Tag: trees

November 2023 Art Update

It has been way too long since I’ve shared recent works here, so, here goes!

Watercolor painting of some spiky trees
Watercolor painting of a dilapidated old building next to a dirt path
Watercolor painting of a warrior heading toward an old, beat up cabin
Watercolor painting of some swampy trees during golden hour in the evening

Above are a bunch of recent-ish watercolors. I haven’t done a whole ton of those this year, but I really enjoyed working on them.

Pen drawing of some floating islands with a house, a waterfall, all colored with colored pencil
A surreal scene of a path leading to a building with a portal in it, surrounded by a bunch of scraggly, strange trees and a spiral in the sky
Some ink doodles of some various props -- most overgrown with plants, but like a mailbox, a barrel, some rocks

I have also been doing a bunch of line drawings like these — and a TON of these little prop doodles. They are fun.

Four drink glasses, one shaped like a boot, with trees growing from them

I have also picked up a small drawing tablet and been coloring things I draw in pen, digitally. It’s fun exploring these more surreal scenes.

January Art Thoughts

Hey friends! Figured I’d write up some thoughts I’m having on Twitter, and share some art I’ve done in the last little bit.

Here’s a tree I sketched out for my dad’s birthday recently, with some indigo paints a friend gifted me and some muddy-green ink I picked up that I really like.

Here’s some thoughts I posted to Twitter today, that I think are a nice bit of insight to keep me going:

I can’t remember who posted it, but I saw something like “artists need plenty of time to do nothing”, and honestly? For real. Making stuff, at least for me, requires a massive amount of focus and energy to channel things onto paper. That, on top of more typical life shit lol.

So with that in mind I feel better about not hammering stuff out like in an assembly line. And even if I was? Still would need proper rest time.

—

A healthy boundary I’m developing in regard to my ambitions, is “what I do and can do is good enough.” I see all this cool shit people make that I love the look of, and instead of having high expectations I just let myself make what I make and do a loose study if I’m so inclined.

I’m hitting a point where I’m fairly content with my level of skill and craft. I am playing around and figuring out what I wanna say, beyond making neat little vignettes to soothe my soul with. Biggest things seem to be “ha isn’t life fucking absurd” and “just gotta keep going.”

I think these speak for themselves, for the most part, but I’ll elaborate a bit just for my own sake, to get some more thoughts out.

A big thing I ran into for ages was having lofty ideals and ambitions, with no clear idea how to get there and limited energy just to brute force it. Even despite that, I’m proud of a lot of what I’ve done and the personal growth I’ve had.

My goal moving forward is self-fulfillment and sustainability. And remembering to live. Art isn’t just putting marks on a page. Music isn’t just hammering out some notes. A big part of it is in studying from life and studying craft — this includes not just learning to do the thing, but learning to say what I want with the thing.

Much of this is related to like, finding the light in the darkness. The world is a deeply chaotic, often unpleasant, but also beautiful place. Giving contrast to and bringing awareness to parts of it can really be enlightening and also sometimes encouraging, despite the deeply dark parts of reality.

Existence, this planet, the things we’ve got, us… it’s all an extremely unlikely thing in this infinite universe we live in. And there’s a lot to do if we’re going to keep existing, but that’s not the focus of this post.

I guess my point is, keep going, keep doing the thing, appreciate it ’til we can’t. I dunno, this post got more existential than I anticipated. I hope y’all got something out of this post, too!

December Update

Hey friends! It’s been a while since I’ve shared anything new here. The work I did during the first half of the year really caught up with me and led me to have to slow down quite a bit. But I’ve still done some cool stuff! I’ll document some of it here.

I’ve done several paintings, but here’s the noteworthy ones that I have scans of.

Below is a quick landscape I did in preparation for a much larger commission I did for a friend. I rather like the weird, acid-yellow/green sky with the haunting blood-red moon. It’s ominous in a way I enjoy.

Below are some fun watercolor and ink trees I painted, as I was easing back into the medium after burning out on it for a bit after the afore-mentioned large commission I did. I had fun with these, and they’re the first ones I did using some “self-evolving” watercolors I bought, which granulate in interesting ways as they dry.

Below are some more trees I painted, using those self-evolving paints. I rather enjoy the granulation and hints at a background that they include.

Below is another painting I did, but this one was with the intent of doing a full-page painting again. I hadn’t quite had the energy to do so for a while, but I’m branching out again and I rather like this as a first attempt.

Beyond that, I did a little bit of music, but not a whole lot. I’m still figuring out what my values and desires for my music are, after releasing so much earlier this year. Any new, little pieces I did can be found at my SoundCloud, which you can find below. Here’s an embedded link of the newest one I’ve done.

Thank you for reading this post! I’ve been uploading stuff more regularly at my Patreon. If you wanna check that out, I’ll drop a link below:

https://www.patreon.com/jankhambrams

May Update

Hey friends! Been ages since I’ve uploaded here, huh. Been busy! Been sick! Been working on all kindsa stuff, some of which I’ll share here.

  • Spooky, green tower reaching off the page with some foliage around it
  • Tower with smoky clouds going off the page, with an orange tree in the foreground
  • Sunset with green clouds and spiky, green plants
  • Trail in the woods with a red, spiky fae thrown in the middle
  • Simple illustration of a dead tree with a green banner flowing off it
  • Sunset sky with a tree floating on a flying island

Above’s slideshow is most of what I’ve done the past couple months, art-wise. I was knocked out for a couple weeks by some health stuff, so I was focused on that, but I’m glad to still have done some of the best paintings I’ve done in my life. Good times!

