2016 In Review

My 2016 in lists and stats. I won't explain further than that because this post is going to be super long anyway.

Books - I'm starting with this category because 2016 has been a year of books for me. I have always been a reader, but after getting pretty burnt out on reading during my high school and college years (as I think many people do) my love for reading has resurged more and more every year since I've graduated.

Book source: the library - Anyone who knows me online is probably aware of my obsession with the library. I was a junior librarian in middle school and in 2016 the public library became a huge part of my weekly routine. 

Nonfiction book: Shrill by Lindy West - This book is hilarious, hopeful and gave me so much to think about. Please read this. 

Fiction book: The Powerbook by Jeanette Winterson - Jeanette Winterson is a genius. I read 3 of her books this year, but this was the one that I stayed up all night to finish in one sitting. The prose and story are gorgeous and she does an incredible job of capturing emotion. This is actually considered to be not one of her best, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I think of her more popular works. 

Graphic Novel: The One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg - A late post-Christmas addition. Hands down the best graphic novel I have ever read. A story about storytelling with feminism, romance, and humor thrown in. Enchanting artwork. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

Honorable Mentions: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers - A delightful story with delightful characters and lots of meaning. Sci-fi for people who love sci-fi and for people who don't.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon - I have issues with this book and even more issues with the series (regarding gender and sexuality issues, as well as writing that can be super repetitive), but the world of this book/series is so immersive in a way that not many books have been since I was a child. 

Total books read: 53

Total pages read: 19,364

Podcasts - I'm obsessed. I listen to quite a few regularly. These are the ones that I binge listened to this year (even if I may have listened before 2016)

Art For Your Ear - Interviews with artists by the Jealous Curator. Always inspires.

The Ladycast - Inspires me to be a more badass lady

Call Your Girlfriend - Their tagline is "for long distance besties everywhere" and its true. I saw them live twice this year, both with spectacular lady friends of mine.

Gilmore Guys - The podcast that I laugh at the most. And its about Gilmore Girls. Saw them live in Boston in June and it was hilarious.

Hot Chicks With Superpowers - Shoutout to my own podcast, started this year. Listen to me and two wonderful friends chat about every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in order, complete with feminism, 90s fashion, and tangents (and I did the artwork).

TV - Like books, I consumed a lot of TV this year. I don't even have a movies category because I'm all about TV. None of these series started in 2016 and I didn't watch them all for this first time in 2016, but I loved them this year.

Supergirl - A happy, uplifiting joy of a show. With so many well-written, nuanced female characters. And season 2 is only getting better.

Elementary - I'm not really a huge fan of detective shows or procedurals in general, but for some reason I find Elementary extremely enjoyable, comforting, funny, and interesting. The characters are incredibly fleshed out and acted so well. And Joan Watson's style is so on point.

Honorable Mentions: The Flash - Mostly for sentimental reasons of watching and commenting with my DC roommate, Hannah, but I'm just a sucker for all of the DC shows. 

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life - Entirely for anticipation reasons. 

Music

Hamilton Soundtrack - That's it. The end. I don't listen to music much anymore (I realize how weird that is), but when I do listen to music it will be the Hamilton soundtrack and I will listen to it over and over and never get tired.

Fashion Things

Accessory: All of the pins (you can get mine here)

Phone case: Bando glitter bomb

Food Things

Tacos - Luckily, the year of the taco is also the year I moved to LA and right down the block from a taco stand. 

Grape Tomatoes

La Croix - I realize everyone else is also obsessed, but truly the best drink to grab from the fridge and take back to my desk while working on a project. My fave flavors are peach pear and cran rasberry.

Art Stuff

Medium: Watercolor and Collage

Class: Jessica Swift's Pattern Camp - I learned so much in just two days. Pattern Camp completely changed my pattern making game and gave me quite a few Illustrator tips and tricks that I use outside of pattern making as well. I highly recommend signing up for the next round if you want to make patterns.

Digital Tool: Illustrator - Totally upped my digital art game

Cool Stuff I Made: geometric collages, watercolor paintings (often of bras), lots of patterns, enamel pins, letterpress prints, little art books, jewel collages, a few acrylic paintings.

Cool Places My Art Was: Urbanic wrapping paper, Print Source, the A Creative DC Newsletter, Obvi We're The Ladies, under people's christmas trees

Museum I Visited: The Broad

Art that I Bought: This screenprinted poster by Lisa Congdon. It is super neon in real life and looks so good in a white frame. 

Travel

Portugal, Spain, and Morocco

Cross-country road trip from DC to LA

Several trips to Boston to visit the fam

Memorable Things That Happened This Year (that I haven't mentioned in the past categories)

-  Snowzilla a.k.a. a huge blizzard in D.C. that kept us snowed in for so many days

- completed the 100 day project 100 Days of Watercolor Without Reference

- moved to LA

- opened my Etsy shop

- turned 24

- attended weekly trivia at the Fox and Hounds 

- my sister Chloe visited and we went to Disneyland

- went to tons of physical therapy and chiropractor appointments

- started Reclaim the Rhetoric with Taylor

- voted for Hillary Clinton (and cried a lot)

Thanks for hanging out with me this year and for your support of my work! Onward to 2017!

