Arches National Park, Ohioans, and the Moon

Delicate Arch from the upper viewpoint. This is the closest we could get
without a strenuous hike, and I don't have a telephoto lens!

If you read my post before last, the one about Mars and Bryce Canyon, you know I recently found a batch of unpublished stuff all about Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse, and some of the creative inspiration behind that project. Well, today I'm coming at ya with another of those forgotten blog posts... the inspiration for my depiction of the moon. Good ol' Luna, Earth's beautiful moon...

But before I get started, I want to share a quick note of thanks to the first person to look at Moonhorse in the Brooklyn Art Library! Last week I got an email notifying me that someone looked at it. Thank you, Audrey, wherever you are! I hope you liked my fanciful little story!

Okay, back to business... One of the highlights of my family vacation in 2018 (yes, you'll be hearing about that trip as long as I live; no, I don't feel bad about bringing it up all the time) was seeing Arches National Park. Arches is located in Moab, Utah, one of the "Big 5" national parks in Utah, and a must-see if you're visiting the area.

The entrance to Arches is dramatic. The visitor center is at the foot of huge cliffs rising up around it.

To enter the park, you have to drive up and around the sides of the cliffs as if the road is gradually curving and switch-backing up the sides of a funnel. The visitor's center is 4,085 feet above sea level, the lowest elevation in the park. By the time you reach the top of the "funnel" and are truly inside the park, you've gained over 500 feet.

At the top you're met with Arches' beautiful natural spires, walls, fins, columns, of course arches.
Tall, narrow fins of rock, aptly named Park Avenue in a double-pun, rise above the entrance road like skyscrapers. Much of the rock in southern Utah is bright orange and golden-brown sandstone, and the colors only push the drama further.

Arches Entrance Road curves deep into the park, with numerous viewpoints and other roads breaking off from it. Most the sites are easy to see from the car, and there are lots of short trails up to and around the enormous stone features.

Of course we were all eager to see the famous Delicate Arch, a beautiful, free-standing arch near the eastern edge of the park. Unfortunately, getting to the arch required a more serious hike than any of us were up to at that point. This was the last real day of our grand adventure, before driving halfway across Colorado and flying home. Between our exhaustion and the elevation, we settled for the sight above, from the upper Delicate Arch viewpoint.

Balanced Rock, Arches Nat'l Park, Utah. November 2018.

Detail from Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse.
Balanced Rock, Earth and Mars. Watercolor, ink,
gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth.

Nine miles in, Balanced Rock is easily recognizable from the main park road. Balanced Rock is what inspired my drawings of the moon in Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse! I wanted to convey the near-weightlessness of the Moon, while echoing familiar terrestrial nature.

I imagine rock formations which would be impossible on earth might in fact be plausible in lower gravity. I'm no physicist, but I like the idea that the moon could have a response to our Balanced Rock. Don't you?

There's something almost surreal about finally seeing these things in person after admiring photos all my life. It's entirely changed my perspective.

One amazing rock formation we got to see is the Parade of Elephants. This is a series of massive rocks that really do look like a heard of elephants.

We climbed up to get a closer look at it, and it really was marvelous to stand up close and realize just how enormous these rocks were. They weren't just rocks or boulders. They were immense.

They say everything's bigger in Texas, but if my whirlwind tour through New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado is any indication, I actually think everything's bigger west of the Mississippi. Photos can never show just how massive these things truly are. In photos, Balanced Rock looks like something I could reach out and tip over with one hand, but it's actually a 55-foot boulder naturally cemented onto a 73-foot base, reaching well over 100 feet into the air. Compared to many of the rock features in Arches, Delicate Arch stands relatively small at 52 feet.

Arches National Park, November 2018.

Walking around these stone structures that absolutely overshadow Ohio's forests, plains, and foothills, I could hardly believe that the stone of Arches is actually wearing down, shrinking away over time, thanks to the constant (believe me, constant) wind on the high plains.

Arches is composed mostly of mudstone and sandstone, which crumble and wear away easily. Delicate Arch is, in fact, becoming more delicate with each passing day. One day, Balanced Rock may fall. The Parade of Elephants is very gradually crumbling, tiny grain by grain of sandstone.

