Confidence, Art and Life

I have a weird attitude. I may be giving bad advice sometimes by coming from a completely different perspective. Or I may be giving good advice where it's needed most. I could be doing both in the same paragraph, depending on who's reading it. So take this as an essay both in general about art and specifically on pastels, because pastel has become my heart-medium.

Pastels are instant gratification. I want to paint it, bang, I do. There it is. Big and bold and visible across the room. I paint small for a pastelist except on very good days but pastels make it possible for me to paint at all most times, because of that speed and power.

This essay is in answer to a forum post where a new friend said something that made me think. I had mentioned I didn't have the space to paint large complex still lifes, so I've been doing small simple studies. I'm drifting into the 6" square format of the Daily Painters and thoroughly enjoying it. This friend compared that to my dipping my toe in the pool, then wrapping the towel around my hips and walking away calling that my daily swim.

Well yeah, actually that is my daily swim. The fact that I was able to do it at all makes it a good day. On a bad day my daily swim would be a two inch long gesture sketch of my cat while he sleeps, something I could probably do without even looking at him because I've done it hundreds of times. He said it was a mystery because other painters with even less space managed to do larger, complex still lifes.

Well, the mystery is solved. I did answer and tell him it wasn't just space but disability. Because he's right. If I was abled, I wouldn't mind getting up and sweeping ALL the food stuff off the dresser, set up a still life, sketch and photo it, live out of boxes for eating for a while till the painting's done (or just work from the photo) and then put all the food back. About like the kind of vigorous housemate who lets the apartment turn into a wreck and then every month or two blitz cleans it over one weekend - and saves time for video gaming overall because that blitz was relatively easy for him.

Heck, I might still live in a place too small for complex still life and just go out to sit on the sidewalk and paint a window display in a shop instead, because that caught my eye. Even make more than one bus trip to get back to the antique shop to do that. There's more than one way to scan a cat.

I adapted to physical disabilities before I knew I had them. This has shaped my attitudes about everything in life and I was constructively lazy for most of it so far. Everything I do to make myself comfortable has an immediate self rewarding effect that I'll actually do more. Someone abled and overworked might find comfort irresistible and prefer to sleep or watch TV or socialize when they could be painting and would enjoy painting if they gave themselves a bit of a push to do it. But someone who's always in pain and usually too tired to live is bored stiff with just watching movies or laying in bed and seizes on any moment when activity's possible as a break in the misery. This is the truth of my life and why I always dive for my Comfort Zone.

It's in my Comfort Zone that I'm able to do anything at all. Add extra challenges onto the logistics of trying to live in my body and chances are I'll wind up using up what little body energy I have in creating the setup or getting out the materials.

So maybe Comfort Zone is a problem like weight loss. Many people are a little over and could stand to lose a few pounds, but you really do not want to suggest that to an anorexic. They might push it to the point of death if you do. It's never a temptation to just do nothing, it's always an unpleasant frustration. I cannot keep the pace of the abled and I find my limits in unexpected and unhappy ways if I don't follow my intuition on what I can do right now, this day, this hour, this weather and what I ate and who said what to me online earlier.

Stress comes into it too. Stress isn't good for people in general, but most people need a certain amount of it to be happy, a comfortable pace. Some people actually thrive on a moderately high level of stress and excitement, depends on personality and metabolism and culture.

Fibromyalgia means that emotional stress, even something like reading the wrong news story at the wrong time when it gives me a shock, will knock me into total exhaustion and physical agony. Crippling pain washes over me. This will also blur my vision, wreck my memory to the point I sound like an Alzheimers patient, leave me forgetting my phone number or not finding something right in front of me. In that state I don't paint well even if I push myself hard and try to paint.

There were some kinds of work I could do in that state but all were left-brained rote activities. The entire 1980s were my "pain robot" years.

That said, I think there's something strange that goes on between attitude and confidence.

I'm continually surprised at how the level of confidence painters have is almost disconnected from their skills. It's not like the best painters beat themselves up more than beginners. It's more that some people are really happy with their own art and others not.

I am usually happy with my art even when it's flawed, because there'll be something about it that I like. I may want to redo it later but probably not by reworking on the same piece. I'll probably apply the critique later to some completely different subject, but if I'm not happy with something I am as likely to be wrong as when I'm thrilled with it.

