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.

While I was able to surmount my illness last week to get a fair amount of creative work done, I had to postpone a few infrastructural projects which means this week could prove a bit of a mess (however productive), and that’s without taking into account the construction project at work that’s disrupting our shifts until (fingers crossed) the weekend. Hoping next week settles down into a more regular pattern so I can really set my nose to the grindstone (or however that goes). Cautiously optimistic in this regard, though; this might be (thus far) the most productive and fulfilling January I’ve had in five years, possibly even since I started painting (things weren’t as crazy at work during Betwixtmas as they’ve been around the pandemic years and I think that released a lot of personal energy).

My main priority right now seems to be making sense of Procreate and I’ve basically decided that (a) it’ll take me a while to truly master it and that (b) the effort’ll likely be worth it. Learning some more about layering and might actually try a still-life or two (I’ve stayed away from the latter idea in my physical art as I didn’t want to waste corporeal surfaces, but this way I could learn more of the basic principles without doing so; I’ve taken some decent photos over the years that’d qualify). Still don’t care for the brush functions I’ve encountered; I feel like Procreate is better for just generally “creating” digital art while Sketchbook’s better for actual digital painting. At some point I might try and design my own brushes to see if I can get around this (but there’s a lot more I need to learn first).

The header this week is a sketch of the titular characters from Caravaggio’s 1598 Martha and Mary Magdalene—the DIA’s sole work by the artist—which was a stop on the museum’s “Big Picture” tour that I finally took last month (after eight years of attendance and three of, like, near-monthly visits). Really interesting look at some of the DIA’s big-ticket draws—Breughel’s Wedding Dance, Frederick Church’s Cotopaxi, Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait that was the first Van Gogh exhibited in the US—and a little chat with our docent afterward brought to light that there’s gonna be a big Caravaggio exhibit there in a couple of years. I’m not as big a fan of his work these days as I used to be (as far as Mannerist/Baroque, I prefer the brighter colors and more fluid brushstrokes of his later Bolognese and Neapolitan successors), but it gives me something solid and positive to anticipate. These days, that isn’t nothing.

How’s your work going?