At the time of writing this, I’m sitting in a small camper trailer just off the Pacific ocean in Oregon. Rain is drizzling down in intermittent bursts, pounding on the metal roof, and when the rain stops a jay outside starts “singing” his boisterous song.

I’ve recently relocated to the Pacific Northwest - my job had a position that needed filling on the Oregon Coast, how could I turn down that opportunity? With little time to prepare, my wife and I packed and shoved things into shipping containers to migrate our life across the country and put our house up for sale. I started work in OR on May 3rd, flying out ahead of my wife and daughter to scope the place out and look for a new place to live. The house in AZ is currently under contract, and set to close on June 15th… So I’ve been living in this trailer in the woods by myself for the last month.

There really is no shortage of stuff to do up here - especially being on the coast and with the weather so dang nice compared to AZ. One of the projects lingering in my mind for the past year or so was starting a new blog. Something to encompass all my hobbies, adventures, short essays on nature things and random stories. Basically, a combination and condensation of my other blog projects along with other things that I haven’t really posted anywhere online.

A one-stop Zach shop.

So, what you’ll find here, in the previous posts, is things written by myself and a coworker on my old “Hidden Phoenix” blog, and all the posts from my programming blog. I’ll be posting new stories from Oregon here, and occasionally write-ups of things I find interesting. You’ll also be seeing posts featuring things I’ve made - sewing projects, MYOG camping stuff, art, etc.

One thing that I’ve wanted to do for a while is sketch more. I want to get out and “art” more - no real excuses for not doing it. With all my free time over the last month, and the fact that a lot of places were shut down because of the health crisis, I ran out of bullshit excuses and got out and did it.

I flew into Medford, Oregon on May 3rd, and spent my first week of work hanging out with a group of new-hires in Ashland. Ashland is one seriously cool place - definitely a great way to start this new adventure. I spent time after work hiking around these cool trails, looking at all this new vegetation, hearing all these strange new birds - all while carrying my sketchbook. It took me a couple days to actually open it, definitely felt intimidated and overwhelmed by the thought of trying to translate what I was seeing onto paper. However, I figured that the best way to start was to just… start. One of the most conspicuous plants around there was this cool looking, smooth reddish bark shrub with mellow sweet smelling flowers that were pleasant to walk by.

I busted out my pen and started doodling - nature journal style. I packed my sketchbook in it’s case I made, loaded with an assortment of pencils, a couple pens, and a water brush filled with ink. This being my first sketch in an embarrassingly long time, it took a bit of internal debate over what to actually use to put the sketch on the paper. I chose the pen because I like the permanency of the lines - the commitment. Once something hits that paper, you’re stuck with it, for better or worse.

This sketch was done with my Lamy Safari, filled with Noodler’s Bernanke Black ink. I bought the pen and converter a while ago, and chose that ink because waterproof sounded like a good idea for sketching outdoors. Of course, I didn’t check how much ink was in the pen before I left, so shortly after this sketch the pen ran dry. Heck. After my first week of work, I decided to take a drive to the coast. On my way, stopped at an art store in Medford, where I picked up a bottle of Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black.

The big reason I jumped on the opportunity to move up here was to live near the ocean - so my first weekend up here I decided to hit the beach, do some exploring, and attempt to sketch the coast.

My first attempts at sketching the coast made me realize a couple of things, mostly that the chaotic nature of the waves crashing on a beach is intimidating to sketch. I had fun though, nothing beats the sunshine, sand, and coastal air. I went out both Saturday and Sunday with the goal of attempting to sketch waves.

The next week at work I didn’t spend much time sketching or exploring at all - I actually had to work! I doodled a bit in the sketchbook at night, but mostly spent my time working in Roseburg. Friday rolled around and I headed west to the coast again, and stopped at this cool “historic covered bridge” wayside along the highway. I jumped out with my sketchbook and couldn’t figure out how to position myself to sketch the bridge, so I went exploring around it instead. There was a cool path (overgrown with blackberry of course) that went under the bridge.

I figured out a couple things here, trying to recreate “brush strokes” with the pen to suggest foliage works better than trying to draw foliage. Water was still elusive, and even with the water brush loaded with dark ink I wasn’t quite able to get what I was seeing and what was in my head down on paper.

Spent the weekend driving up the coast, and stopped in Winchester Bay off the 101 to look at boats. It was raining and cold, but I was determined to sketch so I sat in my truck and doodled these while looking through the windshield wipers at the bay.

I took a trip the next day, again up the coast, with the goal of sketching waves; I was determined to figure out what I needed to make the waves look like waves. In retrospect, one of the greatest things to happen in the last month to my sketching was around this point in the month - I was definitely feeling more comfortable busting out my pen and trying to translate vision to paper. It felt good to stare at the waves and study them, mimicking their flow with gentle pushes and pulls on the paper.

During the work week I was sitting in my trailer, looking at my ocean sketches - and I realized the values in the waves needed work. My lightest values should be the spray and foam of the crashing waves, the waves needed to be darkest at the top and bottoms where they are “thickest” and slightly lighter in the middle where they are “thinnest.” It’s a challenge to build value scales with one color, especially when I barely have a clue as to what a value scale is. The internet gave me an idea though - what if I used my water brush with water on the ink? The Pelikan ink is not waterproof, what would happen?

Well, the ink explodes into beautiful shades of gray is what happens. Fascinated by this development I was encouraged to go out and get some more sketching in and see what happened when I hit it with the water brush.

I am super excited about this - I can paint with the grays in the ink, blur out things in the background put a light grey hint in the sky for clouds. Plus it looks (in my opinion) pretty darn cool.

This sketch of Seal Point is probably my favorite thing I’ve ever art-ed. I was sitting on these rocks watching waves crash and people play in the surf and there was this dad holding hands with his daughter, just letting the surf come up and bury their feet. The waves thundering over the rocks dramatically were amazing - and impossible to do justice to.

I decided to go back into the woods and try some more landscape sketching - so many trees here it really is hard to “see the forest for the trees.” Trying to balance the ink wash and steady lines and working on depth moving from background to foreground. Also along my hike I stopped to attempt some more nature journaling - found this bizarre plant and some cool fungi.

The balance between the background and foreground kept bothering me, so that night I doodled some more, trying things out with washing away the background completely and leaving only the foreground lines. The next couple day’s sketches were attempts at this.

After my attempt at drawing a bridge (damn you perspective!) I went back to the harbor in Winchester Bay and did my second favorite sketch from the last month. The shipyard in the background was a fascinating jumble of old machines, new boats, and boat parts. A bunch of seagulls flew in right as I was about to drive off and I knew I just had to throw a couple of them in there.

One of the cool things I realized over this past month of increased sketching was how the sketchbook became a journal of the places I visited and the things I saw - more sketching means a more detailed account! It also feels good to use up pages in the sketchbook, even though I’m constantly having to remind myself to not let the sketchbook become “precious” - doodle, draw, scribble, that’s what it’s there for and it’s neat looking at my doodles over the last month.

Well this officially is the longest, most photo intensive blog post I have ever written. To whoever reads this: thank you for taking the time, I really appreciate it! I hope to have more things up and posted here soon.