arts & crafts

Tuesday, July 14th, 2026

I’m mentally exhausted this evening. Here’s a crow sketch in oil pastels.

Tuesday, July 7th, 2026

Still pressing on with the romance novel, and still taking art breaks (and also finishing reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, which I’m loving). Also crying because I accidentally saw a picture of a goose being force fed in order to harvest his fatty liver for foie gras. What a world. When I think of how much pain I’m in on the occasions that I eat too much! Is pate really worth another creature’s agony? The cruelty of it truly kills me. Today’s art, unfortunately not as sharply reproduced as I’d like; I finished some sketches of crows that I started ages ago, with phthalo blues, gold, and white, Seasons of Crow:

Saturday, July 4th, 2026

Here’s my original version of the Strawberry Moon, the Moon of Horses idea being more prominent in this one. I painted this onto black gesso with white Posca paint pens.

Friday, July 3rd, 2026

I like using Gellyroll pens sometimes to draw dot pictures. Earlier this week was the full June moon, the Strawberry Moon (also known as the Moon of Horses). In the past, I have drawn this moon in a different style, which I’ll share as well, but this week I cut a small square of black paper and did some dots. The other moon dot pic shown is just some other moon – nothin’ special (except that the moon is always special. Did I ever tell you about the time I realized I had a crush on the moon?)

Wednesday, July 1st, 2026

I’m trying to write a romance novel, and to give myself a little treat between grueling writing sessions, I’ve been doing some quick oil pastels for the past couple of days. Here are two octopuses, one chilling in its garden and the other dancing (as my partner said) in the sea somewhere.

Tuesday, May 9th, 2026

Here are some things I made several months ago, some of which I have been using. I made them thinking maybe I could sell them as cute little thingies and whatnots. But really, I wasn’t very motivated to do so. Classic me. I’ve been using the bookmarks and I plan to take a couple of the tiny watercolor books when I go and see my daughter tomorrow (I’ll probably take her a bookmark or two as well as she’s a book lover and reader). I’ve had one of the lavender-stuffed cats in bed with me for the past few nights as it I’ve had crippling anxiety since the school year ended, and lavender is supposed to be calming. The bookmarks and greeting cards are just things I cut out of a catalog I got last time I was in the UK, rather than being hand-drawn like most of my stuff. I always say I’m not crafty, but I like doing crafts. I shall continue doing them, just for fun.