I’m going to leave this post as a short one. I like the idea of being more concise, to make room for more efforts, so we’ll see how that goes!

February Update

Hey friends! Been a while since I’ve shared an update here. Been keeping a fairly low-key presence online, which has been nice with how wild things have been these past couple months.

Below is a slideshow with a bunch of goofy character experiments I’ve done. It’s fun figuring out how lines and such play a role on defining a character’s personality and such.

  • Cartoon style dogs with human teeth, as well as some weird looking characters, including a vampire and a guy with bad hair
  • Cartoon drawing of an old guy with a pipe next to a fish version of him, with the text "Ol' Brimpy" on it
  • Three brush pen drawing postcards. The first depicts two cartoonish figures holding pint glasses, the first smoking and the second saying "CRUISIN 4 A BREW-SIN". The second depicts a cartoonish figure holding a small cylindrical figure with arms, legs, and an antennae. The third depicts the text "HAIR HANDS" and five faces or busts of cartoonish figures; two are bearded with long hair and glasses, the remaining three making creepy or unsettling faces.
  • Two cartoon drawings of a character. One with him yawning with the text "the best part of waking up is waking up", as well as one of him drinking soda with the text "do the doo"
  • A brush pen drawing postcard of three cartoonish figures. From left to right, the bust of a man, a man in a baseball cap and a shirt saying "egg", and a toilet with a face.
  • A brush pen drawing of two figures, a man with a trunk nose and another man with a top hat, monocle. and a watch

Below here is some landscapes I’ve poked around at. I had a moment of indecision in early January where I wanted to draw both trees and faces, so I figured “what the hell” and combined them. I hope you enjoy these!

  • Postcard of a watercolor and brush pen illustration in bold, earthy tones. In the foreground is a mature deciduous tree, with a face on the trunk featuring a bulbous nose. In the background is a grassy landscape including rocks, clouds, and birds.
  • Six small brush pen drawings of trees and stumps with faces. One looks stoic, another really goofy, the third aloof, one rather bulbous, another looking smug, and the final one having an aggressive snarl.
  • A quick postcard-sized brush pen sketch of trees and rocks in a field
  • Three brush pen drawings, one post-card sized and the other two trading card sized. All depict trees with a face with either stoic or aloof expressions, with clouds and rocks visible.

Other than this, I’ve just been making a point to do more self-care. It’s nice.

Take care!

February Art Update

Good lord, it’s been like four months since I’ve posted here. Been a wild start to the year so far with some great personal growth amidst a bit of turmoil and frustration. But hey, growth doesn’t have to be pretty.

Without further ado, here’s some of the art I’ve been up to!

  • Mountain chateau sketch I did for a friend
  • Mountainside greenhouse and farm I did for a friend
  • Study of a fish from Mario and my character Gorbold Trashman in a similar style, saying “cool” in Japanese
  • Couple sketches mostly from imagination, of rocky terrain and a tree
  • Study of a character drawing by A. Shipwright, and a rock I drew from imagination

Above are all sketches I did this year. I’m quite pleased with them all, and can tell I’ve made some good progress, artistically.

  • Study of an island covered in trees and such
  • Drawing of a man walking through a marshy, rock-filled area
  • Rolling, rocky hills with a creek in the middle of them
  • Couple artist trading card drawings of waterfalls and cliffs

Above are a bunch of studies and gifts I made in December, with some Copic markers I got. I’m not sure I’ll use the markers a whole lot in the future as their ink tends to fade pretty quickly, but they’re nice and quick for getting ideas out.

October/November Art Roundup

Hey friends! It’s time again for an art roundup! In fact it’s past time, but hey we’re doing it now. Here’s some of what I’ve been up to these past couple months:

  • Random doodles, including a tree, a couple ugly faces, and a coffee mug with a face, all done in ink
  • Three rock studies done in perspective with black ink
  • More rock studies in perspective with black ink
  • A third set of rock studies with a tree growing on top, done in black ink
  • A rock study drawn in perspective with black and brown inks
  • A study of a crevice done in black, blue, and orange ink
  • Three artist trading card sized drawings in blue and black ink, done for my patrons
  • Three artist trading card drawings done in blue, black, and orange ink. Done for my patrons
  • A landscape done in ink, of an island with shrubs and tall pine trees
  • Two sketches, one a colorful thumbnail of a boat in front of a lake, and another of a forest done in brown, orange, black, and green inks
  • A perspective study of a tree above a rock wall with stones paving the ground in front of it

I hope you enjoy this slideshow! I’d have more to say about it but honestly it’s been a struggle just getting art done at all these past several weeks. At least doing these rock studies and such have been really helping me figure out how to draw in perspective!

See y’all next time.

September Art Roundup

Hey friends! It’s been a bit since I’ve collected a bunch of my recent art on here, so here goes!

Above are a bunch of trees I did recently. The two with color are birthday gifts I did for a couple friends, and the other two are experiments I did while puzzling out a new method of doing art.

Above are more sketches I did, fiddling around with a different pen (the first two) and getting more experimental with my brush pen. I’ve actually finally worn out my brush pen after three years, so I’m waiting on a new tip to arrive in the mail soon.

Well, there’s the post! I hope you enjoyed reading and looking at my art. I’ll catch y’all later! <3

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