But it was not until I discovered how much I enjoy writing that I started doing something creative as an outlet. Drawing and art have been things I am good at but really, have not served much purpose in terms of processing or expression. In college I was forced to do a lot of fine art work: drawing, some painting and illustration (yes that’s different from just drawing). Exhibits B & C:

Below is a drawing. Replication of one of Peter Paul Rubens drawings.

And here is an illustration. Specifically, a polyptych comic where there is a a character who moves through a period of time over a continuous background

Recently, with this move in process, I have decided to do a couple artistic pieces to display in my new studio. Today I began the first piece. I’m not sure how many I’ll create … maybe three? This first one has been brewing for a few years. My graduation present to myself was a first time trip to Alaska with my buddy Dave. While there we went on three camping trips, one of which was a 26 mile backpacking trip. I saved the map from our trip and a newspaper clipping from one of the other camping trips. About a year ago I got a large frame to put the map (it’s quite large, like 26″ by 30″). I was intending to print out pics from the backpacking trip, marking the points those pics were taken.

When I started thinking about this project again (b/c I did not complete it before) I decided I was going to paste the map onto a board. I bought four 2x2s and a 1/8 maple board. I screwed together the 2x2s to create a frame and then screwed the board onto the 2x2s. I then painted the outer edges a chocolate brown. I took my map and tore around all of the edges, to make it look more rough. I have some left over varnish that I used to sort of mod podge the map onto the board. Now, I don’t know where I am going to go from here. I decided to not use any pictures and do more of a mixed media art piece. I like the idea of layering. Layers of what, I do not know. Any suggestions?

What I’ve got so far: