Art Reads: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck

My coworker buddy lent me this book after loving it, and it turns out that as I talk to more people, more and more of my favorite people have read this book.

Mark’s writing is relatable in a ‘cool dad’ kind of way but he’s the cool dad friend that we all need in times of crises and when we are being too hard on ourselves and giving way too many fucks. In one chapter he mentions he graduated college exactly the same year as I did, in 2007, right in time to get hammered by the economic crash of the aughts.

Wow, I never felt more of a “I get you, man,” feeling than when I read that.

But for anyone who has overhoned themselves into near-perfectionism, for any reason, this book can help. Or if you admit you’re not perfect but you’re still too friggin’ hard on yourself, this book can help.

The excerpt on Picasso in Art of Not Giving a Fuck was one I’d seen before but I didn’t mind seeing it written down. On the page before this excerpt, Picasso drops a napkin with one of his drawings on it:

It takes a whole lifetime for an artist to make what they make.

I think it’s good that this message gets out to non-artists for a couple different reasons - it helps non-artists see their life as kind of art, which is good. And it helps artists value their work. Ultimately the point is to realize how many failures and tribulations you’ve been through, and to see these experiences as valuable.

I felt myself latching onto the Picasso excerpt and also the part in this book about a Japanese general who gets lost in the woods and rejects the idea that America won WWII, and he continues to fight as if Japan is still on the offensive, until the bitter end. This book is just full of little gems of history and pieces of the author’s life woven in. It mostly works. I’d say It’s fortunate if the fucks you are giving are about ideas instead of personal odysseys, but I don’t know, ideas have to come from people, so there’s that to deal with.

While reading this book, I started looking at the accomplishments in my life that really made me happy. It was the accomplishments where I felt the most natural and least worried that ended up being the best ones. Whenever I gave no fucks about what people thought of me, I succeeded the most, on my own terms, like a rapper or something. Whenever I gave too many fucks, I failed - usually on the terms of other people, but sometimes I failed according to my own weird standards. It really is counterintuitive, just like the book cover says, but giving no fucks ended up working for me.

Giving no fucks works pretty well in art - I find when I try too hard or constrain myself too much (give too many fucks) I usually end up failing. Giving fucks equates to me beating myself up and eventually doing nothing. It’s only in being free and giving less fucks that I make art that I am truly proud of.

I definitely had to actively give no fucks when I sketched this romantic sailboat scene. There was a nagging part of me that was trying to give too many fucks, saying: “Why are they on a sailboat? That’s not how a sailboat works! Why is she controlling orbs? What?”

None of this makes any sense! Relax and give no fucks and draw some dreamy sailboat art, kid

Giving no fucks also came up in a couple of my other pieces which are working into Tilted Sun, where a massive deer comes along and is suddenly a predator. I can feel the over-achieving explainer side of me asking: How did it become a predator? What is the cellular science of this? The give-no-fucks side can answer: I don’t know man just relax it’s just a giant deer.

My point is, freedom is important for art. Giving no fucks is oddly important if we want new things and change to happen.

This story isn’t in Mark’s book, but it is one I have heard over and over again about giving no fucks, and I hope it helps anyone who reads it. The actual quotes are not accurate at all, but this is how I have heard the story told to me over several beers:

Stan Lee was about to quit comics forever. He wasn’t making any money, he had put in years of work, and he sat down and said to his wife “I think this comic will be my last one.”

Stan Lee’s wife said to him: “Well sweetie, if you’re going to quit, why don’t you just write whatever you want? Just go crazy!”

Stan Lee did just that! He unleashed his creative side and came out with Spiderman, the Avengers, and more, because heck, it was supposed to be his last comic. It was the Final Fantasy effect - long before the first pixel ever slid across the first screen in anyone’s livingroom. It was these give-no-fucks Marvel books that sold and took off and it’s the reason why Stan Lee stayed in comics and why we have all of the Marvel comics and movies that we do today.

I checked out Mark’s website after reading the book - I am a curious cat, I am - and it was almost too much for me. It was the Forbes-stamped website of someone who gives a huge amount of fucks, festooned with testimonials for all to give fucks about.

Spoiler, I wish I hadn’t looked at his website. I was already onboard with the Give No Fucks mission and I didn’t need to look at the website.

As I scrolled through all of Mark’s awards and cool web motifs, I felt some kind of daemon land on my shoulder and say: “Hey, this give-no-fucks charlatan is out here giving fucks! Let’s get him!” When I saw the Forbes endorsements and slick-as-ice frontend UI on this website, I had to go back and remember that Mark was a fellow 2007 graduate - everything Aught Crash Grads do has to be 100% better than the next person over. You have to go hard into oblivion. But again, even if you didn’t graduate into the worst economy in the history of time, there isn’t really anything else to do in life.

So, who needs this book? Is it the person in your life who gives too many fucks? Maybe, but I think it could be entertaining for just about anyone.

Ultimately I think the message of the book is to keep a sturdy fuck budget and give the right amount of fucks about the right things, things which matter to you. Hopefully the things that matter to you are worth caring about.

Artist Takeaways:

Whenever anyone asks you how long it took you to do something, always answer “My entire life”

Usually the best work comes from giving no fucks

Find your demon that gives too many fucks and kick it to the curb

What is Crystal City like?

I remember reading forecast articles in my Houston apartment in 2017 about Amazon HQ2 with a mix of curiosity and disinterest.

