Today's Doodle

4x6.
No title.
All the usual materials.

Veil

4x6, Zig, Sharpie, & Prismacolor

Latest Doodles

3x5, Zig & Sharpie

Introspection

3x5, Sharpie & Prismacolor

3x5, Zig & Sharpie

4x6 Zig & Sharpie

Desert Varnish

3x5, Bic, Zig, & Sharpie

**SOLD**

Just a little doodle today. My camera died this week, and just before a bucket-list moment too--my first visit to Meteor Crater in AZ. The half moon was rising above the crater's edge, and it would've been a beautiful shot! But...dead camera. Dang! So, until I get a replacement, I have to use other means to show my doodles...like my laptop's camera. 

3x5, Zig & Sharpie

Swifts over the San Juan

Inspired by a trip I took to Goosenecks State Park a few weeks ago.

4x6 Zig & Sharpie

These guys swoop around like little rockets, and the sound is amazing!

Coma Berenices

An expressive variation on my favorite constellation...

3x5, Sharpie & Zig

Variations on a Theme

I'm finding it harder and harder to be creative with these little sketches these days. I like them fine, but they seem more like variations on a theme, than anything truly original.

I think I want to start something a little larger format--get something going that I can dig into for a few weeks--turn the thoughts behind these little variations into something more like a symphony.

3x5, Sharpie, Zig, & Prismacolor

3x5, Sharpie, Zig, & Prismacolor

Star Shadows

Allergies and Benadryl had me completely drugged out and spacey a couple days ago, so I took the opportunity to doodle. My drawing music was the new Radiohead album "A Moon Shaped Pool," and the "Interstellar" soundtrack.

3x5 Zig & Sharpie

A Reason

Hopeless.
Giving hope,
Remembers how to dream.
Lonely.
Reaching out,
Finds solace in friendship.
Broken.
Stained.
Beyond pardon.
Clings to another
where emptiness is most profound.
And there finds Life enough
To recall
A reason for living.

3x5, Zig, Sharpie, & Prismacolor pencil

Catching Up

For the past couple weeks I've been in training here at Bryce. When I saw my absurdly regular (for an interp ranger) schedule--8 to 5 every day--I naively thought to myself that I'd have plenty of time after work to hike and draw.

Not the case.

I forgot about the homework part.

SO...I've fallen behind on my creative "doodle" resolution (though I did manage one a few days ago)...

...and am a little less in shape than I was two weeks ago.

Moonlight and fog in the Ponderosa Forest
3x5, Zig Pen 

 I finally got out for a hike this morning. After a blissful (and MUCH needed!) 10 hours of sleep, I decided to explore an area seldom visited by the public. The wildflowers are just starting to emerge, and I cursed myself for forgetting my guidebook. Next time! Intermittent squalls and sun made for some dramatic lighting. The silence was bliss. Since my last hike, many more birds have returned. I'll need to start learning their calls. A favorite moment: while I rested on a cliff edge, a peregrine falcon rocketed down between two rock fins not 10 feet from where I was sitting. The sudden rush sent a jolt of adrenaline through my body. It almost felt as though the force of bird's momentum would pull me forward into free fall. Far below I hear its defiant screams echoing between the hoodoos. I love this place. 

Bristlecone Pine on the Rim Trail

Midnight Doodle

Still practicing the digital drawing. There are techniques and tools I don't understand, but as long as I don't have internet at home to google them as I go, I figure doodling is as good a way as any to get a more intuitive feel of the medium. Experimental play...and then some googling later if there's something that really escapes me. Maybe one of these days it'll all come together, but for now I'm back in kindergarten...and heck, they probably do teach this stuff in kindergarten these days!

Today's doodle.

3x5, Zig, Sharpie, & Colored Pencil

Many Moods

One thing I love about being a Ranger is that I get to see this one beautiful place go through so many moods and changes. We're lost in the clouds today--intensifying the colors and turning the hoodoos into an eerie maze. Standing at Sunrise Point I heard little cracks, pops, and rocky trickles as weathering loosened material out in the amphitheater somewhere and gravity pulled it down. 

Geological time is now!

Analog & Digital

Doodles from the last two days. Digital is still a struggle, but I'm learning.

3x5 Zig & Sharpie

Digital Practice #2: Table Cliffs Sunrise

Finding Shadows

Ok. Digital is harder than I thought. I'm getting better, but until I come up with something halfway presentable, I'm back to 3x5 Zig & Sharpie.

