Karin Wanderer Learns

Human Beings Are Like Paints

Both react poorly to heat. Dehydration becomes a larger & larger concern as the temperature climbs. Where I live, the temperature rising is generally combined with the humidity falling, which leads to even faster dehydration. As extreme heat waves become more & more common, we are going to have to adapt how we do a lot of things, from growing our food to building our homes. Those are issues I will leave to architects & agricultural experts, however. I will be talking about a different subject: how to watercolor in extreme heat. There’s a lot to talk about because, as you will see-

Paints Are Like Human Beings

There are myriad tips & tricks to weather the heat a little better while painting.

1. Do not paint in high heat, if you can avoid it. Working early in the day or late at night when it is comparatively less hot & more humid will be more comfortable for you & your watercolors.

2. Be aware of how much heat your light source is contributing. Painting in direct sunlight (even if you are inside) or under a hot lamp will dry everything out quickly! When it gets over 90°F (32°c) I use my somewhat dim ceiling light to paint as much as possible. I turn my bright/hot lamp on only for mixing color & painting details. The difference it makes is remarkable!

3. Work smaller, if you can. When it gets over 100°F (38°c), if I absolutely must paint, I won’t paint anything larger than 2 x 3 inches. If the paper is small enough, you can paint fast enough to beat the accelerated drying time!

4. Add water to the back of the paper, then tape it to your work surface. The paper will stay damp longer if both sides are wet! I have seen this as a tip to avoid the paper rippling, but it also helps keep everything hydrated on hot days.

5. Add water to everything! Mix your paints a little thinner than usual, wet your paper a little more than usual… You know the poem; “water water everywhere, so let’s all have a drink.” Get yourself a spray bottle with a very fine mist, & you can mist your paper, your paints, even yourself!

6. Switch to a different medium entirely! I recently had to switch from watercolors to ink mid-painting as the temperatures climbed so high the “water” part of my colors was evaporating before I could work.

While ‘art differently’ is certainly a tactic, it may not be the best tactic.

Happily, there are many other solutions. In fact-

You Can Buy A Solution

Several, even. There are a variety of products you can add to either your water or your paint to extend drying time. These products can also make the watercolors more glossy, more transparent, more textured, or more pearlescent, so test before using! I have not tried any of these products & therefore cannot make any recommendations.

Gum Arabic is the hardened sap of Acacia trees. It is a common ingredient in many watercolors already. It will make your paint dry more slowly, giving you more time to work, while also making the paint appear more glossy & transparent. You can mix it into the water or the paint.

Ox Gall Liquid is not vegan. It is a fluid harvested from bovine (usually cattle) gall bladders & mixed with alcohol. Some watercolors use ox gall as an additive ingredient. If having a vegan art kit is something you value, check the ingredients for each individual color- especially shades of black.

Synthetic Ox Gall Liquid is vegan. Both versions of ox gall reduce surface tension, increasing how much & how quickly the paint flows. They both extend drying time. You can mix both into the water or the paint. You only need a few drops! Too much can dull your colors.

Watercolor Medium is a confusing name. All the products in this section are referred to as watercolor mediums. Watercolor Medium, however, is a specific product. It increases the paints’ gloss & saturation, like gum arabic, as well as the speed & extent of the paints’ flow, like ox gall.

Tune In Next Week For The Epic Scientific Conclusion!

I thought this could be done in one week but it is getting long. I’ve been experimenting with adding various solutions to my water & paint to beat the heat. Next week I’ll share the #WatercolorScience I’ve been engaged in!

This isn’t a mess, it’s science!

Making this a 2-part series means you had an opportunity to share your watercolor wisdom! Thank you to everyone who sent your tips & tricks to me via Ko-Fi & Mastodon! I absolutely loved trying as many as I could that week!

This is an ongoing series of #WatercolorScience articles about how different types of weather affect your painting, even if you work inside.