It all didn’t matter, Amazon HQ2 wasn’t going to be anywhere near where I was. If anything, HQ2 would land in Austin, like an airborne alien ziggurat, hovering and choosing for years over which city to bless. I secretly hoped HQ2 would land in Denver too, if anything to help my friends and family back home in Colorado.

Little did I know that in the future, I’d find myself in the place that had claimed HQ2 like a wallflower suitor.

Nobody really expected Crystal City, but after working here for a while, I can see why it won for both Amazon’s leaders and workers.

As a worker I feel … happy in Crystal City. I take the Yellow Line over the Potomac each day, rolling past the Pentagon and Pentagon City stops until I’m in Crystal City. With No Service brandished across my phone like a warding spell, I get a lot of reading done on my way to the office, and if I forget a book, I play a game where I guess who will get off the train at the Pentagon Station, and who will get off the train at Crystal City. Usually people with cool socks will exit the train at Crystal City.

Taking the Yellow Line over the Potomac from DC to Virginia

pic.twitter.com/6t9griXeFy

— Becky Jewell (@beckyjewell) November 26, 2018

There’s a saxophone player at Crystal City station who shows up most every day. He plays pop hits like Adele and Katy Perry - I’ve put at least $5 in his jar but this is a shame given the amount of smiles he creates. I’ve only heard a sax player in Crystal City play Careless Whisper once, which is pretty amazing as far as sax restraint goes.

pic.twitter.com/oMkiA7kn6f

— Becky Jewell (@beckyjewell) December 24, 2018

And really, Crystal City is not far from DC at all. It’s something like 6 stops from McPhearson Square Station and the Washington Post at One Franklin Square. It’s gonna work out for Jeff Bezos.

As for workers: I’ve worked in Boulder, Austin, Houston, and Columbia Maryland, and have never felt safer or happier than in Crystal City. There’s nothing to think about or worry about. In Boulder I had to worry about paying for street parking at the right times, and theft, harassment from randos and homeless people and trustafarians alike. In Crystal City there’s basically none of that. I mean the Pentagon is right there - you’d have to be bonkers to do anything funny.

A covered building in Crystal City as seen from Highline bar

Where did all the people go? Am I in a dream?

Even in the summer, Crystal City seems empty but not in a bad way.

In a twist of fate, one of my fellow Hurricane Harvey refugees from Houston ended up working in the same building as I do. There’s something to be said when the smart people you meet from one city end up meeting you again in another city, when there are thousands of cities in the world to choose from.

Sparkle time with @PancakesPotatoe pic.twitter.com/hSRvZ9M5n9

— Becky Jewell (@beckyjewell) March 4, 2019

That’s the magic of Crystal City - it’s extremely peaceful and orderly on the outside and absolutely glittering with intelligence and wonder on the inside. Crystal City is like the best you could hope for in a human being: strong, not too gaudy, and surprisingly intelligent.

At a certain point in late 2018, working in Crystal City became like a weird movie, like some kind of Truman Show where everything was just too perfect. It was just too right. Crystal City was trying hard, harder than most, but it did so in a pretty classy way.

I wonder if Crystal City will keep its immaculate Truman Show chill when Amazon arrives? One reason why I wanted to write this post was to capture the place as it is in late 2018 and early 2019, long before the ziggurat touches down.

Art Reads: Snow Crash

Hiro Protagonist, goggling in, burbclaves, ‘pooning, the Metaverse, hackers, Babel.

Written in 1992, Snow Crash mostly predicts our present time in 2019. The Kouriers in the book are Postmates, burbclaves are gated communities with their own pseudo-laws, and the book’s opening chapter detailing an extremely timely pizza delivery predicts our current-day Dominoes app where you can see the name of who makes your Pizza and an Absolute Pizza Status update.

Anyways, if you’ve ever worked in Pizza Delivery, you’ll love Snow Crash. If you’re a software developer you’ll be screaming yes at it. If you’re a linguist you’ll think it’s the bomb. If you’re a war historian, a pathologist … let’s just say Snow Crash takes on a lot of things, possibly All the Things, without being too much. I don’t know how Neal Stephenson did this, but he did.

A couple of the book’s more fanciful inventions are just too cool for school, or too cool for our time. It’s hard to say when Snow Crash happens - maybe 2010, maybe 2020. You get the idea that Hiro and his friends would have to be about 30 or 35 in 2019. But, as future-flung science fictions go, Snow Crash predicted our dear actual 2019 much more closely than Blade Runner or Akira.



Some science fiction books run the risk of acting like the smartest guy in the room. We all know this guy. He drops references, analogies, always with a raised eyebrow to see if you’ll react. But Snow Crash isn’t that guy. Neal Stephenson believes that author and reader are on a level playing field, we are all in this insane boat together. We are all the smartest guy in the insanity boat.

A lot of books and movies have ripped off Snow Crash, and it isn’t mere references or winking homages, it’s some of the most blatant ripoffs I’ve ever seen. If you read Snow Crash after you’ve seen or read Ready Player One or the Matrix, you’ll be facepalming into a horrible blue oblivion. I for one, sure did. The sheer amount of Snow Crash ripoffs feel like going to the club on the week that Michael Jackson died - everyone was playing Michael Jackson but it for all the seethingly wrong, unfortunate reasons.

There were a couple places in the book where two characters started talking each other through a linguistic mystery, and I lost track of who was talking, but I didn’t exactly care - I was there for it. The excitement to tell just bleeds from the pages during these dialogues. It’s like chatting with your friend with a PhD in Comics Studies who can’t wait to tell you all about the vast expanse of the Captain America universe.