We often believe stone is as close to eternal as anything can be, but the truth of the matter is that even rock wears away, falls, shatters, turns to sand and dust. This was a sobering thought, a faint shadow at the edges of our visit at Arches, and the buffeting wind served as a constant reminder.

But Arches is also a reminder that you shouldn't dwell on that distant future. All you can do is enjoy what is here now, and do your best to conserve and not harm the environment.

With that in mind, we had a lot of fun. We took goofy pictures, peered through ginormous openings like windows, enjoying every moment. We stuck to simple hikes, but had no regrets.


O-H-I-O pose!

Buckeye Fans at Parade of Elephants. Pen on paper, 2018.

As Ohioans will, we had to take plenty of pictures posing with our arms spelling out O-H-I-O.

My brother-in-law, who hails from Florida, was thoroughly unimpressed by our repeated shows of state pride, but that didn't stop us from doing the O-H-I-O pose every chance we got. His scoffing wasn't going to stop these devoted Buckeyes.

There were so many reasons to be excited for vacation, and one of them was my hope to get reconnected with art after a long time of feeling unable to draw, paint, or even look at art. I was burnt-out and dealing with heightened anxiety after some major life-events.

Indeed, this trip out west was the reset I needed! I came back physically worn out but creatively refreshed. It's like the art centers had my brain had been numbed for months on end, but this trip woke them and got me back on track.

It felt amazing to come home and finally paint again.

Sometimes a major change of scenery and break in routine is all that's needed to cut the burnout and creative frustration. This trip was such a big deal for my family and me, and such a big creative boost, that you'll just have to deal with continuing to hear about it more than a year later. I hope you'll forgive me...

-Cailey

Mars, Bryce Canyon, and the Sketchbook Project

Detail, Mars Landing. Watercolor, ink, gouache, and
mulberry paper on paper cloth. March 2019.

It's almost exactly a year later, and I just found a few drafts I wrote about Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse last year! That's a little embarrassing, but I'm embracing it. It's not late and disorganized, it's time-travel. So, kick back with your device and get ready for a few throwback posts about the art project that kicked off my 2019. Ready, set, go...

One of my favorite things about art is a little thing called "artistic license."

Artistic license means I can change how something looks just for the sake of aesthetics I have the freedom to be realistic or abstract in my depictions. I especially love surrealism, art that recreates the impossible in a life-like style.

I used a lot of artistic license in my paintings for the Sketchbook Project last winter.

For example, obviously we haven't found extraterrestrial life, especially not lunar life, but I invented a Moonhorse.

Obviously you can't fly to Mars in a night, at least until they solve the problem of faster-than-light travel. When that day comes, you better believe I'll be vacationing on Mars!

I've never seen or heard of a horse walking a tightrope, and even the deepest craters are more like gradually-sloping bowls than the straight-sided pit I painted Hellas Planitia to be.

Nothing in my story is possible, but I still drew inspiration from reality.

I modeled Silhouette Girl's steampunk shuttle after the NASA shuttles of the last few decades, changing the color to bronze and adding just a few "steampunk" details of my own. The terrain of Mars is based heavily on Bryce Canyon, Utah. 

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, October 2018.

The Mars we see sometimes in the early morning, like a large, untwinkling star, is a planet humans have long been interested in. It's our second-closest neighbor and bears many similarities to us.

We're tilted on similar axes, share similar seasonal patterns, and the geography of Mars has many of the topographical features we have - mountain ranges, valleys, deserts, canyons, plains, and polar ice caps of frozen CO2 (we're familiar with this as dry ice). Mars even has water, amounting roughly to that of Lake Superior, frozen underground. It also has many craters like our moon.

Speaking of our moon, Mars has two lopsided moons, named Phobos and Deimos. 

Though it's smaller then Earth, a Mars day, called a sol, is about 40 minutes longer because it rotates much more slowly. Orbiting at a greater distance from the sun, however, a Martian year is 669 sols, or 687 Earth days.

No planet's orbit is a perfect circle, and the oval-shape of our orbit causes the seasons.