Extreme Heat & low humidity: We're Having a Heat Wave & I Started This Heat Wave Freezing Temperatures: When Winter Comes Howling In Humidity & Rain: Lost in a Fog

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• All pictures posted are my own work.
• All reviews are my own unpaid & unsolicited opinions.

Art supplies are expensive. Artists are broke. Greedy CEOs refuse to pay living wages, forcing people like WGA & SAG-AFTRA members to go on strike. Not everyone has the protection & support provided by union membership – for example, VFX artists do not have a union – so not everyone has access to strike funds, or programs that help union members buy groceries. As millionaire & billionaire executives choose to shut down production over sharing their record-breaking profits, artists are forced to tighten our belts more & more. If you would like to support film & television workers, donate to the Entertainment Community Fund.

Make A Peppermint Palette

This is a very flexible DIY to make a Travel Watercolor Palette, you can work with whatever you have in the recycling bin.

1. Go raid the recycling bin. We are going to upcycle a whole bunch of different things! I ended up with a tin that held mints, a lot of differently-sized bottle caps, & a bottle that held juice. The bottle was clear, & the back of the label was plain white.

1. The lid of the tin was grey & I wanted something white to mix paints on. I had a juice bottle & some round plastic from inside the bottle caps (that ended up falling apart too easily). I cut the oblong shape (see picture in step 1) out of a juice bottle so the white back of the label makes a good place to mix the paint.

2. Try different numbers & configurations of bottle caps inside the tin. I have black & white tube watercolors now, & I want to add primary colors in the future, so I needed to have 5 caps fit in the tin.

3. Any glue would probably work. Use sandpaper to rough up the bottoms of the caps & the inside of the tin a little, to help the glue hold extra well. I used hot glue. Try not to burn your fingers- the tin will get hot!

4. Add your paint! This works exactly like filling half pans in a store-bought palette. Here is a lovely video explaining different techniques.

5. Dance the Dance of Victory while the paint dries. You just made a travel watercolor palette!

6. The Last & Most Important Step: Share your creation with me! Send me a picture of your upcycled paint palette on Ko-Fi or Mastodon!

You will need tube watercolors or the ability to make your own paints, which I cannot help you with… yet. I painted the Mr. Turners in this meme with my new travel palette. I will be upcycling more art supplies in the future, so let me know if there is something you want me to make!

This is my paint palette. There is only one like it, because this one is mine.

You Are Now Free to Wander & Paint

The initial idea for this Travel Palette came from The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling by John Muir Laws. I had to return the book to the library long before I had gathered all the parts I needed, so I don’t really remember how close my version is to the one in his book. The Laws Guide has quite a long waiting list at my library, for good reason. It is excellent, I highly recommend it. (See below for my policy on book reviews)

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• All pictures posted are my own work.
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What is Alt Text?

‘Alt text’ is short for ‘alternative text.’ Just as the name implies, it is text describing an image that can be used as an alternative to viewing the image it accompanies. Alt text can be viewed in different ways on different sites & apps. Sometimes it pops up when you hover over the picture, sometimes it is displayed below the picture, sometimes it can’t be seen at all but screen readers & refreshable braille displays can still access it for people. Alt text is used by people with visual impairments, trouble focusing on/processing visual information, or weak internet connections. It is used by people, like me, who get headaches & turn the screen brightness so far down we can’t see the pictures clearly. It is used by people who can see the image just fine, but want to read the description anyway. Really, alt text is used by so many people I’m surprised it’s not universal!

If you are still not clear on what alt text is, you can follow this link & hover your cursor over the picture or use your screen reader to access the alt text for the picture below.

Look at this photograph, tell me what it is so I can laugh

What Isn’t Alt Text?

Sometimes people use the alt text slot to add the photographer’s name or contact info. Put that near the image- alt text is just for description!

Brevity is the Soul of Alt

Keep it as simple as possible without losing accuracy. Transcribe any text that is in the image.