As I was thumbing through page after page of Snow Crash on the DC Metro, I thought to myself “I could draw every page of this, I could make multiple drawings per page for this.” Turns out there’s a good reason for this feeling. In the book’s afterward, Stephenson goes on to say that at one point, the book was supposed to be a graphic novel. He mentions Snow Crash was hard to write (I’ll bet) and even harder to visualize. Conceived imagistically, it was far ahead of its time, yet in its time.

I looked for artist Tony Sheeder, but I couldn’t find anything on him. This is the closest I got, I hope it’s right: http://www.tonysheeder.com/porfolio.html

I made the drawing below while thinking about Snow Crash - in the novel there is a character who has barcodes on the chest of her outfit, and these barcodes act like mini scannable passports which allow her to enter x number of small nation-states or burbclaves. The barcodes sort of look like military stripes.

While making this drawing I was sort of thinking about tags or small markings or screens and interfaces as forms of identity, much in the same way that they worked for the character in Snow Crash. Maybe the problem is that artists just can’t help but rip off Snow Crash, but I hope this is more of an homage rather than making millions of dollars that Neal Stephenson should have made. Snow Crash is just so freakin cool, man.

Perhaps because it was meant to be a graphic novel, or because Neal Stephenson is just a super chill rad dude who I would totally get a beer with, women in this novel have the same kind of inner thoughts that men do. At first I didn’t notice this, but when I looked at it more closely, it just blew me away. Women have the same internality that men do. Women have the same internality that men do. This doesn’t seem like a huge deal, but I’m over here jumping up and down on a couch over it. I felt like I hadn’t even been screaming, but someone heard me nonetheless.

I think Snow Crash ultimately works better as a novel - as a movie or graphic novel, it would have been sealed in 1992 like a mosquito in amber. As a novel, it grows with us as technology grows. It doesn’t feel like looking at a Netscape Navigator interface or like watching the dated animations in Johnny Mneumonic. It feels like looking at a 1990s painting of Google Chrome or Second Life or the Dominoes Pizza app, and the painting is astonishingly, psychically correct.

Artist Takeaways:

Snow Crash is so good that it’s hard to NOT make art about it

We should all buy whatever stocks Neal Stephenson buys

Art Reads: Six Easy Pieces

Reading this book, Feynman’s voice rings with sonorous relateability - you can imagine him pacing in front of a lecture hall and expanding upon the emptiness of atoms.

There’s something oratory in the writing, yet, friendly. It’s unlike most physics reading experiences in this way, and you can see why Feynman was such a star of his time, and an eternal star ever after his passing. He could be talking about tides and gravity while sitting and having a beer with you, or in front of 100 sophomores. This is Feynman’s accessible charm - he’s telling you great secrets, publicly.

Feynman’s compelling physics lessons always arrive with a dash of scale and analogy - an atom is the size of a room, the nucleus is the size of a speck of dust in the room, and the electrons are all around the room or the walls of the room itself.

Reading Feynman after reading everything Sagan does feel like reading a prequel. Reading Feynman after Neil DeGrasse Tyson feels even more so. If born in 1960 or 1970, Feynman would have been a charismatic leader with his own TV Show, someone would have noticed and said “Wow this guy is amazing” and put him on air.

Richard Feynman juggling is a nice photo to accompany the chapter on The Theory of Gravitation

The introduction to this edition of Six Easy Pieces states that Feynman probably failed to reach students with giving these lectures, and that in his own self assessment, his teaching efforts were mostly a failure - but I don’t exactly see how he could have failed. Maybe 90 of 100 undergrads in 1989 weren’t ready, or they weren’t reachable. People say that kids these days are dense, but it’s hard to imagine someone who couldn’t be compelled by Feynman. Maybe there’s something I’m missing.

Perhaps the whole world loved him, but they just couldn’t react in the moment with Richard Feynman. They watched him careening by like a meteor, but they couldn’t get swept up in his magnitude. They couldn’t be amazed at an atom’s nucleus or the unknowability of most of physics. This is the only thing I can surmise as to why he thought he failed. I feel like I am trying to comfort an A+ student who is judging herself too hard.

The horrible condition of physics today for Feynman. We barely know what we don’t know, and we don’t know how far we have to go.

There are some ways to find out mysteries in physics …

Midway through the book there is this stunning footnote:

“For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”

He’s right, the truths of physics are so wild, so outrageous, that the romance of reality is dramatically beyond tales of Chronos and Zeus. Feynman in this book is an entertainer - It’s Carl Sagan slicing a pie in Technicolor, it’s Neil Degrasse Tyson walking across a galaxy for millions of viewers on Netflix. All three physics superstars are like artists in this way, in that they take in outrageously abstract concepts and bring them to earth while at the same time admitting that we barely understand them.

Abstract ideas, even unknowable abstract ideas are communicable, but it takes an absolute master to take us there. 90% of us still may not get it.

Artist Takeaways:

Complex ideas can be communicated in a simple way

Even the smartest can still fail at understanding

The physical truth of the world is far more romantic and outrageous than fiction

Art Reads: How to Win Friends and Influence People

I resisted reading this book for a long time.

Something about the title seemed too manipulative. Friends are people that you win? People are to be influenced?

“I suppose that’s cool for people who want to use people,” I said. “But, that’s not my thing!”

