I painted this on a 5.5 × 8.5 sheet of cold press 140 lb paper. No washi tape. No frame. No “plan.” Just me trying to shove my brain into a different room for a while. Decision point: sometimes you just have to figure out when to stop. I lined up my usual watercolor brushes—0,…
A Test That Accidentally Tells The Truth This image isn’t of what you think it is. And it’s not of what I thought it would be either. It started as a technical exercise. Contrast pushed and pulled.Lens distance tested. Texture chased instead of subject. I wasn’t trying to photograph something.I was trying to see how…
Not everything poses Most people photograph flowers from the front. Face on. Open. Cooperative.Proof that beauty showed up and did its job. This one didn’t. When the peace lily bloomed again, it turned slightly away from me. Not dramatically. Not shy in a storybook way. Just enough that the face of it wasn’t the point….
I set out to paint grass.Just grass. Maybe some lavender. Nothing heroic. Reference material: memory. The budget kind you collect while driving to work half-awake, watching roadside fields blur by like they’re trying to escape your life choices. Cornfields. Early spring. Scrappy wild lavender in little pockets—wedged between asphalt and agriculture like it’s trespassing on…
The One Behind the Trees Not planned. Seen, claimed, and kept. Shoot First, Evaluate Later. That’s how I usually plan how to shoot my images. Unplanned. Every. Single. Time. We were still living in the RV.Running errands with a short list and a longer mental spreadsheet. Groceries measured against what insurance wouldn’t cover later. Practical…
The Naming Test (With Flowers Doing the Dirty Work) This looks like soft watercolor florals. It is. Kind of. This page was my scratchpad for two tests: watercolor control and the name that became ACFA Creative House. It’s also a behind-the-scenes snapshot of how it actually gets born: not from a lightning bolt, but from…
Overview This one’s lives in Imperfect Creations where it belongs. It didn’t make the cut and I’m fond of looking back at the messes I make to see where I progressed or regressed. Painted on cold press watercolor paper (5.5 × 8.5), taped down with washi tape to create a clean frame and keep the paint from bleeding into the…