But I have also got other challenges in life a lot heavier than whether a painting works or whether it's finite perfection. I strive to improve overall so that my worst come out pretty well and someone will like them. I reached a point of liking my own drawings very early in childhood after a long life study of one pet and from there just assumed I'd keep getting better at difficult subjects, but I approach them slowly. I also don't even do them until I've got all the tools I need to do it right sometimes.

But, back to the physical. When I paint, it makes me happy. Especially when I go right into my Comfort Zone and choose a subject with bright colors like a macaw or hummingbird or flower or fruit, or a cat, any cat, a landscape without any other people in it or signs of human habitation where I know I'm not going to get hassled by anyone and can amble through at my own pace without running into those abled hikers with their huge backpacks warbling about "It's only another mile or so" to the water. Better not be or I'm dead. I like to see the water right in the scene.

I like those moments with wildlife where sitting still long enough lets them relax and understand I'm not hunting them, so they wander out and show themselves close. Wild cats especially but most wildlife too. I didn't get to do it often but I have had some moments to remember and love documentaries.

What happened is that because I couldn't run and play as a little boy, I got very good at reading, writing and drawing, the things that were still fun when you sit still for a long time. I did and do lots of little drawings that can be finished before I'm too tired to do it well. I learn a lot and over the past few years have learned so much more than I ever expected, WC is tremendously stimulating.

I get decisive when I paint. A mark is there when I've done it. Removing marks in any medium takes a lot more time and effort than just taking it for what it is and moving on, dealing with it by changing what I do next. That's just a physical fact. Anything that makes it slower and harder to finish a painting means I'm less likely to even manage to do that painting, so my reworking paintings usually isn't cost effective.

I have seen great painters brag about throwing away 19 out of 20 paintings they do. This makes me cringe. I can't count the number of times I hated something I finished, but other people loved it, and then years later I found out why and that what I thought was my worst was actually my best because I'd leaped beyond myself and intuitively practiced a principle I didn't consciously understand at the time.

The thought of wasting that much effort is horrifying too, but on body energy I'm on a budget something like a single parent of five kids working a part time Wal-Mart job. All physical activity takes five times the body energy given my skeleton, that's a limit I had from birth. I took much longer learning to walk than other children and was extremely clumsy being cross eyed on top of it, the eye operation helped but didn't change all of it.

So if I had to cross the room to get more paper, I did so five times. If I have to get out a different box of pastels, I did it five times. If I set up the easel or stand at it, I did it for five times as long and my scoliosis kicks in. Between pain and spasms, I can get too excited and push my back to where I'm stuck with days of bed rest. I have to stop at the first twinge, so slight it doesn't even register as pain, or I will pay bitterly later on.

But maybe for someone passionate and physically vigorous, brushing off a huge piece of Kitty Wallis paper 20 times till they're emotionally satisfied isn't a big deal.

I am currently trying to settle in and rearrange my life to be able to paint more, paint better, paint larger someday. That's a slow process and a good deal of it is a matter of literally rearranging furniture with the help of home care workers. I manage to paint when I can't even take a bath without help, because having help in the bath means I have some energy left to paint the next day. Literally the actions involved in scrubbing my body are sit-ups my back won't tolerate. I can manage two to wash my hair and if it ever gets so bad I can't keep that up, I'll get them shaving my head because I dislike other people washing my hair.

I live on disability for a reason. I'm hoping to get back to painting for a living, or more realistically supplementing old age Social Security by painting on the side. If I wasn't disabled at all, I would have made a good living as a painter probably from the time I was 20 and started getting cash money for little pen and ink dragon drawings. I'd have had the energy to do enough of them and most of all, paint them bigger and colorful and get to enough conventions, do the full sheet starscape and nebula beyond craggy moonscape astronomicals too, live in the sci-fi fandom but drift toward fine art on the side.

It's also screamingly funny to me to look at different art markets like the museums-gallery fine art circuit, the sci-fi fantasy fandom, the graphic novels and murals style of modern art, and see that each one has its own expectations about subject and ideas and "originality" which usually means "Do some old familiar favorite really well and be good enough at this style we can tell it's you without the signature. Share what the dragon or water lilies or mountain goat means to you."

Some people here like tough critique and most of all prefer to see flaws pointed out, because they are tired of compliments and lean toward perfectionist, get disgusted if they feel something's wrong and can't put their finger on why. Or don't trust it if it looks good.