On a whim, I went against my caustic inner critic and picked this book up at a local Fedex. Yes, it’s sold at Fedex. And why not - I needed something to read on the Metro. Anything but staring at my phone’s no service indicator and hitting refresh on Twitter/Instagram/whatever.

I thought I was going to eyeroll through this book, but I loved it.

It is a peaceful and compelling read about how to get along with people.

With all of the vitriol in the world right now, the most punkass and revolutionary thing to be in 2019 is a kind and considerate person who listens deeply to others.

And … that’s what Dale Carnegie is all about. He doesn’t want his students to go yell at people for making mistakes - he wants them to observe carefully and listen.

What’s funny about reading this book as a midcareer 32-year-old is seeing just how many other business nonfiction books owe to this books. Posts that float across LinkedIn that once seemed really original and charming to me are turning out to be quotes or homages or straight up velcro ripoffs of Dale Carnegie.

“Be Genuinely Interested In People” is one cornerstone of the book that struck me as something that many, many people had said and tweeted and posted, and I thought it was all their idea! Nope, it was Dale all along.

For artists and businesspeople alike, being genuinely interested in others is probably the most important thing that we can do. It’s too easy to be interested in only yourself - the greatest joy of art is making things happen for others, or, seeing your work delight others, or seeing your work make others think in a positive way.

I loved most of all the excepts about Abraham Lincoln. It was nice to see that Dale Carnegie went over how Lincoln changed and transformed his approach from being a sour critic to someone who didn’t even send a “I am disappointed” letter to one of his failed generals. (Lincoln’s unsent letter to General Meade here)

I wish I had read this book when I was 16, but I don’t think it would have made as much sense reading it as a 32 year old. At 32 I have enough experience in business and the world to say “Yes, this book gets it.” There are simply ways to work with people that are better than others, and the better that you understand people, the easier everything becomes. Without understanding, you just sort of stumble in the dark and probably get angry.

Is it a zen book then?

It’s more built like a class, and it was a foundation of one of the first modern self-improvement classes ever. I’d love to see this book be transcended, but when it’s anecdotalizing the socratic method, it’s easy to see how with minor updates, the principles of Win Friends will hang on for 80 more years. Our ways of understanding and navigating human nature may change, maybe, but not nature itself.

In a few more centuries, Win Friends will read like The Book of Five Rings, where the anecdotes are ancient, but the mappability is eternal. On long enough timescale, the anecdotes from Win Friends about lumber sales and Lincoln’s armies will feel the same as samurai sword poems: These are dramas of deep and unchangeable human psychologies, we are merely navigating the transactions of our times.

Excerpt from the Book of Five Rings where Musashi informs us that Long Large Swords are for the weak. Will ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ someday look like this paragraph?

Recently I attended an executive meetup where an author admitted that he had titled his book with an inflammatory title. At the end of his talk he relayed to us what the true, more tame title of the book should have been.

“It’s too bad,” he said, “but the book’s true title would have never sold any books.”

Win Friends is like this - it has a title like direct sunlight flashing in your eyes, but there are many titles for this book that would have been more honest. In this humble artist’s opinion, the book should have been called: “How to Win at Life by Being Observant and Considerate”

But then, nobody would buy a book with such a title. But then again, this blog is written by someone who bought and ascribes to "The Keys.” We the best. I think you should read it if you haven’t, and especially if your more ethical daemons have told you to resist it.

Artist takeaways:

Even President Lincoln had criticisms that he wanted to say to people, but he never did. Perhaps this is the point.

The best engineers on the planet have nothing on midlevel engineers who can communicate ideas.

It’s not about the people we influence, it’s about the friends we win along the way. Actually it’s about listening to people and being genuinely interested in them

Overcoming Negative Self Talk as an Artist

I asked artists in my community a question:

“What are some of your biggest pieces of negative self talk?”

It turned out that artists at all levels have inner-self haters and demons that would make a grown man weep on his knees. Not a single artist responded with “I never have defeatist thoughts” or “I never doubt my ideas.”

With self-talk defining our realities, and with the risk that self-talk could turn negative at any moment, we came up with a list of the nastiest myths and stories we tell ourselves as artists, as well as strategies to transcend negative self talk in art.

Self-Talk Foe #4: “These Materials are Too Nice to Use”

That perfect box of oil paints or pastels. Brushes made of the finest synthetic hair. The handmade paper from Tibet. The handmade paintbrush from France.

They’re great materials. So great that they’re TOO GOOD TO USE.

The ‘Too Good to Use’ problem will come up in all facets of life - cooking, business, clothing, everything. We’ve all done it - we’ve all bought a cooking oil that is so nice, we never use it, or wine that is so fine it sits on a shelf for years. Almost everyone has an outfit stationed in their closet that we think of as ‘too nice to wear.’ Or we’ve carefully made cookies that are so finely decorated, none of our guests want to eat them. Or we’ve been one of those guests who feels bad about eating the immaculately decorated cookies. Sometimes, things are just too perfect!

To bust this self talk:

The people who created the paint/markers/paper didn’t create it so that it could sit in a corner or sit in a box gathering dust. They created it for you, the artist, to use and thrive with. Even if the art you make is the worst art of all time, that is much better than the materials sitting unused in a box. It’s like the toys in Toy Story - they want dearly to be yours.

I had the ‘Too Good to Use’ problem with this set of Caran D’ache watercolor pencils. They all looked so perfect when I first opened the tray.

