Category: Notes
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This is the first complete drawing in my Red Book project. I found it was harder to establish when/how to end given my self-assigned experiment to not complete these drawings in single sittings. I’m also getting the feel for how the pages in this book will receive various media for better or for worse.
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Here’s me drawing in the new Red Book art book project. As I say in the video, I’m trying something with this book where I don’t finish drawings in single sittings as I normally do. This is the third (I think) time I have come back to this particular drawing. It might be done? But…
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A few more marks made on this first drawing in the Red Book. 📕 It’s already interesting to sit and then remove myself from a drawing without finishing it. Not exactly comfortable but it pushes me in an intriguing way.
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Beautiful skies tonight
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I started a new drawing project book tonight. It’s a 1976 Olympics commemorative book but that topic isn’t meant to inform the drawings I do. I like having something besides a blank page to react to and I’m sure in some cases the underlying text grid and images will nudge my drawings in interesting directions.…
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When I say document, I mean it less in the “recorded for historical reasons” sense and more in the “just hold on to this for a little bit longer” sense. Holding the firefly of memory in cupped hands but knowing that it must eventually be released. I wanted to save my analogy and also clearly…
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Determined that standing in the dark of our yard trying to take pictures of fireflies is far less rewarding than just standing in the dark of our yard experiencing fireflies.
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The other day, Andy Adams asked folks on Substack about their photos that explored colour. While I don’t actively think of myself as a photographer these days, it made me think about self-initiated trends I would follow like seeking out pops of red.
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10 years ago I started an online group art “zine” called Amateur Escapist. I meant it to be a series of themed issues but I got self conscious about it so there was only ever one issue. But every once in a while, I open the website and think, hmm should I do this again?…
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The final drawing in my Openwork series. A couple different things on my mind starting soon. Made Ready, Davin Risk 2025
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A short video I made before making the final drawing in my Openwork series tonight. https://youtu.be/sGUvxolwblI?si=Z0UnjDYw0CPcAiIB
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This Masonite panel will be the surface for the last drawing in my Openwork series. There will be 30 drawings total and that number is somewhat arbitrarily set by how many of these dollar store panels I was able to find before they stopped stocking them. I’m happy with the number of drawings regardless and…
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My drawings are almost never about one thing but this one definitely came from a place of deep frustration, anger, and sadness. People are being murdered daily and I am drawing. There’s a hard balance to be living a life of relative peace and be a distant witness to a diabolic genocide broadcast each day.
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Getting hot. Allergies ramping up. Scent of roses in the air.
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Yesterday I made bread. Today I sat in the shade of a pear tree and marvelled at this beautifully wispy sky. These acts aren’t connected other than being core moments of an undeniably good life.
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We have a small cherry tree under a protective mesh bag and in the sunlight it becomes its own little world. It reminded me of this beautiful photo experiment by Diana Pappas and Tom Bland – https://pappasbland.com/17
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I recorded this flip through of my book work project I nicknamed “the ledger”. I made 149 drawings in this 90+ year-old insurance ledger starting in 2020. In this video I talk in real time about the project, some of the drawings, and patterns in my work that have continued after finishing the book. Watch…
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Another 44 minutes in 44 seconds Here’s me making Hold True earlier tonight. This is the 28th drawing in my Openwork series. Two more and the series will be complete.
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I recommend wandering in a naturalized quarry filled with 300–400 million year old fossilized sea floor life.
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I don’t often start from dark or black ground but it definitely shapes the negative space in these drawings in an interesting way.
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What sometimes gets missed when people talk about AI and visual art is that there is this assumption that mimicry of style can replace real artwork. But despite the fact that many of us see artwork on screens these days, artwork still exists in physical forms and it’s hopeful point of connection is personal, tactile,…
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I’m nearing the end of my Openwork series. I made this drawing tonight and I believe it’s number 27. I think it will be hard and somewhat freeing when this series finishes. I think it’s helpful to me create a somewhat arbitrary point where the series ends. In this case, the ending is based simply…
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I make most of my artwork in single sittings and it’s something I have occasionally held against myself. But I have the most comfort and connection with making when I just sit down to start making something and I am done within an hour or less. I say hold it against myself because there are…
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Latest piece in my Openwork series. These have slowed down for me. Or art making as slowed down and these are just where I am right now. The series will finish (at least in this incarnation) soon since I am almost out of the cheap Masonite panels these are made on. Once the series is…
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This morning in the garden. We recently did some work on the bed in the foreground which will eventually be the backdrop for the pond we are digging. We planted a small Japanese Maple that will someday reflect in that future pond. It is strangely life affirming to work at a pace that connects with…
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Neighbours a few house away keep pigeons and we see them some days doing their fast racing loops. There seems to be a pace bird that flies in front and then drops back as they arc to guide the flock into their next loop.