Others blossom under the support. WC excels at both, the critique guidelines here are just broad enough to make it very comfortable for both the tough-critique "exciting challenge" crowd or those that thrive on support and encouragement. I got a lot of encouragement as a kid because sitting still made me get way ahead of any healthy child. I had the time and boredom to do it.

So what works for me may not work for you. Or it may work well for you. Please don't throw away your paintings! Just sell them to other people who like them, they may be right, they sure are for themselves and it'll make them happy. Let it go and use the money to get more paper. Remember that your worst is still way beyond what a lot of people can do at all and they'll still love it as much - just as they do still love the one they bought a decade ago that's not as good as what you do now.

There are always better painters. It's open ended. If you're up in that range you're already so specialized in your own style that the others that great are doing things you'd never think of doing, and so there's something cool to learn, including what you'll invent tomorrow. Or what happens when some chemist creates a new pigment or manufacturer an entirely new medium. There is more to learn about painting even in one medium than any one artist could learn in a human lifetime or even a dozen lifetimes because all of us are also always inventing. Art is not a zero sum game.

I think some ideas, like ranking it best and worst, are bad when applied to it because it gets so subjective and holistic. Your personal taste is going to apply to all of it and so does that of your buyer or gift recipient. Your skill at communicating with those art viewers is only going to increase, though sadly physical illness, pain and injury can reduce it. But that can be worked around. Skill can compensate for lost capacities.

I might get more detailed again if I got prescription glasses. Or I might not because I'm coming to enjoy working loose and concise. It's all fun.

What's the point of this essay? You have to judge for yourself. It's real obvious to me now that yeah, I don't do things the way other people do. What's easy for you is nearly impossible for me, but some things that would be hard for you are stone easy for me. I've had one major still life painting planned for almost a decade now and may well paint it someday - little by little by little and without actually owning any of the objects. It involves an expensive wooden sideboard, a lot of lovely crystal and glass, a mirror and a beautiful white cat sound asleep in the middle of it. Which of these things is going to destroy all the others? Guess!

If I had that stuff I sure wouldn't pose the cat in the middle of it but I may get good enough at planning paintings and rendering those objects to put it together entirely by design, capture my Siamese in the right pose, work out the reflected colors on the white fur and remember the exact hue all of it gets in the mirror because the slightly greenish glass cools everything. It'd be a fun painting. It won't be watercolor even if it'd work in watercolor because Getting Older is not going to make me more capable of stretching a full sheet of watercolor paper. Its most likely going to be pastel on sanded paper. It won't be realism. It will be impressionism.

It's simultaneously going to wow with its beauty and shock you with the thought of all that broken glass a moment later, make you want to reach in and gently catch the pitcher, pick up the kitty fast, if I do it right you will have about a 50-50 chance of saving the situation provided you know cats and that cat trusts you like your cat does. I could remove Ari from a pile of breakables on a good day and I'd move the at-risk pitcher before removing him - in that direction in case he decides it's Rowdy Cat Play Time.

But that's the fun of it. I see that paintin gin my mind and slides of it in watercolor, in oils, in oil pastels, oil sticks, oils by painting knife, pastel realism, pastel impressionism, all different ways, exist where you can't see them. And someday I'll have the skills to do it. Then sketch. Then get to work on it about once or twice a year till it's finally done. Not something I can live on, but it will get done or I'll die first. And that's how my life is shaped.

Know yourself. Know what you do and what you don't and why. Stop beating yourself up. Neither you nor your art has to be perfect. Perfection only exists in finite unliving things and art that's too perfect isn't, because good art has and shows the imperfections in life. Compensate for your barriers and weaknesses, play to your strengths and do what's right for you, because that's also where your style comes from. Past a moderate level of skill, others who know you can tell it's yours before you sign it.

10 Tips for Daily Sketching

Pen and watercolor page of art supplies and ivy leaves

from my current Stillman & Birn Zeta art journal

I've done daily sketching or art for years, been interrupted by events like moving or health crises and then picked it up again many times. So I have some tips on creating and keeping the habit. These are ten things I learned that worked for me:

1. Post your progress online somewhere that others can see it.
2. Paint the subjects you love.
3. Keep going back to favorite subjects over and over.
4. Set out your favorite supplies visibly to inspire you.
5. Use supplies that give fast results if you only have a few minutes.
6. Work small and simple as a default if tired or something interferes.
7. Try gesture sketching, timed gesture sketching or thumbnails.
8. Don't stop if you miss a day or even several. Life Happens.
9. Date and save all your sketches.
10. Display the newest and best to self and others.

