I don’t know about you, but this Covid pandemic has me feeling like my life has been taken over by a constant decision-making cycle of checking the local infection numbers, trying to get a sense of how careful others in our social circle are being, re-evaluating the risks of anything that involves leaving our house, weighing the risks against each family member’s (un)met needs, and trying to figure out what’s safe enough for us to do.

Perfectionism is such a pain! It faffs and meddles and distracts and whines and procrastinates and worries and freezes up and over-analyses and stays silent and judges and compares and competes… all in the very noble sounding name of “doing my best.”

With these aardvark sketches, I was trying to capture the essence of their shape. I wanted ti use very few lines and keep to simple, two-dimensional shading.

These sketches were part of Carla Sonheim’s Y is For Yellow course that I’ve been participating in. It’s a really wonderful DIY online program that you can work through at your own pace.

I had such fun playing with these sketches. Eyes closed for some, non-dominant hand for others. A bit of shading with just quick finger smears or water colour pencil crayons.I really love the shape of the Marabou Stork’s long, voluptuous beak.

This cute little scruffy terrier was such fun to sketch, though I really found it hard to stick to simple lines only. Somehow his fluffiness made me really want to use shading and a busier line. Given this strong pull that I felt to complicate (evident in my second sketch below), I'm really happy with the way the simple "smudge" sketch turned out!

Juggling parenting and making art is still such a struggle for me, even now that my son is 7 years old. I hear this is a common struggle for artist moms. Apparently less so for artist dads (Thanks, Patriarchy).

My Magazine Paper Collages displayed here are almost all gifted to loved ones, sold, or kept for my personal collection. But I wanted to share the series and the story behind it because they will always hold special meaning for me. They were the first artworks that I had the courage to try after I unexpectedly lost 80% of my vision in 2013.

These hyenas were such fun. Focusing on the “horizon line” of their backs, I really noticed how interesting their body shape is, and just how much character is conveyed in that single slope-y line of the hyena’s spine!