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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!

Watercolors of Campsites and Mountains

…and experimenting with eco-friendly art supplies!

Watercolor paintings on Forestry Stewardship Council certified paper, from around September 2021. Click on a picture to see it zoomed in!

Here are some watercolors I did last year! As I mentioned in my botanical ink post, I’ve been experimenting with eco-friendly art supplies. These were done with Natural Earth Paint*, which come as bags of powdered pigment that you have to mix with a binding agent yourself, and spoon into the little watercolor pans. So that was fun!

Here is a bit of backstory for each picture:

The four pictures that make up the top and left borders were painted on location (or plein air if we’re being fancy and French) while camping on Santa Cruz Island. I did some outlining with a fountain pen when I got back.

It took me a while to get the hang of watercolor again, after doing so much monochrome, which is why the first two have a subtle rainbow effect going on. I like it, though it’s not quite intentional.

The other three that make up the right and bottom borders are painted from photos of the Himalayas that my sister took. I took two scans of the first one with slightly different settings, and I can’t decide which I like better.

More pictures to come as I get them scanned and uploaded!

*Not a sponsored post, by the way.

Skimming the Climate Disclosure Rule (Research Days 1 and 2)

My research batch for April-June 2022 is in full swing. I’ve been finishing up the blog posts from the last batch, which I’m listing here. (The posts themselves are over on my Medium page.)

It’s possible that I bit off a bit too much this time around. Considering that I have blog posts from last time to complete, and I selected more reading materials this quarter than the last.

However, there was a long stretch in the middle of last quarter where I was waffling around and being stuck, until I figured out a better reading process and really picked up speed towards the end. I’m hoping that I can get more done this time by avoiding the waffling stage.

I guess time will tell.

I started with skimming the longest document of the batch: the SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rule.

These are the questions I usually ask myself while I’m skimming:

  • What is the document, in simple terms?
  • When is it from?
  • What type of language does it use – legalese, engineering-speak, or layman-friendly?
  • What am I looking for in this document?
  • How many (readable) pages is it, excluding appendices and references?
  • What cited resources do I want to add to my TBR (‘to be read’ as the Booktubers say)?

I don’t have the answers to all of these questions for this document yet. Here’s what I have so far.

What it is: The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is proposing a rule that requires publicly traded companies to disclose the risks they face from climate change, so that investors can make informed decisions. This document describes that rule in detail.

When it’s from: March 2022.

Type of language: Lots of finance-talk.

What I’m looking for:

  • An interesting aspect of this rule is that even though it’s mainly about companies’ risks from climate change, it also asks about their effects on climate change, such as their greenhouse gas emissions and emissions targets.
    • That’s because being a high emitter is actually a risk to the company as the economy transitions to being lower-carbon. New regulations may force a company to cut its emissions.
    • I’m looking to understand what kinds of information we can expect from companies about their emissions, and what we can do with it.
  • Secondly, the document says that this change was made because large numbers of investors use climate impacts in their decision-making, and want more detailed and consistent information.
    • I’m looking to learn more about this trend and how we can be a part of it.

Number of pages: 490, which is long, though part of that is because it’s double-spaced. I’m not sure yet how many of the pages will be relevant or readable.

And that’s all for now!