, Charlotte McConaghy, at reminding me my passion for words in accordance with our natural world. I cannot wait to see where this takes me, but I am certain, somehow, someway, I am meant to be both a writer and an artist.
From Studio Notes on February 23, 2025
When I was in New York, I bought a copy of Mary Oliver’s collection Dream Work. I’ve read many of her collections throughout the last few years. There is something about the way she connects how we feel inside to little details in nature that always inspires me. Between reading this book and another that is one of my very favorites, Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith, I have felt very inspired by words. Specifically, written words as a form of art.
I’ve always been a reader and a writer. I’ve wanted to be a writer for far longer than I’ve wanted to be a painter, interestingly enough. And even though I’ve been working hard towards working as a professional artist, I find myself drawn back to writing.
Now, I have been a novel writer since I was 13 years old and wrote my first manuscript. And I’ve written a great many since. I’m querying one of my novels to agents right now, a very slow-moving process.
However, it wasn’t until I was taking classes for my creative writing minor in college that I discovered my love for poetry. I always thought poetry just wasn’t for me, but in truth, I think poetry can be for anyone. If you think not, perhaps it is just because you haven’t found your right kind of poetry yet.
I love how poetry acts as though words are paint, and the page is the canvas, and there is a different kind of freedom towards painting with words. As I’ve been reading Dream Work, I’ve felt drawn to read some of my old poems from my college workshops, and I’ve even felt compelled to scratch out starts to new poems in my journal. And I realized that I’ve missed it.
I’ve heard so many times that to succeed in a creative space, you need to have a niche. While this can certainly be debatable, I can definitely see the draw to that idea. And I want to revisit the idea of combining written and visual mediums in my work.
I’ve done this in the past, but in a way that emphasizes the visual medium of paint. In many of my paintings, I start with writing a poem or snippets of my poetry, before painting over it. While I love this and feel it sets an intention for the painting, in the end the viewer cannot read those words. Something about poetry feels more vulnerable to me, and I tend to shy away from that.
Now, for a long time I’ve had this idea of publishing a chapbook of poems and paintings, and I find myself thinking about this a lot. I don’t think I want to traditionally publish this: if I decide to pursue this project, I want to have complete creative freedom to make it true to itself, without worrying too much about marketability or making it sellable. And now, by writing it here and sending it to you, I feel that it gives this idea substance and holds me more accountable.
For a shorter-term goal, I will be creating and offering a new product in my shop launch next Saturday, March 1. I will call them “Poetry Postcard Prints”, and have on the front a print of a painting, and on the back my own poem that inspired the painting. And since they will be postcard sized, they will be offered at a more affordable price point.
Now, in creating this chapbook and these postcards, I’ve hopefully found a way that I can combine my two loves into a format that you can hold in your hands and see juxtaposed next to one another, as equals.
From Studio Notes on November 24
The very first thing I start with is picking a canvas size. Most of the time lately, I have an idea of what I am going to paint before I start, so I choose a canvas that speaks to me and I feel will represent the subject accordingly. So for trees, I tend to go for a vertical canvas. Whereas with water paintings I am more drawn to a horizontal canvas. I feel a larger canvas provides a more immersive experience for the viewer, so I’ve been going larger lately. My favorite way to start is to build the canvas myself, but that takes a lot of time, and sometimes just buying a prestretched canvas on sale is more cost effective anyways. So it all depends.
The next step is choosing which color to tone the canvas. More often than not, it’s going to be indian yellow. This is probably my favorite color to use, as it is pure sunlight in a paint tube. So if I want a warmer painting, or any painting with sunlight, I will most likely start with indian yellow. However, I don’t want to fall into the trap of habit when it comes to my art, so I started one of my wave paintings with a warm green I mixed. I quite enjoyed the difference, and it made the first layers go pretty smoothly.
When toning the canvas, I work with my spray bottle and a lot of movement. I feel this helps with the first layers.
When I have my toned canvas, I am free to start with my first layers. I like to use my 2-inch, super cheap brush from the hardware store. It can hold a lot of paint and liquid. I always start with my liquid acrylic paints, usually diluted with water quite a bit.
Now, this has been my process in the last couple months. However, I also love starting with intuitive layers, working without a preconceived notion of what it will look like. I use whatever colors I am led to, with whatever marks I am feeling, and what will come out will come out. And once I have some layers built up, I will develop it into a landscape. This process is so freeing and exciting, but a bit harder if I want to paint a specific subject matter.
And from there, the rest of the process unfolds!