Sol 343 on Route to Mount Sharp, Mars. Curiosity Rover, NASA .
July 24, 2013.

On Mars, the seasons are almost twice as long as Earth, and tend to see slightly more dramatic temperature shifts because Mars' orbit is more eccentric, or oval-shaped, than Earth's. This means that even if Earth and Mars were the same average distance from the sun, Mars would have greater temperature extremes.


Negev Desert, Israel. April 20, 2007. By brewbooks.

Earth is covered with a strong atmosphere that burns up approaching space debris and blocks the sun's most harmful rays. We rarely even think about space debris even though it's flying around us all the time, because virtually anything that hits the atmosphere is incinerated.

Mars also has an atmosphere, but it's very thin and provides little protection. Mars has craters like the moon because its atmosphere isn't enough to burn up all of the space debris flying at it.

In the research stage of my project, I was surprised to find that on top of all these scientific similarities, most our photos of Mars look quite a bit like any number of Earth's own rocky deserts.

In fact, a quick Google search brought me to the Negev Desert in Israel—some of the pictures of Mars and the Negev Desert are almost indistinguishable, aside from the blue skies and a few signs of life. Sparse vegetation dots the landscape, dirt roads criss-cross through it, and animals like leopards, gazelle, hyenas, tortoises, and birds.

However, I wanted to make Mars look entirely foreign, while still echoing patterns in nature. It is, after all, an entirely different planet!

Bryce's otherworldly hoodoos were the perfect model for my Mars.


The main amphitheater of Bryce Canyon. The edges of the thousands of
hoodoos are a little difficult to make out in this direct light. October 2018.

Hoodoos like these are found on every continent, but Bryce is the largest concentration of them in the world.

Bryce Canyon is a national park in southern Utah, famed for its bright orange rock formed in strange towers and walls, like castle ruins.

Bryce is a beautiful park. Less popular than its neighbor Zion, but definitely worth visiting. If anything, being less popular means it's easier to find a parking spot so you can get out of the car and enjoy the park.

The main part of the park, a huge natural amphitheater, looks a little like a giant bowl holding a stone army, all wearing pointed gnome hats.

A series of smaller amphitheaters and hoodoo outcroppings are lined up north-to-south from the main amphitheater, extending about 20 miles to the highest point of the park, Rainbow Point.

When my family and I visited, we drove all the way up to Rainbow Point and then made our way slowly back down, stopping at most of the viewpoints until we reached the main amphitheater. Once there, we hiked down into the canyon. This seemed like a fine idea, except that once you're at the bottom, you have to get back up. It turned out to be a much tougher hike than I was prepared for! This really dampened my experience, but I try not to hold my own lack of fitness against Bryce.

Bryce Canyon National Park, October 2018. This is the photograph on
which I based the scene below. 

Months later, back in my basement-bedroom in Ohio, I turned to Bryce's alien terrain for Mars-spiration.

Watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth. March 2019.

I transferred my initial sketches onto the sketchbook pages, painted the dark sky and orange-brown watercolor landscapes, and added line details in gold, yellow, and black ink. I painted the stars and moons with white gouache, which is basically opaque watercolor paint.

The poetry text boxes were the final touch before packing up my sketchbook and mailing it to the Sketchbook Library in Brooklyn.

Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse irreversibly ties together Bryce and Mars in my mind. This is the power of artistic license. You can arrive at entirely new connections, create new ways to envision and understand reality. Not that I've forgotten what I see in photos of Mars, but that there's a vast gap between reality and my creative depiction of it.

There's a little irony here—Mars looks so much like Earth that I instead based my fantastical Mars illustrations off a geological feature on Earth. Granted, we've only seen a tiny fraction of the red planet. I'm certain there are hidden wonders on Mars, just as there are on Earth. But still, we live on a spectacular planet, indeed.

I wonder if a group of Martians and a group of Earthlings switched places, the Martians might be much more shocked by our terrain than we'd be by theirs.

-Cailey

The Watchman

Ahhh, the long-promised art of my western adventure!