The wonderful Curator of mastodon.Art explained the basic format for alt text for a single image so neatly I’m just going to quote her directly;

Describe the medium (“An oil painting”) Describe the subject (“of a cottage in a field”) Describe the mood (“the colours are warm and create a cozy atmosphere”).

The alt text for this image could be... A watercolor painting of a woman resting her chin on her hand. Her head is on fire. The colours create a cozy atmosphere.

Of course, if you are describing art, you may want to be a bit more descriptive. Depending on the art, you may need to change the format or write a bit more:

Watercolor & Ink 2 panel comic. Panel 1: Title Text reads “Calvin and Hobbes by Watterson and Wanderer”. Angry Calvin is marching with his fist in the air, shouting “I'm not tired! It's only 7:30! This is tyranny! I'm” Panel 2: Sleeping Calvin on the floor, voice bubble has a picture of a bee & says “zzzz.”

Make sure you use proper punctuation. It is especially important to add a period at the end, so the screen reader pauses before moving on to read the next part of the screen.

Every person, every app, & every text reader is different. I have given you the broad strokes, but it is worth looking into how/if the different websites/apps you use employ alt text. If you don’t add alt text, most screen readers will just say ‘image’ so trying to write alt text can make a huge difference in someone’s ability to enjoy your pictures! For more information, see organizations like the American Foundation for the Blind & Web Accessibility Initiative!

When You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover

Most book covers – even for audiobooks! – do not include alt text. Book cover design is its own category of art work. It is an integral part of the reading experience. The designers deserve to have their work appreciated by everyone! On 17 July, authors & artists are encouraged to share alt text for their book covers. Readers are encouraged to @ their favorite authors, publishers, etc., & ask them to provide alt text for covers. Be sure to use #AltTextCoverDay!

Mea Culpa

All the pictures shared in all the articles in this blog are mine. They are hosted on my page, where they all have alt text. Somehow I only realized the alt text wasn’t accessible here as I was working on this article. It should work for screen readers now. Please let me know if it does not, & include the program/app/etc you are using to read this, so that I can fix it.

See you next week!

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• All pictures posted are my own work.
• All reviews are my own unpaid & unsolicited opinions.

Last week, I wrote about the art & music in Studio Ghibli movies. I also touched on where some of the stories came from, but I didn’t have time to explore another major influence on Studio Ghibli’s work: folklore.

Japanese folklore is woven throughout every one of their movies. The Kodama, or tree-spirits, that populate the forest in Princess Mononoke also feature in The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu over 1,000 years ago. Countless other people have already written about the many, many spirits depicted in Spirited Away. Anyone who’s a fan of Pom Poko might enjoy reading more about the the bake-danuki, who are shape-shifting tanuki. Myths & folklore are stories that have proven they can stand the test of time. It makes sense that people would reuse & rework them as a form of cultural shorthand.

My work also features Kodama; Lady Murasaki & I are practically twins!

Folklore is a basis for countless modern children’s tales, not just Studio Ghibli ones. It can be used in so many ways & incorporates so many styles! For example…

Some play with the ideas found in folklore. Marcus Ewert & Susie Ghahremani’s picture book She Wanted to Be Haunted is the most Ghibli-like in that regard.

Some tell the story directly, like in The Princess and the Warrior by Duncan Tonatiuh. Some tell it with a few key changes, as Sanjay Patelas does in Ganesha's Sweet Tooth.

Some use folklore as a jumping off point to not only tell a story, but teach about a culture. In Mooncakes by Loretta Seto & Renné Benoit, we get to see how one family celebrates the Chinese Moon Festival as a framing device for telling several traditional Chinese stories about the moon. I can remember my teacher reading A Story, a Story by Gail E. Haley to me when I was so small, so small, so small. This book opens with a page of information about “Spider Stories” & how African storytelling uses repetition for emphasis. It has stuck with me ever since!

Some take characters from folklore & put them into new stories, as in Rabbit Moon by Jean Kim.