After using the pencils for a while, the package no longer looks perfect or instagrammable, but, I kinda like it that way:

Self-Talk Foe #3: “I’ll Never be as good as my Peers/Friends/That Guy on Tumblr”

We all have that one friend who seems to float through the sky like an anime princess, wave their white-gloved hand, and magical art appears like fireworks all around them. I’ll call this person the Magical Art Friend. They pirouette, flutter their eyelashes, and BOOM - the most amazing art you’ve ever seen blossoms across their Instagram feed, perfect and fully-formed like Athena out of Zeus’s forehead, thousands of likes pouring in from across the galaxy. Now they’re on the cover of a magazine!

To bust this self talk:

Your Magical Art Friend also has a Magical Art Friend in their life.

They may be magical themselves, but there is a whole world of Magical Art Friends out there, with artists looking up to each other in an infinite hall of mirrors.

The Magical Art Friend also has ... unmagical moments. We’re all sharing our best moments on Instagram, but it’s good to know that this isn’t the whole picture. Sometimes things suck, for everyone, and sharing suckage in a hypercompetive environment doesn’t make sense. Things that suck also pass, we forget about them (or try), while we struggle to perserve good things. It only makes sense that after a while, everything looks very, very magical.

Self-Talk Foe #2: “I can’t start this project until I am a better artist”

Let’s start by saying this is a tough one. This piece of self-talk arrives at our mental doors wearing the garb of logic and restraint. Logic and restraint are good, right? Artists need it! Discipline is good!

Though discipline is good, we have to transcend this seemingly logical piece of self talk if we ever want to get anything done.

To bust this self talk:

Sit down with me. Have you ever seen the first few panels of Garfield? Garfield changes … a lot from Day 1 to the present day. Here’s old Garfield:

The same can be said of The Simpsons. The first couple episodes do not represent what the Simpsons look like at all.

The characters and character designs… totally changed. They improved. And it was fine. Better than fine, even. The first couple tough installments blazed a path for a better vision.

As an artist you sometimes have to let yourself run into problems actively, take on what you can, circle back and make changes, or power forward, just get it released and in front of people. The reality of art is a bit like a particle of light under quantum theory - it’s a particle or a wave, depending on if someone looks at it or not. When art is observed, the reality of the art is different.

Self-Talk Foe #1: “The art I made does not match my vision”

Missing the mark. A failure to communicate. Poor execution.

Failed art hurts so bad.

We’ve all been there. We have a fantastic vision for the painting/drawing/animation/knitting project, and then upon execution … oh dear lord it looks terrible. It looks nothing like what we wanted!

This piece of negative self talk is the most brutal of all. It’s the reason why most people give up on art. It’s the reason we put down our pencils at around 6th grade and we tell ourselves “I’m not good at drawing.”

Unfortunately, this doesn’t go away over time. The Vision is always there along with The Reality, two sides of the same spinning coin.

When the reality doesn’t match The Vision, it feels like a failure of engineering. It’s like getting a math problem wrong or asking your crush on a date and getting rejected. It’s like following a recipe with 1960s housewife diligence, and the cake still looks terrible.

To bust this self talk:

Remember that everybody fails and that failure happens all the time - we just don’t talk about failure. There’s no class in school where you talk about failure. Nobody goes to a weekly staff meeting and reads out a list of their failures.

Because we don’t talk about failure, it feels like failure doesn’t exist.

You know what, let’s talk about failure for a second.

Cakewrecks.com is a blog dedicated to cakes that don’t quite make the mark. Okay, that’s being nice. Explicitly stated, the cakes on the website are absolute wrecks. They are the saddest cakes you will ever see.

What’s funny about Cakewrecks is there is a never-ending stream of cake wreckage content. Every day, there are new sets of wrecked cakes to see on Cakewrecks.com. Some wrecks are user-submitted, some are found by the website’s author, or curated and compiled out of other posts around the internet. But one thing is for certain: no matter where the cakes come from, there are many, many failed cakes out there. Cake making is hard.

Another way to get over this is to remember that sometimes, action can outperform vision. You might have a vision for a piece of art, but the more you draw, the more you chip away, sometimes action will take over.

Other people, not just artists, miss the mark all the time. We might try hard, we might pour hours of work and money into the perfect cake, we might have the most pristine vision of a cake in our head, and it might still fail and look nothing like the cake we envisioned at all.

Crow Magnum - Sneak Peek!

I’m happy to announce I am working on a graphic novel adaptation of a short story by author Laurel McHargue!

A high-octane visual psychic thriller, Crow Magnum tells the story of Ruby and Jade, twins who make an unlikely discovery about their mother’s mysterious death.

The comic is drawn in a dramatic black-and-white style in the spirit of Frank Miller - with a modern twist! Here’s a sneak peek for now - enjoy!

I’ve loved every minute of adapting this short story to graphic novel form!

About Laurel McHargue:

Award-winning author Laurel McHargue, a 1983 graduate of The United States Military Academy at West Point, was raised in Massachusetts, but somehow found her way to the breathtaking mountains of Colorado, where she completed Waterwight, her fantasy adventure trilogy. Laurel's goal is to author as many books as possible in genres of every type. She produces and hosts the podcast Alligator Preserves about storytelling and the human condition, and blogs about life—real and imagined—at leadvillelaurel.com. She also has been known to act!

Laurel will be at Denver Pop Culture Con this year, go see her!

Featured on the Clip Studio Paint website!