Since my vacation at the end of October 2018, I've made several art pieces inspired by what I saw in Utah. This one is the first, completed just a few weeks after the trip. The Watchman is acrylic on 18"x24" canvas, exactly how I imagine the sunset setting Zion National Park ablaze.

The Watchman, acrylic on canvas. November 2018.

I waited to share this because it was going to be published in a Utah arts journal, alongside other gorgeous images of the American West. There were some miscommunications and now, a year later, it's safe to say it won't be published. All this time, I’ve wanted to share the finished piece here on my blog, or even on Instagram. I held off, honoring the journal’s rights to publication. Well, the painting is here now! It’s here, published on my blog, where it should have been right from the beginning.

I painted The Watchman following a two-week autumn adventure in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah (check out my Western Adventure for more details about my trip). I fell in love with Zion National Park while hiking the Narrows, a gorgeous up-river hike which was very difficult for a rookie-hiker like me! Despite the ice-cold water and tough hike, it was one of my favorite activities of our vacation.

One of the most famous, often-photographed features of Zion is The Watchman, a mountain that juts up near the park entrance, overseeing the park's 4.5 million visitors each year. The Watchman makes for a perfect sunset shot down the Virgin River, an image many photographers have sought.

One of my initial colored pencil studies. October 2018.

Dad and I were hopeful about catching that sunset shot in Zion, but hungry bellies got in the way and we all ended up getting dinner at a nearby Tex-Mex restaurant instead of waiting for sunset. No worries! I took some reference pre-sunset photos.

Back home in Ohio after the rest of that unforgettable vacation, I got out my paints, palette knives, sketches, reference photos, and a 16"x20" canvas. It was time to recreate "the shot," The Watchman at sunset.

Inspired by Zion's brilliant rock colors and the golden-yellow autumn foliage filling the park while we were there, I wanted to build up the color, each layer brighter than the last. But first, that watery wash to fill in the weave of the canvas!

I forgot to take a lot of process photos... You know how it is. You're in the zone, Netflix is on, hands are covered in paint... so you'll have to trust me for a few minutes here.

My wash was mainly red and blue. Red in the sky, and blue in the ground. Yes, you read that right. Red sky, blue ground!

According to the laws of the color wheel, complimentary colors, which are opposites on the color wheel, cause each other to appear more vivid. Blue makes orange POP, because they're opposites. If any blue were to shine through at the end, it would only make the yellow-orange mountain look more vivid. Color theory, people, I love it!


Over the blue and red wash, I started layering in my dark and light values
in yellow and purple-brown, and laying down my sky. Note that the sky is a
muddy grey right now... Not for long!

Red in the sky... because while I wanted a vivid sky of red, purple, and blue, I also wanted it to feel as if the sky goes on forever. I couldn't risk any stray dots of green or yellow showing through the layers of paint to break that impression of infinity. Instead of a complimentary color, I chose red for the underlying wash.

Over the wash, I blocked in my values. Bright yellow for the light spots, and a mix of brown, purple, and grey for shadows. 

From there, it was just a matter of building up the color. Browns, reds, oranges, greens for the land, and purples, blues, red, and white for the sky.

The sky, dramatic and stormy, took more effort than the ground. I had it going pretty firmly and decided it wasn't working.

I believe that decision went a little like this...

"This sky isn't working. It's just... Off. I'm going to redo it. This sky is really not working for me. Hold on. I need to fix this. It's... It's bad. I hate this sky, I have to redo it before I explode!"

I know, that escalated quickly. Needless to say, I redid it. That's the sky I ended up with—fierce, anger-driven, directional paint-knife work. I typically try to avoid emotion-painting, but I'm actually really happy with the resulting sky.

Almost done...

The shot to the right is nearly finished. It's come a long way from the previous picture, eh?

It stayed this way for a while. Not bright enough, and missing a particular tree in the foreground, one I recognized in multiple reference photos.

When I finally got around to it, finishing this painting felt a little like coming home.

