This is the year I re-invent myself.

I didn't choose this year, more like it chose me... and why now, I don't know. But there it is — I can feel it. This year I re-invent myself as a cartoonist, as a painter, and [if I can manage to tackle poetry] as a writer, too.

My 14^th gouache is a Bohemian waxwing — I was quite taken by the incredibly vivid reds and yellows in the wings and tail, they were fun. 8 x 10, watercolour paper mounted on cardboard: a surface I found in Dollar Tree and have since stocked up on. I find it a very handy work surface for gouache.



My 63^rd acrylic is a seasonal Golden Lab. Got organic greens by mixing yellow and black: a trick I picked up a while back and still get a kick out of. 10 x 10, canvas.

making a breakthrough [okay, maybe more like a baby step forward] in designing a character for my graphic-novel WIP

My 61^st acrylic is another in my projected No Idea series.

( the 'story' behind it )

My 59^th acrylic is another in my projected No Idea series.

( the story behind it )

Getting enough comic strips drawn to give myself a buffer of time so that I can try to produce a painting as a gift for an upcoming special occasion.

[Sometimes my creative life feels like I'm spinning plates.]

[Actually, the other parts of my life do, too. Just Sayin®.]

I was recently talking with Barbara about a local artist [acrylic painter] I have met and conversed with a few times... and how I always find it flattering but odd when I realize that said artist talks with me [and about me] as if I am a peer. Barbara says that I am one and should certainly see myself that way, but I have trouble with this. Then she got talking about whether I realize that I am a good artist, and that my art is good.

Afterward I thought about it for a while, and realized that I do think that my work is generally Good Enough®, but I don't think of it as Good®. Since then, I've been struggling to define for myself just what the difference is, between good enough and good.

Finally I settled on something like this: if I look at a piece of mine, and I don't see things that I wish I had done differently, or parts that aren't quite what I would like.... if the flaws are not glaring, but are acceptable instead, then I can say the work is good.** Then I got thinking about which pieces of mine I can say that about.

I came up with four. Out of sixty years of arting.

Not sure where I'm going with this, I still need to mull over and hash out. Wondering if other people make a similar distinction between good-enough work and good work. I just wanted to get this down while I thought of it.



** and is this how I judge whether other people's work is good? Not sure that I do. Yet more sutff to mull over....

trying out my new specialty pencil sharpener [designed for carbon and charcoal pencils] and finding out it works exactly as hoped

My 56^th acrylic is, once again, a visual that mysteriously popped into my head and stayed there. (As usually happens with any abstract that I feel moved to pursue to completion.) There's something about this colour palette that seems to connect with me, seeing as I used this same one last year. I can see me using these colours to sub for the white/gray/black palette I'm accustomed to working with in my cartooning, and doing value studies that way. (I even have a vague idea for the next one...)