Some will retell a familiar story in the style of a different culture, as a way of introducing something new alongside something familiar, as Tomie dePaola does in Adelita

Some do a little of everything with folklore. Some, like Walter Elias Disney, have built empires out of it.

... and the Soot Sprites rejoiced.

What fantastic folklore have I forgotten? Let me know on Ko-Fi

I would like to reiterate my policy that all reviews are unpaid & unsolicited. I am a preschool teacher who loves to read, I can only go so long without talking about books!

See you next week!

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• All pictures posted are my own work.
• All reviews are my own unpaid & unsolicited opinions.

We Made It!

Another 10 Tuesdays over already? Wasn’t it April yesterday? Apparently not! Every 10 weeks here on KWL we take a break. Please, take however long you were going to spend reading this week’s blog & relax instead. Drink some water, breathe a little, relax your jaw, & try my favorite vegan cake #recipe. It is very flexible, delicious, & easy. The ingredients don’t need refrigeration & they have a long shelf life, so I always have them in my pantry ready to go.

Basically, it’s everything I want in a cake!

Pantry Cake Recipe

(see after instructions for recipe variations!)

• 1 ½ Cups flour
• 1 Cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 5 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp white vinegar
• 1 Cup water

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F, grease an 8x8 baking dish.

2. Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.

3. Add wet ingredients, mix until smooth.

4. Pour in 8x8 baking dish

5. Bake 30 minutes.

6. Let cool completely before cutting.

I usually just dust it with a little powdered sugar. You can make an icing by mixing 1 cup of powdered sugar with 1 teaspoon your chosen flavor extract & 1-2 tablespoons of your favorite non-milk.

The Different Versions

• Chocolate Cake: 3 Tbsp cocoa/cacao powder, mix with dry ingredients
• Confetti Cake: 2 tbsp Sprinkles, stir in just before adding to the baking pan.
• Substitute any flavor extract for vanilla, add any spices you want. I like to use Fiori di Sicilia & a little ground ginger.
• Any kind of sugar works
• If substituting molasses, maple syrup, etc., only use ¾ cup of water & bake at 325° F (any kind of dry sugar works better than molasses, maple syrup, etc)

A Word of Warning

When I started cooking for my vegan friends I was surprised to find out that sugar, molasses, sprinkles, & food coloring often contain ingredients that are not vegan. Make sure you check the label!

Enjoy your break, we’ll be back to talking about art next week! See you then!

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• All pictures posted are my own work.
• All reviews are my own unpaid & unsolicited opinions.

CW: Nudity

This is La Fontana del Nettuno, or Neptune’s Fountain. It stands in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy.

This is what the ultra-rich used to spend money on, instead of social media sites

The Plan

The fountain was commissioned by Cosimo I de' Medici & created by Bartolomeo Ammannati in the mid 1500s. Both men sought to use this fountain to demonstrate their greatness- Medici with his largesse, & Ammannati with his skills. Neptune was the Greek god of waters & storms, which makes him a natural choice for a fountain. Ammannati supposedly modeled Neptune on Medici himself.

What are the odds he had a Captain America-on-the-run beard & literally chiseled abs?

I realize that Medici was paying the bills, but… come on…

As far as I’m concerned, that’s Tuscany’s Tookus!

Flattering your patrons is clearly one of the oldest art forms. From his official portraits we know that Medici looked more like Brendan Hunt.

The Execution

Quite a lot goes into building a fountain today, so you can imagine how much harder it was before computers & global supply sourcing & all the other modern conveniences we take for granted. Florentine artists incorporated all manner of materials in their art, but the most popular were marble, bronze, & wood. Obviously wood does not make for a very long-lasting fountain, so Ammannati planned to use marble & bronze. The fountain’s scale was so large, however, that they had a hard time finding enough materials! Neptune himself is made of Carrara marble, known for being snow-white. This earned the statue of Neptune the nickname of Biancone, or ‘great white’.

