I don't take enough time to document things that catch my attention. Simple things that pull me out of my normal mindset and just let me look at them for a quiet moment. A few things that caught my attention recently:

• This alien shadow being cast from apartment utility lines across the street from the hardware store.
• The variety of beautiful blue- and purple-blacks on the back of a raven and their confident, yet awkward saunter while they size me up.
• The scrawling of a code on a sidewalk, repeated over and over until it was illegible but left a wonderful texture.
• The color of the sky after dusk last night driving to the airport. The double-decker bridge cropped the sky and framed the most beautiful soft and intense purpley-pink.

I have no trouble starting a new painting. In fact, it's probably my favorite part of the process. There's no wrong answers at the beginning stage. Every mark has potential but they'll likely be covered up by the end so there's no consequence. I love starting a new painting. (Finishing a painting...that shit's hard.)

I've been trying to start this blog for months! "I'm no writer," "No one'll read it," "I have nothing interesting to say--I'm just trying to figure stuff out" are just a few of the things that rattle around in my mind. But I think that last one--figuring stuff out--might be a good place to start. The what's, the why's, the how's. So I'm hoping this blog will be less about gratuitous pontification and more like scribbles in a notebook casually exploring things that interest me with no grand goal in mind. Seeing where it takes me and making adjustments along the way.

Image: Procreate sketch on iPhone. ©Mark Dunst. All Rights Reserved.