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Here are two videos of the recent beach ephemeral, “Gull”, I made in collaboration with my partner Gayla Trail. Because these are dimensional temporary art works, I like to think of them as existing in many forms at the same time. I try to take photos and video to document them but they often don’t…
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In our previous home in the city, I would take a photo from the rear window most days of the garden behind the house. Those images showed the subtle changes day to day that became broader changes with time. In this home here in a small town, I haven’t kept up the practice mostly because…
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Slight work desk reboot. I like a certain degree of chaos in my art making space. I tend to thrive on some level of happenstance in reacting to what’s at hand. But I haven’t been connecting with this work space as much as I would like over the last few months and so I took…
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It has been a while since I worked on one of these and I especially like when I can create a set of balanced elements that respond to the breeze.
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Zine plotting continues. I made a couple of these mini dummies at half the size of the final zine. Handy for scrawling notes inside to get a sense of content and page sequencing. This zine will be issue 1 in a series based on an idea I had a few years ago. Trying to keep…
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Idea for a book of poems. A set of generative text prompts never sent to an AI. That we can have visuals imposed on words is often so much worse than those words working on their own in our minds.
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Poem I love by Gayla Trail from the Grow Curious second edition. Painting and design by me. Both editions of Grow Curious had watercolour and gouache paintings by me but the second edition was full colour and meant I could play a bit more with how the artwork was used. bookshop.org/p/books/gr…
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Read a post where an artist said that they weren’t a perfectionist because they weren’t high achieving, were impatient, and not competitive. I don’t want to police anyone else’s view of themselves but can say from personal experience that perfectionism doesn’t need to have any of the things above to be true. Perfectionism can be…
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I was thinking about these small watercolour imagined landscapes I made a few years ago and that they might make an interesting zine or chapbook. UPDATE: I made this book! Imaginary Landscapes https://ko-fi.com/s/e4e66e26a6
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This is the twentieth panel in my Openwork series. There is a rhythm and pattern in making these that feels good to me. Not that I don’t struggle when making them since there are points of discomfort in making each one. But discomfort in art making isn’t necessarily a sign of success or failure.
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A Saturday morning drawing continuing my Openwork series. Most of my recent work is done on this slab of particle board that I got for free at a local art club sale. I enjoy the layers of pint that have accumulated around the square ratio of these Masonite panel drawings.
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Many years ago, one of several art practices I had was placing these simple stickers around the city in a variety of locations. They were small and probably mostly got ignored given the layers upon layers of visual information encountered daily in a city life. But my intent was a simple one. That anyone who…
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Thinking about the things we call “hobbies” and how that term is used to diminish what are in some cases those things that truly fill us and let us connect with ourselves. Where we find joy, play, discovery, and connection should be the core of our lives despite how it connects to success or money.
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Thinking about zines and artist publishing in general so I pulled out this unreleased book of photography I made in 2013. This was based on a 2009 trip we took to Barbados and Dominica where my partner Gayla was exploring her heritage. I’m pretty proud of these photos and also how they came together in…
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Artists’ lives are just plain human lives. Making breakfast and coffee. Caring for pets or children. Going to work. Watching TV and reading books. There’s nothing special. But there is a choice to see and hear and feel and to make something from that that is for ourselves but also for other people. There is…
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Pages Marked, Davin Risk, 2025 I received some of my mother’s high school sketches and early design work tonight that she didn’t have space to store anymore. I’m sentimental in my way and I said I would store them and would enjoy looking back at them. Some of them were from before my birth and…
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Sometimes the places where there has been an intention to create form their own unintentional creations.
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I made this drawing yesterday and after “finishing” it I had a hunch and I rotated it upside down and then back and forth a few times until the upside down orientation became its true finished state. That’s art sometimes. Our eyes and heads can need that false “done” moment to truly see something we…
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Some improvised electric piano playing. Improv is all I know because I don’t know how to play the piano in at least a technical sense. Watch on YouTube
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As much as digital creation comes with some facility and convenience I still prefer working with physical media. Digital has that kind of “anything is possible” promise but actually often feels like there are more limitations than what can be done with a bunch of drawing, painting, gluing, layering, blending. And my mind and body…
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Another Question of Density One of the issues/interests I have with digital drawing is something I’m naming “tool blindness”. I can choose from so many simulated tools and then within those I can choose colour, size, opacity, and more. But the mode of drawing only shows those things as settings and it’s only in the…