Category: Blog

I went to start the car. Click, nothing. Maybe I left the lights on.

After a year of not driving anywhere, I’m still not used to this car. There’s an ‘auto’ setting for the headlights that looks exactly the same as the ‘on’ setting, according to all the light-up indicators that one might be able to see after dark… you know, when you use lights. Unlike like every other car I’ve driven since 2004, someone didn’t include the “lights have been on for a long time so let’s automatically turn ’em off so the battery doesn’t die,” feature. The battery drained but I got some drawing time.

Just like that, I was on the couch wearing makeup with flat-ironed hair in sweatpants. Why not do another mirror sketchbook selfie?

Yes. That is a piece of homemade charcoal I worked with.

You know those orange trumpet flower vines along the Hudson at Battery Park? I made charcoal out of those creeper vines… except they were from my Mom’s. She doesn’t like vines, so I put them to good use.

That’s random so I found someone who’d taken a photo of these pretty creeper things. Oh check it out! The park documented them all in a plants list. Looks like there are a couple of different species.

Homemade charcoal is neat to work with. This vine charcoal came out soft, which was nice for building up subtle tones. A little fixative probably would have come in handy… but it’s just a sketchbook selfie.