I've been trying to come up with something with the appropriate amount of gravitas to say for my first post of the year. This has been unsuccessful, so now I'm just going to say something and move on.

This year, the main goal is to stop thinking about shit so much and instead make like Shia LeBeouf and just do it. This is particularly pertinent to my art — I made some progress in overcoming my aversion to "wasting" sketchbook paper last year, but I've noticed I'm still not immune to the pressure to find the perfect scene or reference to draw. This eats up a lot of time that could be spent doing literally anything else.

At some point in the future, I might be mentally stable enough to do something more measurable like daily drawings. As it is, I'm a completionist, and having any concrete evidence of days that I've failed to do [x] thing only makes me more likely not to continue doing [x] thing because I've already gone and fucked up my record anyway. For now, I'll just do what I can when I can (and make an active effort to find the time).

On the topic of finding the time, I've started pulling out my sketchbook and drawing something around me whenever I feel the impulse to check my phone. Most of the time, that "something" is a mundane man-made object, so I can't waste time looking for something photogenic. Also, sometimes it sucks. It's fine!

Sometimes I wonder if I'm feeding into the online sketchbook consumption problem by posting pages, even bad ones, here, but this is a shitty unserious blog that I don't really expect anyone to look at. If it stops being that, I'm dead and have been replaced by a body double. Happy new year!

My training to write more stuff on paper has been successful enough that I was able to justify buying a passport-sized Traveler's Notebook in March! And then... another one last week. The passport is perfectly pocket sized and more conducive for carrying around everywhere.

After experiencing some success with plein air drawing (as detailed in the tree-drawing post), I was consumed by my own hubris and set out to assemble a field painting kit. This is a well-tread road, but I wanted something small enough to stuff into a backpack or fanny pack.

I cobbled together a kit with a mint tin palette and a small tupperware container for water. These are attached directly to the book with magnets: I used a pair of small neodymium magnets for the water container and a magnetic metal clip for the palette. This setup has been working out really well, even in situations where I'm sitting on the ground or somewhere similarly uneven. It's not great for standing work, though, since the water needs to stay perpendicular to the ground.

I've avoided dabbling in ink drawing without drafting with a pencil underneath because the thought of putting ink on the page without a plan fills me with irrational dread, but that changes now! (The avoidance is changing. No guarantees on the irrational dread.) This is also my first time doing plein air drawing, so there's excitement all around.

I bought a Traveler's Notebook cover last year, mainly because they released an olive edition and I needed it. I liked the idea of a modular notebook, though, so I swore I would figure out how to use it. I continued liking the idea and doing absolutely nothing else with it for 6 months. But it's a new year with a corresponding new me, so here I am! Using it!

I will freely admit to dropping about 50 bucks on the cover and having no regrets about it at all, but a lot of the other stuff that Traveler's Company sells is overpriced. Some of their accessories are fine things that someone less frugal would probably be happy with, but others are garbage. I don't want to play roulette with garbage, so I've hacked together the stuff I have inside my notebook with some success.