First Art of 2024 — June Piety

Hello! Welcome to my blog. This is where I want to share my art and art related things, maybe some writing, maybe a little life update stuff. Who knows?! There is no real concrete plan here. First off, my name is June Piety, I'm 44, and I'm an artist from Portland Oregon. I live with my partner, Mark, and my two cats Edgar and Lenore in a one bedroom apartment in the beautiful Sellwood neighborhood. I work a 'real' full-time job, I've been working from home since 2020 covid-times, and I create art in my free time. Here is my first finished piece for 2024!

"Untitled" 24 x 19' graphite pencil on Bristol paper.

I apologize, I'm terrible an giving my art titles. I've been referring to this one as just the hyena drawing.

This drawing really tested my resolve as an artist. I started it back in 2022 and found it incredibly hard for me to focus, I eventually hit a small period of burnout and ended up just tucking it away in the closet for a while. Then at the end of 2023 I decided to pull it back out and finish it. I worked on it here and there when I could, mostly on weekends, and I felt like it was just a never-ending series of struggles. My apartment is dark, very poorly lit, and not set up for large floor easels or large art projects in general. We would constantly have to move it around the room to get to things like the dining room table or my day-job workspace. I would constantly be bumping into it or tripping over the easel legs. My vision isn't what it used to be and I was straining to the point of headaches to see (again, poor lighting) or I had to turn on all the big lights and wear my glasses. Not having a proper set up was also causing actual physical pain to draw. I would have to stop every few minutes to stretch and let my shoulder relax or the cramping and pinching became unbearable. But I loved the concept of this piece and I was determined to finish it by the new year. It's a little past the new year now, but it is finally done.

This may be my last large scale graphite pencil drawing.

Yes, I went way overboard with the details on this one and being that it's in grayscale I think that a lot of those details get lost. It's muddy. Maybe it's a subconscious reflection of how I'm feeling recently. Cramped and cluttered, maybe a little muddy myself? And doing graphite pencil on this scale is a tedious and painstakingly long process. Not quite big enough to use loose graphite powder, but a little too big for your average artist's pencil. I'm not saying I'm not going to do these highly details large format illustrations anymore, but in the future I may be playing with different mediums like watercolor or ink.

The concept of this drawing is kind of funny and came about when Mark and I were hiking through the Tryon Creek nature trails. On this particular trip the woodpeckers were very active and noisy and we were chuckling over how it sounded like the woodpeckers and sapsuckers were laughing at us, and it suddenly hit me, that's why in the old Saturday morning cartoons Woody the Woodpecker laughs like that! Here I am, in my 40's, and just now realizing that Woody the Woodpecker's laugh was based on a real woodpecker's call. I then started talking about all the animals I could think of that have a laugh or a crazy call and I was getting excited and wanted to bring them all together in a drawing like they're having a party and they're all hysterically laughing at a joke and just having a good time. There are the obvious main characters, the hyenas, and did you know that a group of hyenas are called a 'cackle'? I love that! There are a variety of different woodpeckers and sapsuckers, I've included kookaburras and one white peacock. Peacocks don't necessarily 'laugh', but they have this crazy sounding call that makes ME laugh when ever I hear them. And a bird I just recently learned about, the potoo. I thought they were amusing to look at, and a friend of mine said they sound like a teenage boy whose mom just took his Nintento away. Which I quickly Googled for a potoo soundbite and sure enough, it's a pouty teenage boy! These birds are sometimes referred to as the 'poor-me-ones' and I just had to invite them to the party. Well, there it is. I think I'm going to take the next week or two to just decompress from this project, reground, regroup, then I'll be back with fresh new ideas. Thanks for stopping by!