Clip Studio Paint has featured one of my tweets on their Artist Testimonial page. The art is a sketch for a book I am working on for author Laurel McHargue. Laurel is awesome, one of my favorite books by Laurel is this one, Waterwight.

I love Clip Studio Paint and my ultimate dream is to bake a Clip Studio Paint appreciation cake and mail it to the software developers who made it. Clip Studio Paint understands artists and what artists need most!

Related blogs:

Clip Studio Paint for the iPad Pro (2017)

Clip Studio Paint AI Colorize Feature

Clip Studio Paint for the iPad Pro Revisited

Fan Art Friday - The Watchmen, Earthbound

I wanted to make a drawing of the artists on Veidt’s island in Watchmen. Ms. Manish and Mr.Shea only show up for a couple panels, but I could draw a whole comic just with them in it.

It’s unclear what Veidt has them doing exactly, but what is clear is that they’re out there on the island playing some creative role in creating a monstrosity. On the first readthrough of Watchmen, these episodes make less sense than Dr. Manhattan creating his own Citadel on Mars.

Earthbound

I’ve been having too much fun playing Earthbound or Mother 2 on the SNES classic. The SNES was the Nintendo I never had while growing up. I could only play it at friend’s houses down the street. I missed Earthbound completely.

So, I’m playing it as a 32 year old and it gives me so much hope for the world. The best part of the game is that it’s not neat and tidy - characters say things that make no sense, motivations are all over the place, and there is no clear exact goal right away. Doesn’t that sound a lot like … life?

I made this painting of the guy who sells Hints in Earthbound. I love this guy. He has a house and sets up an outdoor booth .. inside his house. Hints cost money. Or should I say HINT$? ? It was fun to paint this guy and chat on Instagram livestream with a couple folks. I wish I could do more livestreams, maybe that could be something for 2019 8) .

What’s funny about Earthbound though is every time I play it, I want to paint it again. I started over-making Instagram stories about it, recording every little bit of the game, and as I posted video after video, I asked myself, Is this too many videos? It was all coming from a place of wanting to capture this game and show it to the world and project it from the mountaintops. This game makes me want to invite people over to my house to play it for days on end. That’s how I feel about this game. I can’t wait to paint more of it.

Much more art on the way!

The Punishing Truth of Art Critique

Haters are always there for you

You’d hang a painting on the wall, and 30 people in a room would make comments on the painting. You couldn’t say anything while the other students were offering critique.

“I hate it.”

“It reminds me of my mom…”

“I don’t get it.”

“You could have worked on it harder.”

Ask anyone who has been through an art major or art school and they’ll probably talk for miles about the drama of critique. Usually, artists hate critique sessions. It drives deep seeds of unhappiness into artists, and it’s hard to say if it works as an educational model, but I will say that it’s an honest experience.

Critique is painful, but it is the most true-to-life moment of art school.

Once your art is done and out in the world, you can’t possibly defend every piece of criticism lodged against the work. It’s done, and you have to stand behind it, or be convinced to abandon it.

If 1000 people see the art and 200 people think it’s terrible, it’s impossible to argue and defend against 200 individual people.

You have to let it be.

A lot of people hated the paintings I made in school but I showed them anyways.

The peace of critique is that there will always be people out there who don’t like what you do. Haters are like McDonalds - always there for you and always the same service, state after state, country after country. The sooner we accept this and move past it, probably the better.

Once when I was young, my family and I went to a swimming pool park in Florida and I made a sand sculpture of a turtle. An even younger girl, probably three years old, walked up to the turtle, looked it over for a few seconds, and ran her foot through it. I remember feeling sad for a second, and then realizing “It’s sand, it would all have washed away anyways” and “she’s a three year old, what do you expect?” and then feeling the liberation of letting it all go.

Most art disappears or gets destroyed. A lot of people hate art. A lot of people don’t get it. Do it anyways.

Related blogs:

What Makes a Helpful Art Critique

Medium Moment: Oil on Yupo

On a total lark, I bought a sheaf of Yupo paper from the DickBlick store in Washington D.C. last spring. The ‘paper’ was unlike anything I’d ever seen.

Placing colors on Yupo is like putting the color in a vacuum - a color’s unfiltered brightness and truest essences emerge when on Yupo.

After working with Yupo for a while, you realize that it definitely isn’t paper in any sense - made of recycled plastic, it rebuffs water like a duck’s feathers. Colors don’t sink into it, they float on top of it, roiling softly, blending like a dream. It’s more like working on glass than paper or canvas. Think Bristol board but not made of trees. Like painting or drawing on Mylar, Yupo is extremely mutable. You can make a mistake in ink, and remove the mistake with a bit of rubbing alcohol.

Given all of this, I could see no reason why oils wouldn’t work on Yupo, where oil is like ink and turpentine works to erase like rubbing alcohol. That said, oil isn’t exactly advertised to work on Yupo - the Yupo pad itself states that the surface is great for watercolor, alcohol inks, and acrylics. No mention of oil paint anywhere.

I gave it a try, and spoiler, it’s amazing.

To get started with oils on Yupo I used Yupo Heavy (purple packaging) instead of the Yupo standard (orange packaging) paper. I tend to paint with heavy layers of thick oil paint and painting on anything less sturdy than card seemed unfair, or like it would end in disaster.

