Well, that was my longest hiatus from blogging ever. I’ve been writing online for more than 25 years, and I’ve never taken a nine month break. Kind of crazy.

I appreciate the kind words from those of you who dropped a line to be sure everything was okay with me. Things are okay. They’re great, even. For the past nine months, I’ve done little other than practice art.

As a reminder, I picked up painting (and, to a lesser degree, drawing) in late 2023. Aside from photography, I’d never done any kind of visual art in my life. But I was drawn to watercolor because (a) it was completely different than anything I’d ever done, and (b) I hope it would help with my mental health.

At first, my progress was slow. I was frustrated. Eventually, I let go of my expectations and accepted that I’d have to struggle through the learning process. I didn’t like what I was creating, but I had to create crap in order to ever produce the good stuff.

Jump-Start My Art

This year, at long last, I’m finally producing pieces I like. This didn’t happen by magic. It’s a result of a lot of time and effort.

In some ways, my approach has been unorthodox. Most of my fellow students are very much into the creative side of things, the intuitive and expressive aspects of art. I get it. But I’m not worried with that side of things because I’ve always been creative (it’s just that this creativity has manifested through writing).

Instead, most of my self-study has been directed at the nerdy, technical aspects of art: pigment composition, color theory, the “water clock”, principles of design, etc. For a long time, I worried this was wasted effort. Did I really need to be learning about the different methods of color classification? Did it really matter that whether I knew the difference between organic and inorganic pigments? If I wanted to paint a bird, couldn’t I simply paint a bird?

Turns out, all of this technical stuff is beginning to become useful! Learning these things has given me a solid foundation to build on.

But what’s really helped me jump-start my art is a combination of three things:

• Last summer, I took some art workshops at the Sitka Center on the Oregon Coast. The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology offers multi-day classes on a variety of art- and ecology-related subjects. People travel from across the U.S. to attend. Last year, I took several watercolor classes, a Procreate class, and a fun class on how to make inks and paints from material foraged in the wild.
• Last fall, I took a new (to me) watercolor class at a local community center. I was wary of its title — Advanced & Intermediate Watercolor — because I still felt very much a beginner. Turns out, though, the class is perfect for me. I plan to continue taking it for the foreseeable future. I’m not alone. The class is packed full every term, and most of the students have been taking this same class for years. We do field trips together, get lunch every week after class, and more. I informally refer to this class as my “art cult”. (In fact, that’s pretty much all I call it: “The art cult.”)
• Perhaps most importantly, on 20 October 2024, I began to keep a daily art journal. I found a terrific sketchbook — the Hanhnemühle 100% cotton watercolor book — and I’ve made it a habit to use at least one page each day to draw and/or paint anything that comes to mind.

The combination of these three things has helped me make great progress as an artist. I no longer consider myself a beginner. I consider myself intermediate. (Early intermediate, but intermediate haha.) And I’m eager to improve even further.



My Art Cruise

At the start of 2025, I did one more thing that helped accelerate my learning. I took a solo transatlantic cruise where I did nothing but draw and paint.

Cruise companies offer great deals on “repositioning” cruises, where (for whatever reason) they need to move a ship from one part of the world to another. I got a smoking deal for a solo cabin on a Norwegian cruise from Miami to Southampton by way of Portugal, Spain, and France. Mostly, the ship was at sea. In fact, it spent eight consecutive days at sea from Miami to Lisbon.

Overall, I liked this cruise less than I thought I would. After several days at sea, I began to feel like I was trapped in Groundhog Day. It was the same thing over and over and over again. Very disconcerting.

That said, I was able to devote 8+ hours a day to art, which was amazing. I was by myself. I didn’t socialize. I didn’t participate in a single ship-based activity while at sea. (Well, I guess I did take one art class.) When we eventually reached ports, the excursions made great subjects for my art journal.



Each morning, I woke, went to breakfast, showered, then sat down at the desk in my cabin to draw and paint. At noon, I went to lunch. After lunch, I picked up my art supplies and walked to a public space. I drew and painted in public until it was time for dinner. I ate, then I returned to my cabin to watch a movie before bed. I repeated the cycle the next day — for eight days running.

There’s one final thing that’s helped me make progress too. I’ve made it a habit to bookmark art that appeals to me. If I really love a piece, I try to replicate it.

For instance, in November I found the work of Mikael Hallstroem. His paintings resonate with me. I think they’re beautiful. I mean, look at this!



At first, I was baffled by how Hallstroem achieved some of his effects. (I’m still baffled by a couple of things, to be honest.) I spent three months off and on attempting to duplicate his look without any success. Then, last weekend, somebody posted a question about Hallstroem’s method to the /r/watercolor101 subreddit. This spurred me to spend several days of doing nothing but trying to copy his style. I think I’ve finally figured out most of it.

This compulsion to copy is almost universal among artists. In fact, when you read bios of the great artists, they all learn by copying. I can see why. For more than a year, I had no real direction with my art. But once I felt the urge to copy what others were doing, I felt like I had a purpose to my work. I knew where to direct my energy.

2025

So, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past year: Making art. And making more art. It’s been a blast. I’m pleased to report that after years of struggling with my mental health, I’m possibly in the best psychological shape of my adult life. (My physical shape? Ugh. Possibly the worst fitness of my adult life. I need to allocate at least a little energy to exercise.)

