snake and moon study & starting a sketchbook
it’s been a gazillion years since I’ve had an analog sketchbook practice. since leaving NYC in 2020, packing my stuff into a storage closet, and one-way traveling the world with a carry-on suitcase, I’ve been very careful about not accumulating paper. I wanted to be a digital vagabond, to be weightless.
and so, in the last four years, my visual practice became 99% digital. my iPad became my infinity notebook, my endless canvas.
when I work, at most, I’d do tiny pencil sketches in the corner of work notebooks, then move as quickly as possible to Procreate. half of my Procreate is full of unfinished drawings and ideas for concepts never born.
but recently, in my third year of living a settled life in Istanbul, I’ve been hungry for the feeling of materiality. paper. pencil. erasers. watercolor; art that I can touch, hold, frame, or tear into pieces.
a sketchbook I can flip through, like an accumulation of a life lived. like the practice of drawing a book of my life, page by page.
this snake and moon study is not the first page of this sketchbook — but it is the first finished page. actually, I started this sketch with just tracing a circle in the center (to give myself something low-stakes to fill). then I decided that it would be a moon, and I colored the moon in with watercolor pencils. (the last time I used those watercolor pencils might be 2016, in my visual diaries of a cross-country roadtrip).
as for the moon — I’ve had a history with moons. I drew 365 moons in 2017 as an archive of a heartbreak; I called it moon journaling. (actually, I broke up with the boyfriend I took that roadtrip with).
after the moon arrived, I decided that there would be a snake emerging from the moon. how this idea came about, I’m not sure, but I’ve always been drawn to snake jewelry and tattoos — something about the smooth curvature and sliding movements, and infinite looping, like a riddle. the inherent danger of them. the snake is one of the signs of Scorpio. there is mystery and magic and power in snakes.
then… yes, I sat there for an hour or two and drew all the tiny triangle/diamond shaped scales with a 2B pencil, while speaking outloud to myself about an unrelated situation I was annoyed about.
this was my first visual encounter with a snake, and I know it won’t be my last.