I hadn’t seen Yupo Heavy in stores until lately. (Sidenote our local art store in Hyattsville, Maryland is probably the most intimately-stocked store I’ve ever seen. I feel like this store knows my deepest desires, like it knows artists better than they know themselves. More on them soon)

To get oil to flow smoothly over Yupo, I wouldn’t recommend using anything heavy like linseed oil or stand oil. Winsor and Newton Liquin is the key:

Winsor and Newton Liquin medium

The painting above doesn’t even look like an oil painting, it’s more like a watercolor or acrylic ink at this point. Liquin makes layering easy and provides the mutability needed to make oil on Yupo work.

One part Liquin gives oil on Yupo a glassy, alcohol-ink-like feel, with all of the benefits of blending in oil. While Liquin makes oil paints a bit more like acrylics in that it speeds up drying time, it doesn’t dry so fast that you can’t go back and rework within 2 hours.

Without Liquin, oil paint can kind of get stuck on Yupo. It goes onto the Yupo and your brush just kind of sticks there - controlling it isn’t as easy.

I did not use Liquin in bulk on these paintings:

The first challenge is getting the Yupo paper onto an easel-like surface - since it is a sheet rather than a board, it’s a good idea to put the paper on a board or something like it. I used this wooden canvas backing as a support for the Yupo.

Without a decent amount of Liquin I had to keep brushstrokes shorter, and the model looks more like she was cut like a stone rather than flowing.

(Sidenote: the Android Google Pixel 2 camera is dope AF for taking photos of paintings and artwork. If things look a bit clearer above, this is why.)

I did like painting on smaller pieces of Yupo but for range, larger pieces (around 8 x 12 or so) work much better. It turns out you can get huge rolls of Yupo, similar to rolls of mylar, for larger work.

More oil on Yupo discoveries:

Will oil paint crack or split on Yupo once dry?

No, it bends as easily as the plastic it’s sitting on. Freezing weather would likely cause cracks, but that’s all I could think of. It’s been a few weeks since making my first painting on Yupo and it’s holding up beautifully.

Since plastic has extreme longevity (think of all the pictures of plastic in the ocean and its tendency to never biodegrade) oil paintings on Yupo could last for a long time. I don’t see yellowing as a problem, as long as the paint utilized is pretty good. I’ll get back to you in a couple years.

Does Yupo work for thick, heavy layers of paint?

The answer is YES, it works just fine and can support quite a lot of paint and impasto medium, up to about half a centimeter at highest. I’d recommend the Yupo heavy version for painting with thick paint.

The smaller Yupo surface worked well for experiments and compact painting, so I decided to branch out and try a larger size.

What else works on Yupo?

To be honest, just about anything. Watercolor pencil looks great, acrylic ink pours on and Yupo holds the color brilliantly. Copic markers work and since they are alcohol-based and the paper is smooth, they blend even more fluidly.

Related blogs:

First Yupo tries! https://www.beckyjewellart.com/blog/2018/1/6/medium-moment-yupo-paper

Washington D.C., Virginia, Yellow Line Metro Drawings

For the past four weeks I’ve been taking the Yellow metro line from downtown Washington D.C. over the Potomac and into Virginia where I go to work in Crystal City. If the Yellow Line breaks I take the Green line.

Up until this time, I’ve been driving to work for my entire life. The peace of the subway hasn’t worn off yet - it’s a solid 20-30 minutes where I can sit and draw instead of worry about other cars or traffic or merging.

For people riding the metro, the only thing that stands out more than an artist drawing on an iPad are people playing the new Nintendo Switch. It would be impossible for me to make drawings on a giant iPad in a subway - people are just too fascinated and I am extremely shy while making art, so what I do is draw just a couple core elements of the people I see for a few minutes. From there I take the iPad home and finish the drawing there.

I am producing a lot of Tilted Sun while riding the metro as well. Making art while traveling is hit or miss - the airplane/train is either bumpy and it’s impossible, or it’s smooth sailing. All art is this way. Painting in plein air brings challenges like wind and dirt and bugs, and the subway is the same. You just never know if you’ll get a seat or if conditions will be right, which is half the fun.

Fortunately, Washington DC’s subways are relatively smooth and everyone keeps to themselves for the most part. Everyone seems to be on their phone despite the lack of service - Bubble Burster and Bejeweled are the great equalizers of our time. The DC metro doesn’t like it if you eat or drink on the train, and riding the yellow line near the Pentagon is the most orderly, composed ride on a subway you could ever imagine.

All of these drawings are made in Clip Studio Paint on an iPad Pro. Basic tools, nothing fancy. Someday I’ll make my own brushes and pencils but until that day I’m thrilled with the default tools. Defaults are something that Clip Studio Paint does well with - as an artist/user I don’t have to think, I don’t have to triangulate my settings into the blue oblivion. I can just sit down and create. As much as I love tinkering, I love production even more. Most artists have to love both to a certain extent but I’d say most would choose creation over tool selection.

The places where I’ve lived before the East Coast are’t so hot on trains - Texas and Colorado are more about cars and trucks for people, and trains are reserved for commerce and big cargo.

So I’m still in love with the metro here in DC. It really is so amazing that there is this machine that will just spirit you away to another part of town.

To explain the DC Metro system to anyone not familiar, here is a map I drew, where the Yellow Line crosses the Potomac into Virginia.

I forgot the silver line but it runs between the orange and blue lines.

Paintings and Drawings of Cats

Real Cats: Bitty

The painting above I made from a photo of cat on a rock in a pond - it was such a cool photo, I had to ask - how did the cat get there? And, why would she ever leave the rock? The rock seemed like such a cool place to be, surrounded by water and flower petals. 