Two of the horses drawing his chariot are also white, but the other two are made of completely different marble. The marble was a brand new type called mischio that had been discovered in a Medici quarry. Ammannati wanted to use Medici marble for his Medici fountain. Sadly, the marble was so delicate it broke easily during shipping & carving. This meant they needed to transport & sculpt all new marble. It was starting to look like Ammannati was going to miss his deadline. So what does he do? He builds the rest of the fountain out of stucco & plaster!

He’d already made his barely-chinned patron look like this, what was one more fabrication?

The wildest part of the story is, it worked. The part-marble, part-stucco fountain was unveiled at the wedding of Francesco de' Medici I to Grand Duchess Joanna of Austria. Cosimo de' Medici looked like an amazing Duke, to give the city such a large & beautiful fountain. Ammannati looked like a genius sculptor. Then, once the party was over, Ammannati went back & actually finished the fountain!

I Want to be Like Ammannati

No, I’m not taking up sculpting. Well, I… No. No, I’m not taking up sculpting… Not now. I can barely fit painting into this tiny apartment! When I say I want to be like Ammannati, I mean I want to emulate his confidence in his vision. He was going to make the biggest Neptune fountain in Italy, & even running out of marble wouldn’t stop him!

I have been lucky enough to see this fountain twice. In 2005 it was tagged, broken, & kind of gross. Recently they finished completely repairing & restoring the whole fountain. It is gorgeous, not to mention wildly popular! I had to go there at 6 am, before they even turned the fountain on, so that I could take pictures without being overrun by the absolutely massive crowds that go there every day.

Ammannati had to rework his plans over & over. He had to make compromises. At one point, he had to literally fake it until he could make it. And here we are, 500 years later, still appreciating his work. Do you think that was part of his vision?

See you next week!

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• All pictures posted are my own work.
• All reviews are my own unpaid & unsolicited opinions.

What Is MerMay?

There are an infinite number of themed art challenges online. MerMay is a popular one, with a different mermaid-related prompt for every day of the month of May. I talked before about how this art challenge has already gotten me to learn better scheduling/time management. Now it’s over & I’ve had a week to reflect. I completed all 31 days of MerMay on theme, & it almost broke me.

What Happened?

I decided to add some extra rules for this art challenge. The goal was to push myself to expand my skills. The rules were:

1. Finish all 31 days.
2. On schedule.
3. Follow the official prompts instead of just doing something vaguely “mermaid”ish.
4. No more than 25% (8 of the 31) prompts can be done in watercolors.
5. Use more pink & yellow, limit green & black.
6. Stick to form- & environment-purist mermaids..

The month started out great! I made some silly pictures I am quite fond of, like this one As well as a Mermaid R2-D2 wearing Slave Leia’s bikini which I still categorically refuse to apologize for. I was limiting my watercolors & trying to incorporate something new when I did use them, such as salt water or drawing textures with my left hand. Things went well, until they didn’t. In the second week I had to force myself to sit down & draw. It was a fully-fledged burn out. I have experienced burn out before; working in early childhood education in the US is an endless series of burn outs. Artistic burn out was brand new. I hated it! Following the 3 steps in my problem-solving strategy helped me find the solutions I needed.

What I Learned

There were too many rules! If someone else had tried to impose 6 arbitrary rules on me during a fun art challenge, I would have told them to go pound sand. Somehow when they were my own rules with all my own justifications behind them I didn’t realize how they piled up. If I had picked 2 or 3 from the beginning it would have been fine, but all 6 combined were too much. They disrupted my workflow, lessened my enjoyment & increased the amount of time each piece took to complete.

What I Changed

I got rid of half the rules!

4. No more than 25% (8 of the 31) can be watercolors

I love watercolors. Trying to go most of the month without them was less of a challenge & more of a drag.

5. Use more pink & yellow, limit green & black.

I should experiment with more colors, but I will focus on that instead of shoving it into a larger challenge.