Let's Talk About Sketchbooks (and Art Journals) Volume 7

It has been a little while, but today I'm back with another post in my sketchbook series! The little book that I'm talking about today is something that I would definitely not call a sketchbook, it is entirely an art journal.

The story behind it is this: As I've mentioned many, many times, at the beginning of July I moved from DC to LA. In the months leading up to this big change I was leaving my job, packing up my apartment, and trying to figure out how to move to the opposite coast (where I'd lived for my entire life and where the vast, vast majority of my family and friends were) and I was having a lot of feelings about it. I wanted a place to work out those feelings, and, of course, making things always helps me with that, so I started a daily art journaling project for myself.

The idea was to make at least one page for the book each day. Not to just decorate a page, but to completely create it - background, writing, etc, all on that day. I then punched holes in each page, and bound them together with book rings, adding a new page or two each day. I'm not exactly sure why I decided to do it this way, I think I thought it would make a cool project and a nice creative challenge. And this way, I could end the book whenever I felt like it. With a pre-bound book I could end up with several blank pages that I didn't feel like filling, or I could fill all of the pages and still want to add more. 

Emotionally, my goal with this book was to get really honest about what I was feeling and thinking. I think a lot of the time I'm not really honest with what I write in journals and sketchbooks. I gloss over or downplay or write something vague. I don't think this is because I'm afraid of someone else reading what I've written (let's be real, no one cares what I write about in the many many journals I keep), but more that I'm afraid that writing something down makes it real, or I'm afraid to admit something. But I feel like it is also important for me to get that stuff out. This project also makes a good time capsule of my last days in DC and of my state of mind at a very specific and important time, so hopefully I will like looking back on it one day.

Phew, sorry that was such a long introduction. This project is unique so it needed some explanation. Now, onto some of the pages.

I haven't made covers for the book. I just started with page one. I love how simple but impactful this one is. I wastercolored a lot of the backgrounds in this book because I was working on my 100 Days of Watercolor Without Reference project at the time. Using the date stamp became something I did every day, and I used my stapler a lot too.

I included some quotes about change that felt relevant. I also played around with different shapes and sizes of pages. The largest pages are 4x6", but you can see a narrower page on the right with 2 other pages peeking out from behind. I just love layered pages like that.

Hoarded paper from Japan on the left, and a photo transfer using a Chartpack pen on the right.

Made the day after my roommate moved out of our apartment, kicking off a few months of living alone. Rifle Paper Co. paper on the left, and another photo transfer on the right (with a book page peeking out from behind).

One of my first geometric collages! I actually made my first ever ones as 4x6" to go into the book and kind of fell in love with the size. I painted and wrote on a book page on the right (using what I had around my desk).

I took a lot of Instax photos in those days. A lot of them ended up in the book, either on pages, or in envelopes/bags.

One of those bags is on the left. It was just packaging for something that I recycled, punched holes in, and decorated with Sharpie drawings. Behind it is a page made from security lining of an envelope. On the right, I wrote out a text that I sent to my roommate. I included some kind of writing every day in one form or another - long, short, whatever. 

On this day I felt awful and like I had no creative energy. So, I made the page by layering on tons of stickers as a kind of mindless activity. The one on the left page summed up my feelings. Now, this page cheers me up.

Keeping it simple with watercolors on the left. On the right, I made an envelope out of really delicate newsprint paper to hold journaling that I didn't want anyone to be able to see and read easily. I didn't really think that one through - it took a lot of finagling to make it so the newsprint wouldn't completely tear apart when I opened and closed the envelope, but its pretty.

While making the book I took a trip to visit family in Boston. I didn't bring any pre-made pages with me - just my stapler, hole punch, date stamp, and pens. All of the pages from that time were made on paper that I procured when I was there. On the left are a piece of a shopping bag and greeting card, and on the left is the envelope the greeting card came in (with more Instax photos inside).

The penultimate pages. Opposites. Very indicative of how all over the place my feelings were at the time.

I stopped adding to the book 2 days before I drove out of DC. I had envisioned working on the book at least until the move and maybe on my road trip out to LA, but ultimately, I felt like the project was finished and that adding to it would become more of an obligation than the emotional and creative outlet that it had been up until then. So I stopped.

I highly recommend trying out this type of project. Working on it really did make me feel better and more in control of my emotions. And it is pretty cool how something can come together with just a little bit of work every day. I was super busy when I made these pages, but I got a pretty chunky little book after about a month of working on it. If you're interested in this idea and would like to know more, let me know!  I'd love to share more, or maybe even make it into a class...