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Welcome back, Brave Souls.
I am still practicing my perspective. I am wrestling with architectural drawings today. Mausoleums. Cathedrals. The heavy stuff.
I have always loved the old cemeteries. Specifically, the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires. There is a weight to that architecture. It mimics the divine, but it houses the dead. I think cemeteries are some of the most beautiful things we build. Maybe that says something about me. Maybe it just says something about the quiet.
The Cardboard Castle
I am building this drawing out of red ink and stubbornness. I’m trying to nail the small details—the pillars, the arches, the way the light hits a dome.
It is wonky.
My perspective is off. The lines drift. But one of the great things about working in ink is that you have to commit. You cannot erase the foundation just because the roof is crooked. You have to build on top of it. You have to make it work.
The Water & The Fear
I decided to do something stupid today. I decided to throw watercolor into a sketchbook that is not made for watercolor.
The paper is thin. It buckles. It bleeds.
Why do this? Because I watched a painter named Nyan (I hope I’m getting that right). He uses watercolors in non-watercolor sketchbooks specifically to force speed.
If the paper can’t handle the water, you have to move fast. You have to make decisions. You cannot noodle. You cannot hesitate.
It forces confidence.
And that is the lesson. We spend so much time trying to get the conditions perfect. We want the right paper, the right pen, the right desk. But progress doesn’t come from getting things right. It comes from seeing your own mistakes and fixing them on the fly.
Get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Try doing the thing you didn’t think you could do. Try the thing that feels silly or impossible. What is the worst that can happen? It looks bad? No one has to see it.
But you have to try. You have to push the medium until it breaks, or until you do.
The Color Lie
I learned something recently that hit me with the Oof.
There is no such thing as the color brown.
When you are painting skin tones, or wood, or dirt... orange and brown are the same thing. Brown is just dark orange.
It sounds simple. It sounds like Color Theory 101. But for years, I just clicked “Brown” on the color wheel. I didn’t understand the mixture. I didn’t understand that you have to mix the orange down into the shadow.
It’s like the “Green” problem. We avoid green because it feels artificial. But you have to muddy it up. You have to break the purity of the color to make it feel real.
The Three Sisters
Somewhere in the middle of the grind, I shifted gears. I started working on a photo reference of three deer.
One looks surprised. One looks like she’s striking a pose. One looks annoyed.
And suddenly, they aren’t deer anymore. They are characters. The Three Sisters.
The Annoyed Sister: Trench coat. Scarf. Done with everyone’s nonsense.
The Happy Sister: Ugly Christmas sweater. Living her best life.
The Surprised Sister: Puffer jacket. Caught in the headlights.
This is how character design happens. It isn’t a lightning bolt. It’s taking a shape—a deer in the snow—and asking: “Who are you?”
The Sign Off
It has been a three-hour stream. A long haul.
We painted. We wrecked some paper. We talked about gods and colors and the fear of the blank page.
If you are still here, reading this far? Thank you.
The Ask:
I am just a man speaking from the road. If this sparked something in you—if you picked up a pen, or a brush, or just looked at a shadow differently today—then the work is done. Go check out the BoneShop if you want to support the work. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the next one.