6. Stick to form- & environment-purist mermaids.

This forced me to practice drawing humans, which I dislike but want to get better at. Unfortunately it would have forced me to practice humans for 31 days straight, which would have been tedious at best.

Did It Work?

Getting rid of rules #4-6 allowed me to enjoy the rest of the month much more. All of my favorite MerMay submission were created after, like this Striped Marlin Submarine Or this Friday the 13th parody poster that came out pretty much exactly as I wanted it to. Consistently assessing my limitations & being open to change paid off! All the rules pushed me to try new things initially, but once they became unsustainable they needed to be discarded.

The month started off erratically but it has certainly turned around. I’ve come out of MerMay energized & ready. For now I’m sticking to more fun art goals. For example: the last time I painted Usagi Yojimbo was probably 2 months ago. That needs to be remedied. Friendly Neighborhood Karin's Friendly Neighborhood Edit: I remedied it!

See you next week!

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Who?

Andy Warhol was an artist who worked in many different media such as paint, sculpture, film, etc. He is most widely known for his work in & influence on the pop art movement of the 1950s & ‘60s. It is fitting that some of his best remembered works in pop art feature a pop icon; Marylin Monroe. Over time, Warhol did many screen prints using an old publicity photo of Monroe from her movie “Niagara”.

What?

Screen printing, sometimes called silkscreening, is at least 1,000 years old. Fine mesh is used to make a stencil, which then has ink or paint spread thinly over it. Multiple stencils & multiple layers eventually create a picture. Warhol worked with professional screen printers such as Michel Caza to create many of his signature prints, including multiple Marylin Monroe series.

My version of this iconic celebration of publicity photos

Why?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Even I, a person who did not go to art school, can name quite a few of Warhol’s iconic pieces. This month I have been participating in MerMay, a 31-day Mermaid themed art challenge. Yesterday’s theme was Barbie. I decided that the 90’s Little Mermaid Barbie of my childhood was another classic icon which deserved a similar treatment as Marylin Monroe. In true Warhol fashion, I appropriated someone else’s photograph. Warhol was sued & ultimately settled with the photographer whose publicity photo he used for the print. Hopefully whoever took this Barbie photo is more understanding; I used a straightforward photo that had been reposted so many times I couldn’t find its source! I don’t have screen printing supplies, so I used a digital art program called Krita to color the Little Mermaids instead.

It was all so simple quick and chancy. I was thrilled with it. ~Andy Warhol, as quoted in “Popism: The Warhol Sixties”

This is how Warhol described his screen printing work. Instead of trying to control every aspect, he embraced how the “chancy” nature led to imperfections & irregularities in his work. Some artists may have seen the prints as flawed, he saw how they made each piece unique. I’ve been thinking about this quote since I first read it. There’s an urge to keep fixing something until it’s exactly what we want, & to throw out what we can’t fix. There’s a need, especially on social media, to pretend that we are perfect beings who never make mistakes! I’m working on embracing my mistakes. I’m starting to realize that sometimes they aren’t mistakes- they’re just a different form of success than I had anticipated.

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• All pictures posted are my own work.
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Friendly Neighborhood Karin here. Usually my updates are limited to the beginning of these posts, but this post is all updates, baby!

Friendly Neighborhood Karin’s Friendly Neighborhood Shop Is Now Open!

Finally! It is here! The long-awaited GRAND OPENING! Check out my TeeSpring shop!

Many of my painting are now available as mugs, notebooks, & vinyl stickers so you can put them on something other than a mug or notebook.

More designs added soon!

Check It Out!

Get yourself a something neat. You deserve it! Then pick your favorite social media site & tell me what you think. You can find me on Ko-Fi, Mastodon.art or IG

(If your favorite social media site isn’t on that list, pick one that is & tell me which one I’m missing)

The Shop Will Be Expanding!