In the time since Untitled 37, I made very little art. In many ways, I felt unable to make art. I couldn't connect with it. It almost hurt to think about art. I managed a few drawings and half-begun paintings, including the illustrations for Stars & Seas, but it all felt off. Until The Watchman, art was out. Finishing The Watchman last November really was like coming home, and not only from a vacation. For the first time in about a year, I felt truly connected to art again.

I considered giving The Watchman to my dad for Christmas, but in the end I kept it for myself. I had another, long-promised pair of drawings to make for Dad, and I honestly didn't want to let The Watchman go. It's currently propped on my bedside table where I can see it every day. It's a good reminder of my trip, of the golden light at the end of the day, and hopefully a reminder for me to take action and not allow miscommunication to get in the way of putting my work out into the world. It will not be appearing in that small Utah arts journal, but that’s alright. Utah already has the actual mountain! I’ll keep the painting, and its likeness, here with me.

-Cailey

Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse, Part 2: The Finished Sketchbook

Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse Cover

Hey all. Last week I finished a book for The Sketchbook Project!

The Sketchbook Project is a collection of mini sketchbooks housed in the Brooklyn Art Library. Artists from all over the world can order a sketchbook, fill it with art, and mail it back to join the permanent collection.

I was just notified that my sketchbook has been delivered safe and sound in Brooklyn! Thank you, USPS, for taking care of my baby. Pretty soon it will go on a short tour around the country with the other 2019 sketchbooks before returning to its new home on the shelves of the art library.

In my previous post, I walked you all through some of the decisions and artistic process for my sketchbook.

What started as a plan for 16 pages of black and white ink drawings turned into a book of 8 full-color watercolor and ink illustrations. Each page also has includes a stanza of a poem telling the story.

Today I'll finally show you the finished product! The large-text portions below are each stanza of the full-text poem found in Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse, so you don't have to strain to read my tiny handwriting on each page. The regular text is my notes and commentary, not included in the actual book. Enjoy!

Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse by Cailey Blair

On a night long ago, I flew to the moon—
taking off from the highest hillside

in a steam-powered shuttle, 

—all clockwork and gears and dream-stuff—
with a clank and a buzz and a cloud of smoke

I left the earth’s atmosphere.

Page 1 - Flight to the Moon

watercolor, gouache, ink, and mulberry paper 

on paper cloth

One of my favorite parts of the brainstorming process was crowd-sourcing ideas for the girl's transportation. I hopped on Twitter and Facebook to ask for ideas, and the responses were amazing. It's been a while since I crowd-sourced like that, but I love doing it. People can be so creative!

Several friends said the girl should travel by unicorn, one said a space segway, another said a dragon covered in feathers. My brothers suggested an iPod, traveling by the magic of music, or an imperial star destroyer from Star Wars. One friend suggested a book, because that's how she travels the universe.

With so many great ideas, I actually picked two modes of transportation. The second one in particular quickly became an integral part of the story.

The girl would fly to the moon on a "steampunk" space shuttle, but on the moon she would meet a magical moon-horse with whom she'd travel across the moon and all the way to Mars.

As a kid and teenager, I was obsessed with horses. That's right, I was a "horse girl." I still love them, though I haven't ridden since high school. I felt that having the girl travel by horseback through space would make this sketchbook more personal, a nod back to my own childhood and my longing to travel the world on horseback. In recent years my fascination with space-travel has grown a lot, so combining the two felt very natural to me.

Spread 2 - Meeting

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

I landed on the shore of the Mare Desiderii, 
silver dust in my eyes, on my ragged old hat—
I found myself face to face with a blue Moonhorse, 
leader of the Lunar herds.
We bowed in greeting—manners are important 
even on the Moon—
in his bold eyes I saw a distant dance I 
longed to join.
He invited me to go with him
with a flick of his flowing tail.

From here, the girl and the horse travel beyond that unique balancing rock formation in the distance to take off at the highest point on the moon—the Selenian summit.

Spread 3 - Balancing Rock, Earth and Mars

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

We rode far across the moon, far and farther still,
to reach that Selenian summit where surface and 
crater kiss—
higher than Everest or K2 could dream,
where space meets breccia. I thought we'd arrived,
but to my—shock—terror—delight—
the Moonhorse gathered his great legs under him,
galloped to the point of the summit,
and took off into the night—a capriole 
unlike any other,
his airs above the moon—we flew.