Exercises

Today's doodle is a hand/eye/screen coordination exercise I did to help get used to a new digital drawing tablet I'm using. I'll be the first to admit this particular doodle is nothing special, but I'm hoping once I get the hang of it, the results will become more and more satisfying.

Exhalation

The music for this one was Anna Thorvaldsdottir "In the Light of Air." 

3x5, Zig, Sharpie, & Pencil

Ancient Voices

I've gotten a little behind on my daily doodles lately, so last night I put on some George Crumb ("Ancient Voices of Children," and "Music for a Summer Evening") and came up with this...
No, I have no idea what it means.

3x5, Zig & Sharpie
***SOLD***

And Still More Moon

4x6, Zig, Sharpie, & Prismacolor

3x5 "Doodles:" $25

4x6 "Doodles:" $30

Full Moon on the Brain

3x5, Zig & Sharpie

Moonlight Shadows

In the discussion about "dark sky" protection, most people only focus on the ability to see the really faint stuff: dim stars, deep sky objects, and the texture of the Milky Way. Those aspects are surely important, but I feel that moonlight--because it also interferes with seeing faint astronomical objects--is all too often overlooked. I love walking in the bright light cast by the moon as much as I love resolving a distant galaxy or star cluster, and the pure experience of moonlight is as threatened by glare from artificial light as our ability to see the faint stuff is. Next week I lead my first Bryce Canyon Full Moon Walk, and I look forward to guiding people though an experience of moonlight unlike anything that's possible in most of our urban/suburban communities. Wherever you are, as the moon is waxing this week, I invite you to find a dark sky nearby and enjoy the natural light cast by our nearest cosmic neighbor. You might be surprised by how it alters your perspective, and transforms the familiar into the sublime.

3x5, Zig & Sharpie.
***SOLD***

First Days at Bryce Canyon

I'm all moved in at Bryce Canyon National Park, and am now working full time as a Ranger!

Yes, I've still found time here and there to draw. I expect many upcoming doodles will have "hoodoos" in them. Also, for years sharpies have been my pen of choice, but I've found a new favorite: Zig Memory System Millenium pens. In these most recent drawings I've used both.

3x5, Zig Millenium & Sharpie

Since starting at Bryce, I've been reveling in the incredible views from the rim and down on the trails. A couple days ago I watched low billowy clouds hover above the Table Cliffs Plateau--15 miles away on the eastern horizon as seen from the rim of Bryce--and every evening, Jupiter appears as a brilliant "star" above that same plateau. This drawing combines elements of both scenes...and a little of my own imagination.

3x5, Zig Millenium & Sharpie

3x5, Zig Millenium & Sharpie

Afternoon Thunder

3x5, sharpie

Star Stuff

3x5, sharpie

Thinking about falling water

3x5, pen & sharpie. 

A new resolution

A few days after the New Year, I started thinking that I wanted to make some kind of creative resolution for 2016. I love drawing, but I haven't done much lately. I think this is mostly due to my tendency to imagine these huge detailed mega-drawings, then get lost somewhere in the planning stage before even putting pen to paper.

I dug through my art supplies and found a pack of clean white 3x5 cards. Close by was my usual stash of sharpies. I found myself wondering if I could fill one little card per day with some sort of sketch. And there it was.

I've decided to forgive myself if I miss a day or two here and there. Whether I complete 365 doodles or 150, it's still a lot of drawing. Certainly more than I had been doing. And hopefully enough to bust through my creative blockages. If--somewhere along the way--I start to formulate something bigger, I'll put the little drawings on hold and post each day's progress on the larger project.

I've been sharing these on Facebook since I started, but for those of you who aren't on Facebook, I'll start posting them here as well.

All are for sale at $25 each.

Enjoy:)

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What do you see? 

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Inspired by "surface hoar" crystals I observed on a winter hike at Bandelier National Monument

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Based on a scene from the book 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

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Coma Berenices: my favorite constellation

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Self Portrait

Inspired by an ice waterfall I discovered at Bandelier National Monument

***SOLD***
Landscape inspired by Canyonlands National Park, Island in the Sky

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"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place?
Just this: what is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above.
One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.
There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one has seen higher up.
when one can no longer see, one can at least still know."
--Rene Daumal, from "Dream: the Art of Ascent," by Jeremy Collins

***SOLD***
A real tree on Bandelier's Main Loop Trail, sketched from life

Sunrise and "Nike swoosh" clouds at Bandelier

Dream Big

***SOLD***
Sunset over the San Miguels

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Crane migration