From Studio Notes on June 23, 2024
Thunder Mountain: a beautiful, incredible mountain I hiked up last summer, that I wanted to portray in this painting. This painting has… well, let’s say it hasn’t been as easy coming together as This Land’s Heartbreak has been. But I’ve read a lot about intuitive painting and how it’s necessary, in order to bring one to conclusion, you need to use reason. To look at your painting critically and see what is working, and what is not. Now down below, the first picture is what it looked like when just working intuitively. But something just wasn’t setting right with me. The composition was too symmetrical, and somehow didn’t feel accurate to the memory I had in my mind that I wanted to bring to life.
So, what did I do? I turned to my camera roll, scrolled back to when I took this hike last year, and looked closely at each picture. And then, nestled in the corner of a picture was my painting. A similar composition and structure, but it felt… right. So I went in with acrylics and adjusted the mountains, added in Mendenhall Glacier, and changed the hill in the foreground. And it just… clicked. I became excited to work on the painting again, and I could see how it will become a finished work I am proud of.
I’m always learning in my process. This was another one of those aha moments that I felt I wanted to share with you all.
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From Studio Notes on June 23, 2024
Ok, it’s time to get gritty with the details. I feel my relationship is constantly shifting with oils and acrylics. Acrylics will always be my first love, my comfort material that I can come back to anytime. I learned to paint with acrylics, specifically heavy body. But for the last year or so I’ve been in love with soft body and fluid acrylics. I love seeing paint flow on canvas, and you’ve probably noticed many drips, splatters, and translucent layers in my recent works. All due to my new obsession with soft body acrylics. I’ve been using the more affordable Liquitex Basics line of fluid acrylics, which released recently and made me so incredibly excited.
My work flow lately has been to start a painting intuitively in acrylic, and discover within it a composition and subject matter that I develop and reveal. I usually switch over to oils to achieve colors and details that, while possible with acrylic, are just so much less painful to do with oils.
However, I think I’ve discovered the most perfect flow in my painting in progress, This Land’s Heartbreak. This painting is based of a poem that I wrote a couple years ago in college, inspired by the most beautiful and magical place in the world: Tracy Arm Fjord in Southeast Alaska. I’ve had the privilege of working on catamarans that tour this magnificent fjord, and I continually explore those experiences in my art. I am so in touch with the paint, the canvas, and my thoughts and feelings in this piece. There has only been one other painting that I’ve felt this way with (Self Portrait as a Landscape), but with This Land’s Heartbreak… it’s stronger than ever.
All this to say, I had an aha moment this week. I was debating when to make the switch over to oils in This Land’s Heartbreak. I usually do it when I have it more blocked in, with more details. But I didn’t want to cover the dynamic, beautiful messy paint strokes, drips, and splatters. So I just followed my intuition and jumped right in with the oils. And oh my god, it was unlike anything I’ve ever done. I worked loosely, blending in colors with oils, and in places that I loved with splatters and drips, I worked with a lot more liquin, which is transparent, and the layers of acrylic shone through the vibrancy of the oils. I think it was one of the most effortless, beautiful, perfect moments I’ve ever experienced while painting. So yeah, those are my current thoughts and processes with oils vs acrylics. Let’s just say, I am very in tune with the mediums I am currently using.
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From Studio Notes on July 7, 2024
Switching gears a bit to talk about something that’s been on my mind this last week. In my Thunder Mountain painting that I showed you guys in the last Notes, I have since made the switch over to oils. Yet, intuitively, I worked very loosely on the details. I blended the highlights and shadows together. While it still took a lot of time, at the end of this session, when I took a step back and looked at it, what I found really surprised me. It almost looked as though someone else had painted it! It had a very loose, painterly style. I was in love. I’ve made a few tweaks, tightened up a few things here and there, but I am keeping the loose nature in the final painting.
Ever since this studio session, I’ve felt a draw to incorporate that looseness into my other painting-in-progress, This Land’s Heartbreak. When I was working on the trees on the land in the background, I kept this looseness, and it worked very very well. It faded into the background, while still having the definition to look like trees. It felt more like you were seeing a scene with your eyes, instead of just painting an image, if that makes sense?
Which leads me to my thoughts on organic vs. inorganic details. I don’t know if someone else has coined the term, but in my eyes organic details come about, well, organically. They’re the top of a tree created by the texture of a brush, or waves blended together with oils. It’s clouds shaped by a palette knife full of paint. It comes about seemingly with little effort, even though organic details can be just as much effort.
