This is the space for our members to discuss and share their creative projects, ranging from written works to drawings, photography, and even craft projects such as knitting and woodworking. Self promotion is welcome (websites where we can view and/or purchase your work). Please do continue to preface if content is NSFW and be sure to properly spoiler/link such content.

Egg on my face from the past week; for pretty much the entire time I’ve been painting or doing any paper-based work involving color, I’ve been using the old Samsung Galaxy S7 I was forced to supersede due to the brand new 5G network–that is in no way spotty or unreliable in even the most basic circumstances—as it has the better camera for this kind of thing. Inspired by the recent Wayne County High Schools community exhibit at the DIA last week, I decided to have a go at a colored pencil portrait and on a whim figured I’d see how long it took to scan on my trusty old Epson XP-420 (that I increasingly can’t believe I’ve owned for almost a decade). The last time I tried this, I’m pretty sure it took forever and it turned me off the process. It barely took a minute this time and this’ll probably be the way going forward (I’ll be interested to see if this works the same with acrylic or oil on paper, though I’d obviously have to wait a while in any case to see with the latter).

Last week saw the annual descent of the Ann Arbor Art Fair, the town’s big non-University of Michigan football game event, and I always have mixed feelings. As a resident, I’ve gone from apathy to interest to excitement to hatred to resignation to apathy to (extremely mild) interest to somewhere between the two latter. Going into artwork myself sparked the second bout of interest before I realized most of what was on offer wasn’t what I really wanted to do (a solid half of it if not more falls pretty decisively on the “craft” side). That said, there’ll always be one or two booths I think are pretty cool even if—as I live in Ann Arbor and don’t make over 100K a year—I can’t usually afford their work even if I could actually fit it inside my tiny apartment (one reason among others I can continue to afford to live here). Exposure to this kind of thing usually provokes bewilderment in me that nobody else—I know, at least—seems to be doing what I’m doing, and I’m hoping it stokes the fire to get more work done in August and the autumn. I’ve been doing well on the inkwork, but it still feels like the painting lags.

The header’s one of my sketches from Chicago, this one a medley of passersby and docents at the Art Institute, engaged in a discussion of Brancusi’s Two Penguins (1911-14), a sculpture which mildly obsessed me for a week (hilariously just around the corner, too, from Max Beckmann’s glowering Self Portrait of 1937–he was understandably in the dumps, to be sure, as it was his last painting before he fled Germany). The mild pedagogic enthusiasm pictured should hopefully serve me well in my present mood.

How’s your work going?