1. Posting the goal to a goals thread somewhere online is a public commitment. I use the Goal Post monthly thread on Pastel Talk forum at WetCanvas.com, an online art community that I'm active in. Everyone posts a monthly goal and then posts progress whenever they do. I put Daily Art or Artish on my monthly goals. Cutting mats or organizing supplies counts. Then when I do the day's art, I post that day's success. I do post more often than most of the participants because of that, but it reminds me to do it. We comment on each others' goals and sum up at the end of the month. I count off how many goals I achieved and some months attain all of them.

This could work anywhere online, especially with a small low resolution image of the day's art. I'm starting to post again to Rob's Daily Painting even if it's a sketch, which I neglected for a year due to sickness. Reviving it, I'm starting to get readers again. If you put the images online, people will comment and say something nice to encourage you. If you use an online community, make sure it's a friendly one where comments are positive. If your Facebook or posting site gets trolled, use a blog or community that's positive and well moderated. It works best if most comments are supportive critique or compliments.

2. Draw what you love. What you sketch most often will become easy. Even if it's a difficult subject, drawing it over and over will give you some fast improvement. Daily sketching of something you really like will result in a level where you like your drawings and from then on it stops being as much of a challenge. I love cats so my default for a number of years has been "draw my cat." It doesn't have to be just one subject. I also do small still life objects, pebbles, dead leaf once in a while, clear glass marbles, anything that looks cool to me. I collect little things that look cool to have something handy and interesting to draw.

Doesn't matter what it is, why you want to draw it or if you can draw it well. Keep doing it and eventually it'll get into your comfort zone when it always look good. If you hate it in the first place, forcing yourself to do it will discourage you from drawing again. I hate doing shoes, toothbrushes, soap bottles, appliances, the sorts of subjects that if I rendered it perfectly it'd look like I drew it for an ad agency to sell the product. Things that make me daydream about being out in the woods are much more likely to make me feel like drawing again. They're almost as serenity inducing as being in the woods. So don't draw what aggravates you. Draw what you wish you could draw so well you'd love to frame the drawing.

My cat Ari and his catnip carrot in pastels, rough sketch

3. Keep doing those favorites over and over. I started doing my cat asleep because he was holding still and I hoped it'd be easy. I was so wrong.. until after a dozen of them it did start to get easy and after five years of this, I'm now something of a cat expert when any animal reference comes up. I do big cats well because I studied my personal hairball producer so much, that surprised me in a good way.

These two are very closely tied. It's hard to make myself draw something I hate over and over enough times to do it well. I never wanted to be able to render a soap bottle invitingly with markers in order to sell an idea to an ad executive, I wanted an art journal full of feathers, stones, water droplets on leaves and twigs and glass bobs that was breathtaking good like the ones I admired. The more I do this, the more this actually happens. The more improvement on my favorite subjects, the faster they get into my comfort zone. 

Sometimes things that are really tough, like clear glass marbles, can turn into a quick and easy "OMG that looks so real" Showstopper that gets a lot of comments when I post it too. So pick things you really want to draw well and then keep trying. Pay more attention to progress than perfection until perfection just jumps off the page and throws it into the "Easy" category.

4. Set out your supplies right in reach and easily visible. I used to keep my Pitt Artist Pens set open and handy next to my computer, now I've got Tombow brush pens nearby. Also pocket watercolor sets, water brush, tin of watercolor pencils, pastels sets. One pastel set has a transparent lid so I can see all the colors in their tempting array. Anything organized by spectrum color tends to be very appealing and make me want to paint and draw in color whether that's colored pencils, either sort of pastels or the pan watercolors set. Keep them clean, organized and tempting so they're both easy to use and draw your attention.

5. Use supplies that give fast good results if you only have a few minutes. I'm disabled and might only have a brief window of feeling good enough to do anything in a day. I miss days because I might not be able to get out of bed. What I do to get around being sick works the same way for people who are just busy. Here are what evolved as my favorite sketch supplies.