I will be adding more pieces soon. One thing slowing me down is I need to take new pictures. I don’t have fancy lights or anything, which means taking pictures outside in the sunshine is important. This means I have to wait for a day with strong sunlight & weak wind so my paintings don’t blow away while I photograph them! That’s a bit of a challenge this time of year, but I’ll manage it. If there is a piece I have made that you would like to see in my shop, let me know! Check back for frequent updates

What Do You Want To See?

What should I add to the shop that isn’t there already? I will certainly be adding more art, but what else? What do you think of printables, e.g. Habit Trackers? To-Do Lists & other Organization Templates? Coloring Pages?

The options are limitless, so let’s explore them!

We will return to our regularly scheduled nonsense next Tuesday, Same Karin time, Same Karin channel!

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• All pictures posted are my own work.
• All reviews are my own unpaid & unsolicited opinions.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of mistakes & problems lately. Some are smaller & some are larger, but all of them are purely my own, & they are starting to affect my art. This is how I work with them, instead of letting them stall my progress completely.

Step 1: Identify the Problem(s)

Ever notice how one small mistake can grow & combine with other small mistakes into huge issues? Like a trickle to a flood, a snowball to an avalanche, that moment where one line of dominoes splits into a dozen different directions at once… Something simple becomes simply unmanageable. My problems were all too common: exhaustion & an overloaded schedule.

Thinking about stress is stressful. Please enjoy these fluffy clouds

Step 2: Identify The Cause(s)

Knowing what the problem is can help you manage it, but knowing why the problem is can help you solve it. My causes could be neatly split into two categories. First: I was jet lagged, which threw my insomnia completely out of whack, & I hurt my knee so moving around was (literally) a pain. I made the mistake of thinking all that would be over quickly & did not pad my schedule accordingly. Second: my schedule was already overloaded, & getting worse as I fell further behind.I’m trying to follow the prompts & do all 31 days of Mermay as well as the 4 weeks of Hippy Sheep Fest, which means 1-2 deadlines per day every day of the month. I made the mistake of planning too much for an average month, & I was starting May thousands of miles away from my home. I also planned on starting an online shop through a POD company to sell my watercolors on stickers, stationary, etc. I had done a fair amount of research, & decided on a company. I was a week away from opening a shop, & that company announced they were changing their entire business model to take more money from artists, designed in a way that hits new artists hardest. I have to pick a new company, but I didn’t keep my notes on the others, so my to-do list just got a lot longer. I made the mistakes of not bothering to pick a back up, & absentmindedly throwing out my notes.

Whew! That was a lot. Please enjoy this pretty flower

Step 3: Identify the Solution(s)

Some causes just needed time to resolve: jet lag & my insomnia will both respond to a regular sleep schedule, hopefully soon. My knee needs rest & careful stretching. My other problem could be solved with time, too: if I could add 6 or 8 hours to each day that’d be perfect! Since I can’t, I need alternative solutions to alleviate these problems now & avoid them in the future.

I use these 3 questions to find those solutions:

What Can I Learn?

How to better estimate the time individual pieces will take me. I based my expected drawing time on how long I spent per day doing each of the 31 days last Inktober, without taking into account how different my drawings are now. For example, this drawing took longer than all the all the Inktober ones I linked to above Clearly, I need to start setting a timer to get a better idea of how much time I am actually spending on each piece!

What Can I Do?

Art smarter, not harder! We are 2 weeks in MerMay so I have 2 weeks’ worth of marine life photos ready to use for reference, as well as my own work. I’ve also been working mostly in Krita instead of watercolors, which means I can reuse the parts of my own drawings that I like best. For example, this is my favorite mermaid I’ve drawn: So I used that layer in my Friday the 13th parody poster (above) & saved the time I would have spent drawing another silhouette.

Who Can I Ask For Help?

Why, you lovely people, of course! Do you use a POD to sell &/or buy art? Which one? Why do you like it? Why do you dislike it? Let me know!

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• All pictures posted are my own work.
• All reviews are my own unpaid & unsolicited opinions.