The Future I Stopped Pretending Not to Want
I thought that, when I retired, stepping away from goals and schedules would bring peace. Instead, I discovered restlessness, distraction, and a loss of meaning. This week I reflect on how I found my way back in 2025—not to obligation, but to making, learning, and respecting my real nature.
December in the laundry room
I’m in the creative laundry room this month, holding up projects like shirts and asking which ones still fit.
In Praise of the Story-seeker’s Gremlin
A playful ode to creative chaos, mysterious glitches, and the mischievous gremlin who shows up just when you think everything’s under control.
Mapping the Realms: How This Site is Actually Organized
Realmscapes isn’t just a blog—it’s a mapped world of creative realms. This week, I’m pulling back the curtain to show how it’s actually organized (and why I built it this way in the first place).
The secret power of mini-projects
Sometimes the secret to finishing creative work isn’t more time or more discipline — it’s thinking smaller. Here’s why mini projects have helped me finish more in two months than I did in the last two years.
Sometimes It’s Just a Good Week (and That’s Enough)
A quiet week of porch-sitting, birdsong, and unexpected studio satisfaction. Zines are blooming, pastels are cooperating, and the dust layer has been vanquished (with a dish rag from the 1980s, no less). Sometimes, it’s good to pause and celebrate the small, quiet victories.
Exciting beginnings: my self-taught art journey, week 1
My first week on a self-taught art journey has been filled with unexpected challenges, inspiring discoveries, and a renewed sense of creative freedom. Join me as I explore foundational skills, face new trials, and uncover what it means to truly learn the art of illustration.
SketchAwesome: a new sketchbook habit?
I’ve given up on an online business. But there’s one thing I’d like to do: make sketching a daily habit. SketchAwesome might help with that!
Walking Makes You More Creative
Did you know walking makes you more creative? It’s true! Adobe did a study (https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xlm-a0036577.pdf) with college students, putting them through a bunch of tests to see how walking influenced their creative thinking. Specifically, they looked at “novel” idea creation, meaning ideas that are unusual and/or new, and “unique” idea generation, meaning no one else […]
How Storytelling Can Help Your Art
To me, storytelling and art go hand in hand, but I didn’t always think this way. In fact, I never heard of storytelling prior to three years ago when I moved here. It was in 2017. We’d been searching for a new home that would suit us for life in retirement and found a beautiful […]
How to Find Your Lost “Why” in Art
Are you struggling with your art? It’s fun to draw and paint, no doubt about it. It’s nice when your artwork can also earn a few dollars. But what do you do when your creative work is no longer satisfying? Worse yet, what can you do when your creative time becomes a source of frustration? […]
Make Art that Matters
There are artists, and then there are the people who can draw, color, or paint. Which category do you want to be in? The purpose of art is to communicate a message. It can be obvious or subtle, but without a message, without the emotion that creates the message, there is no impetus to shape […]
Artsy Hobbies
I want to share my latest hobby. Artist Trading Cards! I don’t remember how I discovered this wicked addiction, but last month I signed up at ATCs For All (www.atcforall.com) and began participating in swaps this month. The concept is that you create a card and exchange it with another artist for their card. The […]
New Goals and Objectives
Hello again! My last post explained some of my thoughts about the new objective of this blog. This post is about planning the road map. I’m not going to go into a lengthy discussion about why planning is necessary. I’m not going to cover the topic of planning at all, really. Instead, I’m going to […]