I use a lot of different sketch mediums but they fall in two categories. Small, clean and no setup for journals: pen or watercolor pencil, pocket watercolor pan sets, Niji waterbrush, very soft B pencils, brush tip pens like Tombow or Pitt Artist Pens. Pigma Micron pens are great and waterproof, but the watersoluble Stabilo ones let me shade by pulling color out with the waterbrush. 

My other sketch supplies are bold - oil pastels, charcoal, soft pastels and Pan Pastels all give me bold results very fast on 9 x 12" sketch paper. Drawings big enough and colorful or dark enough to see across the room. If I want to work big I use something loose. Small, I use bound journals.

6. Work small and/or simple if tired or anything interferes. As described, I use very detailed rendering mediums like brush pens, pen/watercolor, watercolor pencils etc. in bound journals. If I feel like doing detail I literally do something very small - a life size clear marble or two and get it perfect. If I want to do something bold and don't have much time, it's one pear in charcoal and white on brown paper that looked good across the room. It doesn't matter which way I go - I keep the subject simple enough to do it well in the particular way I feel like. 

I like to change up the medium I use so as not to get bored doing the fruit from my lunch over and over. That keeps the exercise from being dull, but I am still drawing pears regularly in season and those marbles look cool in pastels as much as in watercolor realism. You might prefer to choose one sketch medium and stick with it, but when things are tight, draw something so simple and easy it won't take much effort. Go ahead and draw around a coin or use a ruler to start it if you want a perfect circle or straight line, because those tools are there for a reason. With enough practice you'll eventually do freehand lines and circles well even if you usually use them.

Of course sometimes I've got more time and feel good so I'll do a serious pastel painting in more than one session or fill an entire page or two with good pen/watercolor realism instead of just doing one marble. This is what to do on the days you've only got five minutes and grab the pocket sketchbook and the ballpoint you were using at work to sketch a pebble or your coffee cup. It still counts! Let yourself do as much or as many as you like, just set the minimum so small and simple that it's hard to fail.

Charcoal and white pastel pear on brown paper.

7. Try gesture sketching, timed gesture sketching or thumbnails. This relates to the above. I might sometimes do a full realist glass marble but it's also okay to grab a black and a gray brush pen, look at a photo reference and try to do a 2" square thumbnail sketch creating a composition of it. Or do a fast gesture sketch of my sleeping cat curled up, almost a spiral with a foot and two ears sticking out. I started doing this because various classes advised thumbnailing serious paintings to plan them. It helps composition to do that whether you do the painting or not. Practicing thumbnails will improve your more serious sketches. 

Timed gesture sketches are good to train yourself to believe you really can draw something well when you've only got a five minute break on a really long day. I learned that on the fly at a life drawing group. One model said "I'm going to start with a few short two minute gestures" and got up to do a dozen poses with a two minute timer. i went crazy trying to draw her. If I didn't finish, I just went on to the next one. To my surprise, by the end of those gestures I was drawing her a lot more accurately and I finished her fifteen minute pose before the time was up - because I'd blocked her in that fast after the warmup. Everyone got better sketches of her than the rest of the models.

So I tried it again with my cat and discovered I didn't need the timer. He rolls over or moves at least every two minutes even sound asleep. I started drawing him as one of my favorites a few years ago and that made all other animal drawings easy by comparison. Most of all, it didn't take many two minute cats before I could always recognize him and his pose with them. They don't have to be big or detailed, just try to get the pose. 

This gives your hands proof that you really can squeeze in at least one drawing during a break and it means those quick drawings will come out decent enough to motivate you to keep doing them after relatively few tries on the same subject. The reason is that you pay more attention on each try. What you see in the subject is cumulative. Practice at it means being able to do it on the fly and get the essentials of even new things on the first go. 

8. Don't stop if you miss a day or even several. Life Happens. I have multiple disabilities and can't even keep up activities of daily living let alone earn a living. If I could only work one or two days a month and can't predict which days those are, I'd have to get a month's income per painting and be able to complete it within an hour or two to live on my art again. Not likely. 

But people juggling long work hours and stress in emotional relationships, other commitments, other good habits like exercise can also have their schedules randomly interrupted by other people. If you get used to drawing on your break at work, the day the boss wants to socialize all through your break it didn't happen and then you forgot. Life happens. 