Here, then, are the finished pieces of art I’ve produced in 2025. I have no delusions that these are “good”. But they’re where I am in this journey. And they please me. I’m no longer ashamed to share my work.

First up is a copy. This is my attempt to replicate a painting by Pat Race that hangs in a friend’s house here in Corvallis.



Next, I took a photo from Unsplash and re-arranged it a little to come up with this composition.



After tackling some ambitious stuff in my daily art journal, I decided to make my first attempt at a portrait. This was based on a screencap from Flavorful Origins, a Netflix show about food in China that Kim and I had been watching. I like most of this except the white gouache dried very heavy and chalky. I should have used less. Lesson learned.



That painting gave me the courage to try my first true portrait. A year ago, I told my buddy, Mr. Money Mustache, that I’d like to paint his portrait in the style of Uncle Sam to go with a quote he had hanging on the wall of his apartment. I didn’t have the skillz to do so…until my transatlantic cruise. This was the result.



Back home after the cruise, the next term of the “art cult” was under way. We’re studying abstract art. Many of the students don’t enjoy abstract art. I do. In fact, I think this term has been a ton of fun. Anyhow, this was my piece for our first assignment.



And this was also for that first assignment. People like this a lot, apparently, yet it’s the simplest possible painting. In fact, I did it in five minutes as I was rushing to leave for lunch on the boat. It’s simply a wet wash of Daniel Smith’s undersea green with liberal doses of table salt thrown in. Cool effect.



I had so much fun with this next painting. It was based on an Unsplash photo of lava flowing into water. (I can’t relocate my reference photo, so I can’t link to it.) I messed up the watercolor portion, though, and was going to trash the painting. But then I thought, “What if I were to paint over the watercolor with black gouache?” Gouache is an opaque watercolor with a thicker texture. I haven’t used it much, but I’ve been experimenting with it a little this year. I really like how this turned out.



That painting had no real design to it after I abandoned the “lava flowing into water” idea. I was proceeding intuitively. I painted pleasing shapes. I paid no mind to the overall composition, only the small area I was working on at any given moment.

Salvaging that “mistake” and making something new out of it (other than what I’d intended) inspired me. I have a stack of failed paintings on top of my shredder. I don’t actually shred them. Instead, I cut them up to use as scratch paper to test various paints and techniques. I took one of these that had a cool background, and I used gouache to to add two orcas. Voila!



Our next assignment was to paint an abstract landscape. This is probably my least favorite of the paintings I’ve completed this year. I’ve saved it, though, because it marks my first attempt to work with a specific color palette that I enjoy (and which you’ll again in a moment). The idea is good here. The execution is poor.



I’m taking one other class this term: Comics Drawing & Storytelling. Comics were my initial inspiration for learning art in the first place, so it’s exciting to be taking a comics class. This is my first (and, so far, only) comic. I very much like the thought I put into the layout and design here. The execution is clumsy, I know, and my drawing skills have a long way to go. But for a first attempt, I like this.



And now we reach the stuff I’ve been working on for the past week. It’s my favorite art I’ve produced during this eighteen-month journey. I would hang these three paintings on my own wall.

All three of these were inspired by the work of Mikael Hallstroem, and I won’t try to hide that fact. (In fact, as I create these I intend to call them “Hallstroem portals” and “Hallstroem gradients”, etc.)

The first is a “happy accident”. I was trying to produce a gradient, but it didn’t quite work out. Rather than discard the painting, I added some splashes of water and sprinkled in some salt (all while the paint was still wet). I like the result.



And the last two paintings are both attempts to re-create Hallstroem’s “portal” paintings. It took me three months to puzzle this out. And I’ve spent the past week almost exclusively working on this project. In the end, it turns out this is one of the simplest possible techniques. It just requires a ton of patience.





Those are both much clumsier than Hallstroem’s works, but they’re a start. I think I’ve figured out the method. Now it’s a matter of practice practice practice until I can get the same crisp lines that he gets.

There’s still a month left of classes for this term’s “art cult”, so I’m sure to produce more abstract paintings of various kinds. (Although truthfully, all I want to do is practice more of those portals.) There’s also a month left of my comics class, so I’ll probably produce two or three more comics. In fact, my work for today is to begin drawing a four-panel retelling of Aesop’s “The Ants and the Grasshopper”.

Meanwhile, registration for this year’s classes at the Sitka Center opened yesterday. I signed up for a “gouache on black paper” class and a Japanese woodblock class. I’ll probably take a couple of additional classes (including one on painting birds), but haven’t committed to them yet.

I started this art journey hesitantly. Drawing and painting seemed overwhelming, and my early results were so poor that I was afraid I’d never be able to make anything good.

Eventually, though, I surrendered to the fact that I’m a raw beginner. I embraced the idea that I’m going to have to produce a lot of shit to ever produce anything good. That change of mindset made a huge difference.

I’m nowhere near where I’d like to be with my art, but after a year and a half, I’m at least able to create pieces that I’m not afraid to share. And, once in a while, I actually create art that I like, art that I’d hang on my own wall.

[Postscript: Ohmygosh. I can’t believe how good it felt to write this post. It’s been nine months since I made a blog post. I haven’t written anything substantial in that time. This comes after 25 years of blogging regularly. I’ve missed writing! I’ll have to see if I can balance my current art obsession with a bit of blogging — and a whole lot of physical fitness.]