Real Cats: Marl

I wanted to make a painting of my cousin's cat, Marl, who is a striped cat with beautiful markings. It was fun to paint Marl basking in the sun on a checkered carpet, it was especially fun to paint Marl's little footpads. 

^ Here is Marley Cat hanging out at my cousin's place. 

Real Cats: Flash

One day in Houston at my grandpa's house, a mostly white kitten appeared and stopped by to eat the kibbles of grandpa's much older cat, Xena. Fairly common in Houston, stray cats tend to come and go -  everyone in the family was expecting the wayward white kitten to move on to another house, but the kitten decided to stay. The kitten would appear intermittently and would race about the yard, and so the family named the kitten "Flash." He was fully adopted and now has his shots/tags and is overall here to stay. I made the above drawing of Flash in the garden, and the below drawing of Flash in Clip Studio Paint. Flash is white, but I reimagined him as a cat in the shade. 

Imaginary Cats

I started out this series of colorful cats in oil with a sort of "Wayne Thiebaud Cakes, but with Cats" kind of take. The thick oil paint makes the bright colors stand out quite a bit. I'd love to do more in this sereis with non-pale backgrounds, maybe more with leaves/foliage or household surroundings. Overall these were just fun to make. 

Painting this cat's feet was fun. ^ At this level of thickness in paint, the paint takes on a sculptural quality, and I'm not even painting so much as sculpting or building dimensional form. I often start out paintings like this with a small undersketch in orange (so that it is easy to see) and then I fill out the full-bodied paint forms from there. It's interesting how no matter what kind of paintings you make, it all starts with the foundation of drawing. 

Cats but with watercolor or acrylic ink. 

For Inktober 2017 I made the cat above, what's interesting is people see a lot of different shapes in this cat. It's a bit like a cloud in this way.

Several cats also make an appearance in Tilted Sun, a sci-fi fantasy comic that you can check out on TiltedSun.com. 

Art Journal May 20 2018

Lately I've been looking at a few big changes in life, mostly adjusting to life on the East Coast! 

This weekend I worked on a couple small watercolor pencil drawings made on the paper from France (Paris art store blog here!) Although my trip to Paris was in November, it took me a while to think about what I wanted to put on these delicately handmade pieces of paper. Perhaps I shouldn't say 'delicately handmade' - they're really strong and sturdy pieces of paper, yet you can feel the care and time that went into creating them. 

Indian Paintbrush

For these small watercolor pencil drawings I am still using the Caran d'Ache Supracolor pencils, wonderful pencils in every way. The variation of colors in the 80 pencil set prove to be a dynamic and sophisticated range.

I couldn't decide on many of these pieces to add water to them or not. The seemed to look fulfilled with no water added, so I let them be for the most part. 

A couple happy hummingbirds 

On the other side of the studio, I've been working through a list of Things I Want to Paint, a list of photos that I have assembled on Facebook of memories, things, and people that I want to paint. 

I decided to keep a running list of Things I Want to Paint after one day where I was stuck in front of my easel without a thought in my head of what I wanted to do. There is little worse than scraping along and finally getting time to paint and then suddenly... not knowing what you want to paint! 

"Things I want to Paint" is a public gallery on Facebook, so even if you are not my Facebook Friend, you can still hop over and take a look! (I am extremely friendly I just don't have time for Facebook too much anymore...) 

Below are a couple results of "Things I Want to Paint" 

A photo of my friend's vacation to Tahiti, including a shark swim, and the painting: 

A photo of my mom relaxing with Geddy the Poodle, and the painting: 

These paintings are fairly in keeping with my style and outlook, I like to paint with bright colors only, I usually stay away from using brown or gray. 

This month has also been a good month for digital art. I am still loving every moment of Clip Studio Paint on the iPad Pro. I'm finished with the very generous free trial and am grateful for every feature, every penny is worth it. If I meet the developers of this app I will hug them. 

One aspect of Clip Studio Paint on the iPad Pro that stands out and that probably doesn't get enough laudation is the basic pencil tool. The pens are great. The watercolor effects are bangin. But the regular old pencil tool really... just drives it home. It seems so simple, but it's so very powerful. Most importantly, it feels natural. 

I made a couple drawings in Clip Studio Paint using a light lavender pencil on a black background. It's a lovely etching, scratch-paper like effect. Here is a portrait of my grandfather's cat, Flash, who has an interesting pattern on his back which resembles a broken heart: 

I'm also working on this larger digital piece of two lovers surrounded by foliage - I was thinking about leaves from all of the places I have lived in the past 5 years, and incorporated leaves from Maryland, magnolia leaves from Houston, aspen leaves from Colorado, and forget-me-not shaped flowers from Leadville. I'll probably work on this one a bit more .... 

I haven't made as many romantic paintings or drawings this year, not sure what it means, I both struggle and resist in putting words to most of my best art - this is probably why. 

Lastly it's been a great couple weeks of Tilted Sun being released and out in the open. The comic launched on May 1 and releases a new page every Tuesday and Thursday. It's also featured on the top level navigation of this website. For some reason I always leave Tilted Sun for last, I'll have to not do that next time! 

Tilted Sun is free to read online! Tether Orbs, cyber horses, electric guards, spy birds, and all kinds of cool things await you in the world of Tilted Sun! 

Until next time ... excelsior!