So let it go. Don't do perfection. Do progress, the next day do it as if you hadn't missed a day. Or several, because that was friends in from out of town or some romantic something - love can soak all available time and energy in life whether that's a happy long weekend off at the same time or a three day argument about the budget. 

Missing a day or several is going to happen, but it's easiest to build up to where those are rare by not worrying about them. Count instead how long you go between them and find out what interferes. Each day is its own. Each success matters. Losing a day is just luck, it's not breaking a promise to self. But each day you get it is a reward, something cool, a treat for yourself.

Because the more you do it the better your sketching is and the more often you go "Wow I didn't think I could get that so well, it was just this goofy little sketch but it came out awesome." Those happen, more and more the better you keep it up.

Robin in pastel pencils from June

9. Date and save all sketches. This is proof to yourself that you're keeping it up, which is a real achievement. As soon as you accumulate some of those, you will start seeing real improvement. Count those successes. Every now and then look back to old ones and see how amazingly far you've come since last month or last year or a few years ago. I have been doing well for a long time but I've seen more improvement than I thought I could have - because the better I get, the more I can see that I can improve. I draw better than I used to but not as well as I will - and dating sketches is constant tangible proof of that. I sketch things now that I used to think of as impossible and occasionally get it on the first try.

10. Display the newest and best to self and others. I post my sketches on Wetcanvas and am back to blogging and posting them on Facebook too. That's "yes I'm succeeding at my self set goal" and also gets compliments. At home I look through my art journals when I pick them up, get happy about the good pages, think about improving on the ones I'm not as happy with. Most of all see the improvement. When I finish one there are a lot more good pages than I expected.

In a lot of movies, a character who can draw will have a wall of sketches to show the viewer what he's good at. A primate researcher has a whole giant cork board full of realistic gorilla expressions and full body poses, you know he's the gorilla scientist. Hannibal Lecter filled his cell with beautiful views of Florence and you knew he was a genius with an eidetic memory before he opened his mouth. The movies do that to give a lot of information fast. 

I always wanted a wall that looked like that, full of good sketches that told anyone who came in that I can draw well. It's there. Because I'm me and love color, most are in pastels so it's not quite Hannibal Lecter's somber view, it's this blazing garden and fruit stand and nature preserve with my cat here and there making my room a lot more colorful. It's a constant reminder of my skill and who I am - everything in it meant something to me and the style is naturally the kind of art I like most. 

If I have to take down all of it like I did once for the exterminator who insisted bugs hid behind paintings (there wasn't even one), I just start over on the blank wall and recreate it with new sketches. It always looks better than the last time I did the Sketch Wall because practice does that. Instant feedback and identity reminder. I sketch all the time. I do daily art. I'm good at this thing, especially at the subjects I love. It also makes me want to do more. When it's full, I take down the worst of what's up to put up the newest. That means my very best stay on the wall for months and maybe years, but anything flawed rotates into the portfolios and storage boxes for me to go through on spring cleaning and go "Wow, didn't realize I still that. Dang, I really improved. Oh I can't believe I used to draw like that. It's so easy now."

It's constant proof of success. Small incremental success is addictive. These are the things that worked for me.

Drawing at the same time every day is something I could not do because weather is random and my disabilities flare sometimes for reasons I can't even detect. A pressure change can leave me comfortable and energetic one minute, answer the phone, talk two minutes and blam, nap attack and I don't wake up till it's the next day. Or my wrists and hands hurt too much to hold a pen. So that's pot luck. i have to seize the moment and draw whenever I can to keep it up, count it done when it's done.

That is one strategy and doing it the same time and way every day is another. Both are habits, I just happen to have the particular disabilities that break any habits I have at the slightest disruption. Use whichever works. Use whatever of these get you going and ignore any that don't. We are all different and you're the one person in the world that knows most what motivates you or not. 

A failed trial is just that, a success is something you achieved. Small daily successes are good for both your drawing skills and general outlook in life. It's a human thing that's all too absent at most jobs, but art is the one thing that you can never really run out of ways to do something cooler and more interesting. It's also the one thing in life that the more you do it your way, the better you get. Style is something that just happens like handwriting, skill is what makes it visible to everyone else. But very few kinds of activity leave positive, tangible results and improvement every time you do them. It's incredibly satisfying to get to the point something that looked crazy difficult is part of the "easy stuff."

Red clear and blue catseye marbles in pen and watercolor from Zeta journal

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