Inorganic details, on the other hand, are applied with a small detail brush. Small, precise movements: snow on the top of a mountain, shadows between the peaks, an eagle flying overhead. Inorganic details are very time-consuming, and are part of what adds to the realism of a painting. However, if you work closely too much, inorganic details can make a painting feel stiff and, well, inorganic.
Now that I’ve defined what this is I’ve been doing, I’ve developed a kind of strategy. With the Thunder Mountain painting, I’ve decided to keep its organic nature with little-to-no inorganic details. I think that is its best form. While, on the other hand, This Land’s Heartbreak has a balance between the two. I’m not including a picture in its current state in this email, as I’m waiting for a grand reveal once I’m sure it’s done. (I’m 95% sure it’s done, but I need to be 100%) So, I think I want to work intuitively between organic and inorganic details, and while I’m heading into the final stages of a painting, make an intentional decision: here I want to keep it loose, but here I really want to stand out so I’ll go in with the inorganic details.
From Studio Notes on July 7, 2024
In these last two weeks I’ve finished up two series—my mini-series of the three Scandinavian paintings, and the big series I’ve been working on since January! A hint: it’s based on Southeast Alaska. I’m very close to being completely done with this series—basically just waiting for the final layers of oil paint to dry on my last couple paintings. There are 8 paintings in this series, as of right now. I have a feeling I’ll be adding to it in the future.
I am very excited to start selling work from this series! The debut piece, if you will, is actually “Calm Waters”, a painting I’ve already started selling prints of. And it is one of my best-selling prints so far! So, if you’re a lover of Southeast Alaska, marine life, or glaciers, then keep an eye out the next couple days!
Finishing a series is bittersweet. There’s something so accomplishing and satisfying about having it all done, and the openness to starting something new. But at the same time, I’ve been working on this series for so long, it’s occupied space in my brain and my studio, I’m sad to let it go.
And even though this first group of paintings in the series is done, there are still a few ideas I have that I didn’t get to in time. So I imagine I’ll be revisiting this series in the future. So overall bittersweet, even though it does feel very good to finally get it done!
From Studio Notes on February 9, 2025
I used to hate plane flights. I was really scared of them when I was young. I have since gotten over that fear, but I would still get very antsy and uncomfortable in the small seats for hours on end, so close to so many people. I also almost never can sleep on a plane, even if it’s the middle of the night. (The only time I’ve gotten actual sleep, I was in a row by myself with no one behind me. I leaned my seat all the way back, and after spending all night awake on the floor of an airport, I passed out. That was the only time, and honestly it was wonderful.) But, back to the point, I realized that plane flights are a given if I want to travel, and so there was no use dreading and hating them.
I have now embraced plane flights, and instead of seeing them as an obstacle to get through, I now see them as an opportunity. An opportunity for hours on end to slow down and dive into whatever brings me joy, without the world as a distraction. No internet, no social media, no notifications. Just me and whatever I want to work on.
I read a lot on planes. But I have also started drawing, journaling, and even getting some work done. I’ve fallen in love with sketching from references in my camera roll while listening to a podcast or music. Or while watching a familiar movie on the seatback monitor, if the plane has those. It is so relaxing and makes the time pass quickly and comfortably.
I used to be self-conscious of everyone being able to see what I’m doing, but I’ve let that go now. I don’t care, and honestly it’s led to some really fun conversations with people around me about art.
I still get antsy on the flights. When I start to feel myself getting agitated, I stand up and go to the little bathroom. I go slow, take my time, wipe my face and fix my hair. On some larger planes there is a little bit of room around the bathrooms, where I will do some simple stretching. I know some people probably think I’m weird, but I don’t care anymore. And then when I get back to my seat, I feel refreshed and ready to jump into a different activity.
I also love journaling. I can take the time to fill in blank spaces in my travel journal. Or, on this last flight, I was brainstorming ideas for these Studio Notes.
Now, while I am jealous of people who sleep for the entire flight, I’ve found that I feel good not “wasting” the opportunity for uninterrupted time to myself. Whether that’s through reading, drawing, or journaling. It can be challenging when it’s a deadeye flight, but honestly I just work in the dark. Usually there’s a little bit of light overhead. I don’t turn on the booklight overhead because I feel like it’s too bright for everyone around me trying to sleep. But if it is too dark, I just read on my kindle. And there’s something exciting about being awake while everyone else is sleeping.
So yes, that is how I’ve adjusted my mindset about plane rides, changing them from my least-favorite part of traveling to one I actually look forward to.