This is where it began to change a lot between the original intent and the finished product.

In my original 16-page sketches, I had a close-up illustration of the distant lunar rover, and an image of the girl and the moon horse taking off at the selenian summit.

I had to cut these and some other illustrations to lower the page count and compensate for the thick, stiff paper cloth.

I miss some of these illustrations, and I may still draw them one day, but the scenes I did include are much more intentional. Like a carefully edited book, the remaining content is made stronger by cutting out all unnecessary information.

Spread 4 - Flight to Mars

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

We soared through space, and his coarse
mane whipped my bare arms and stung my eyes,
and his tail streamed behind 
—I now know the secret of the comets!—
we flew
      past Phobos and Deimos,
      past distant stars pulsing,
      past long-lost mysteries;
I marveled at blue dots and ancient suns—
and the red planet drew near.

Flight to Mars was heavily inspired by the famous Lipizzaner horses of Austria and their gravity-defying classical dressage. I've always wanted to see Lipizzaners in action, but have had to content myself with pictures and videos of those remarkable airs above the ground.

For this scene, I researched and sketched the capriole move for our moon-horse's long flight.

Spread 5 (center fold) - Landing on Mars

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth, bound with purple thread

At last, with straining legs and quivering muscles, 
his hooves touched solid ground 
—racing—slowing—stopping—panting—
I slipped from his back - see my footprints on
sienna stepping stones?

Noses touching in kunik—eskimo kisses—we breathed 

great gasping breaths of the thin, icy Martian air

—air made for dancing— 

      I sensed it, 

      I knew it, 

      my bare toes felt it,

but the Moonhorse’s eyes told me this was 

not the place. We rode on, on, on until 

we reached the deepest crater, 

strung across with a tightrope. My hopes fell

—he still shook with exhaustion from his flight—

a tightrope? Could it be, could a horse— 

even a Moonhorse—walk a tightrope?

Originally, Silhouette Girl and Moon-horse's landing on Mars would only be implied—the first Mars scene was to be a close-up of the girl and the horse examining the red Martian dust. From there, they'd travel toward a Mars rover before arriving at Hellas Planitia, the deepest crater on Mars.

For the new version, however, I cut out the Mars rover entirely, and replaced the close-up with a wide-angle landing scene. I felt this would better tie the narrative together. I took the background from a scene in which our two characters are riding across the Martian plains, and replaced their simple ride with the more dynamic landing action that you see above.

Spread 6 - Hellas Planitia

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

Indeed—brave eyes sparkling—he nudged 
me on, and the dancing Martian atmosphere 
lifted my chin,
—and we stepped—onto—the rope—
to cross Hellas Planitia,
deeper yet than any Himalaya could fill.
The rope trembled under the Moonhorse's hooves,
and I clutched a long lock of his mane;
arms stretched wide for balance.

Like I said, I cut out a lot of planetary travel, but I couldn't bring myself to cut out the scene above! For a long time I've had a mental image of crossing the deepest Martian crater, Hellas Planitia, by tight-rope.

In reality the downward slope of the crater is much too subtle for a tight-rope, but the entire book is lodged firmly in the surreal—there's nothing realistic about it! Being fanciful to begin with, I indulged myself and stretched a rope across the crater.

Finally, after that long tight-rope crossing, our interplanetary travelers have reached their destination...

Spread 7 - Final Destination

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

At last on the far side of the crater we stopped, 
labored breaths clouding
like wisps of smoke in the frozen air—
the Moonhorse and I looked up.
We arrived—we arrived!—The Moonhorse
tossed his great mane, stamped his giant hooves,
and with a leap, abandoned gravity.
I, too, could ground myself no longer—
I gave in to the thin air of Mars;
gave in to the growing dance in my heart.

This scene was inspired by Bryce Canyon in Utah, where orange towers and columns ("hoodoos") rise from the ground, creating natural arches and spires like a princess's castle. This was one of the first sketches I made, and it changed the least over the whole process.

