evening street view

Painting window swaps in my travel journal while I spend some time close to home this year.

Can you tell I’m trying to learn stippling?

And also blogging?

I’m kind of circling a post format I like, so bear with me, I’m very new to blogging. Is it a blogging faux pas to say you’re new to blogging? If it is I wouldn’t know because I’m very new to blogging.

I had to move out of the furnace workshop and set up in the pink room with the puppy this week — otherwise I really can’t get much of anything done. She’s learning to settle while I work. I play audio of dogs barking and construction noises and drop treats at my feet.

Keeping the house clean has so far been genuinely impossible, but the puppy is really coming along. The temperature has come down between her and the dogs out back. Yesterday she declined to bark at three dogs in a row and I was filled with pride.

As usual I can only do about two things well at a time so the rest of my life is being rotated frantically through the secondary slot, but that’s okay. I only have one chance to get this right. And anyway it’s fun.

Exiled from the workshop, I took the opportunity to try out the new Art Toolkit travel palette I set up on Halloween which feels like a lifetime ago. I haven’t learned the layout or made a swatch card yet, so a few times I didn’t feel confident about what color I was dipping into. Between the new palette and unfamiliar brushes, work was quickly underway on an extremely ugly painting.

The plan was to take a break from ink, but I switched gears and practiced some stippling to try and salvage it. Just thousands of tiny dots in the quiet. As good a way as any to pass a sad, cold Monday on the northern plains.

I like the result — I especially like how my scanner makes everything look so official, and so perfectly flat.

I’ll need to spend some time learning my new travel kit. By the time I’m able to pack up again it’ll fit like a glove.

A lifetime of standby travel has taught me patience.

I can wait for a little bit longer.