Month: May 2022

Line Drawings of Plants and Fruit

…and experimenting with combining drawings and stories.

Line drawings of houseplants and fruits. Click on each for a zoomed-in version and/or a related story!

From top to bottom, left to right, here are some stories I wrote to go with each of these pictures:

  1. The Day Begins and Creatures Emerge
  2. A plucky sprout with one wrinkly, damp-looking leaf twists its way up among several drooping leaves in various states of aging.
  3. Hanging Out with a Succulent
  4. GPS and Surprise Strawberries
  5. Soaking Up the Orchid

Research Day 3 – Skimming the FTC Green Guide

Continuing with my first pass through all the reports for my sustainability reading project for the quarter…

I have about five weeks to go, and wandered off for a while to do some other stuff, so I’m hoping to spend this week on a sprint through all the big dense materials. Kind of like I did at the end of last quarter, but a month early, because – adulting.

This document was a fairly easy read.

To go through my usual questions:

  1. What is the document, in simple terms?
    • It is a guide from the Federal Trade Commission on how to follow the rules about avoiding deceptive claims in advertising, with regard to environmental claims.
  2. When is it from?
    • It was last updated in 2012.
  3. What type of language does it use – legalese, engineering-speak, or layman-friendly?
    • Mostly layman-friendly, with a few legal terms.
  4. What am I looking for in this document?
    • I’m looking for a clear distinction between greenwashing and reasonable environmental claims.
    • Most environmental claims we see feel like they don’t go far enough, since if they were, climate change would be solved already. But I doubt they’re bad enough to be considered deceptive by the FTC.
    • So I’m trying to find ways to describe that distinction.
  5. How many (readable) pages is it, excluding appendices and references? And what cited resources do I want to add to my TBR (‘to be read’)?
    • It’s 36 pages, and ends so abruptly that I had to double check that it had downloaded correctly.
    • It has no conclusion or reference section, so no TBR-fodder from this one.

* * *

Phew. It feels good to be moving again with this project.

Drawing Plants for 10 Days in a Row!

…and dipping my toe into making videos.

And now, for something completely different! I recorded myself making vector drawings of plants and sharing some thoughts. I plan to do this for 10 days in a row, and I’m currently five days in.

It’s working as a crash course in basic video editing and a fun source of routine. I enjoy setting up these little projects for myself, especially if they have a clear endpoint. (But I can only keep those up for a short time, hence the 10 days).

And watching the timelapse of a drawing, even when I just drew it, is strangely satisfying, like a recap – “Yep, that’s what just happened!” I wish I had a similar recap for all my projects, but I’m actually terrible about remembering to take photos…

Anyway, here’s my tentative foray into video (part 1):

Day 1 – Onion and explaining the 10-day challenge.

Day 2 – Succulent and thoughts on having multiple interests.

Day 3 – Spiky Succulent and thoughts about working styles.

Day 4 – Pomegranates, and project updates.

Day 5 – Citrus, and thoughts about the benefits of reusing art.

So that’s the halfway mark! Five more plants to go. I’m having to venture outside the kitchen and patio for subjects now, so the quest escalates.

A Multi-Project Update for Q2 2022


I last made a multi-project update post here, and I’d like to start doing one every quarter. They help me stay focused(ish) and might help you make sense of my scattered updates.

Here are my projects this quarter.

• Research quest: I have a new lineup to read, as well as a couple of posts to write from last time around. I’ve defined the project here.
I’ve made a little progress, and yet I’m feeling strangely confident about getting through it. Expect some more updates on my reading soon!

• YA fantasy novel: I’ve been sharing updates here. My goal for this quarter is to finish the ‘long draft’, which is what I call the draft that has everything I want to put in, and can then start cutting down.

Currently, I have all the scenes I want, though a few are in outline form.

So my next task is to flesh out the newest scenes and paste the material hanging out in various note-taking apps and my (transcribed) voice memos into the main draft.

My second goal is to finish sharing my novel’s (real-world) backstory, which I started here.

• Art & Painting
I don’t usually have any goals to speak of related to art, since I prefer to just draw or paint when I feel like it. But this time, I have two goals:

1. To upload my recent watercolors and vector art into galleries in my Painting category.
2. To make vector drawings of all the plants (and fruit and vegetables) in my house.
I’ve also been using my art in blog posts and other media. So I want to continue to do that.

Okay! There’s a lot going on. Let’s see how I do!

More Leaves and Foliage in Botanical Ink

…and painting on location for the first time!

Monochrome paintings of trees and hills. Click on a picture to see it zoomed in!

Dipping back into the archives for these.

I last shared some of my botanical ink paintings here. As I wrote there, I’ve been enjoying drawing from my old vacation photos, looking deeply at the zoomed-in pixels of dappled green leaves and foliage.

Here are the last few I managed to do before running out of ink, some time in 2021. I was already well and truly out of blue. (Yes, I do need to buy some more. I keep forgetting, and now I’m on a watercolor and digital art kick. I’ll circle back to ink eventually!)

A bit of background on each, going clockwise from the top left:

  1. I painted this on location, and not from a photo! One of the first times I did that. It was while camping in the Angeles forest. Since then, I make a point of packing art supplies and painting on every trip.
  2. From a photo I took in Madrona Marsh in Torrance, California.
  3. From a vacation photo from Flagstaff, Arizona. I had to mix in some regular fountain pen ink for the dark branches.
  4. From another Flagstaff photo taken at high speed in the passenger seat, probably.

Expect a few more art updates, woven in among all the other activity, as I catch up on sharing my recent work!