I read somewhere that since gravity is lower on Mars, there are rock formations there that would be impossible on Earth. I don't know if that's actually the case (it makes sense to me), but I definitely had that concept in mind when brainstorming Martian geography. While this particular scene is very reminiscent of Bryce Canyon, I still tried to imbue it with that mystical, low-gravity feeling!

However, this final scene is where weightlessness truly comes into play. The gravity on Mars is about 1/3 of what it is on earth, so in reality our beloved travelers would still be bound to the ground. Even the moon's gravity, 1/6 of our own, doesn't allow floating like this! But this is anything but realistic. They traveled all this way to dance, how could they not dance in mid-air?

Spread 8 - The Dance

watercolor, ink, gouache, and mulberry paper on paper cloth

The Moonhorse and I, 
we rose above the rock formations,
      dancing
      spinning
      floating
on cold beams from the distant sun.
We're all of star-stuff, dancing above the dark
slope streaks!
In the magic of Mars we danced forever...

Final page - Morning

watercolor, gouache, ink, and mulberry paper 

on paper cloth

...Or so I dreamed. 

This last page came about weeks after the rest of the images were complete. I kept this final page blank, unsure if I'd write the full-text poem on it, leave it blank, or add one last illustration. As you can see, I chose the latter! I only knew what I wanted to do with it when I started writing the poem and that last line, "or so I dreamed," came to mind.  

I hadn't intended for this adventure to be a dream, exactly, though it has all the characteristics of a dream. But when I had that line, that's what the story officially became. I envisioned the girl waking on a hillside, as if she fell asleep stargazing and woke with the sun. 

This project was both challenge and game for me. I indulged a lot of fancies in this book, and the result is everything I never knew I wanted. Magic and fantasy set in space... a simple but highly unlikely journey, to say the least!

For most of the creation process, I held off on painting the girl - I seriously considered whether she would be Silhouette Girl or someone else, someone with features and visible details. But I think in my gut I knew this would be Silhouette Girl. Who else could manage an adventure like this? It was truly made for the girl who holds the tail of a tornado, conducts wildebeests like an orchestra, and releases a cloud of butterflies from her hands!

I kept telling myself it could be anyone doing this - any little girl could dream this up. Why lock it down for only Silhouette Girl?

My two babies, Stars & Seas and Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse, with a
delicious mocha from my favorite coffeeshop. This is the very mocha that
powered me through writing my previous blog post.

That's where my thinking has been skewed. For a long time, I've thought of Silhouette Girl as an individual. Where is she going next, what fanciful thing is she doing this time? 

However, she's not an individual. She's a concept. Any little girl can be "silhouette girl," because it isn't about the things she actually does. It's about the metaphors. The Silhouette Girl series started as a reaction to tragedy - innocence and weakness against one of the greatest forces on earth, a little girl holding the tail of a tornado. 

The series has grown and taken on new metaphors with each drawing and painting, but the core must remain the same - innocence overcoming the impossible. Weakness overpowering the greatest powers. Childhood and imagination conquering reality. If Silhouette Girl remains as she should be, a concept instead of an individual, then she really can be anyone.

Anyone who values innocence and imagination can be Silhouette Girl.

With that realization, I inked in the silhouettes, covering all the loosely-sketched details like facial expressions and folds in her clothing. Our favorite girl has a ragged top hat and her new friend from the moon... she has everything she needs.

With this blog post, I put a close to this brief project. I had a lot of fun with it, and I was a little sad to tape the mailer shut and send my baby off to New York... but I look forward to seeing it again someday! If you find yourself in NYC, be sure to stop at the Brooklyn Art Library and see my sketchbook for yourself. Silhouette Girl would love to have visitors!

-Cailey

Updated 2022: in the time since this posting, the Sketchbook Library moved to Florida, shortly after which it closed and the books were distributed for display in various institutions. Unfortunately, during the move to Florida the trailer caught fire and many books were damaged or destroyed. I'm utterly heartbroken to share that my own Silhouette Girl and the Moonhorse was among those lost in the fire. I'm thankful for emergency responders, the Sketchbook Library, and its volunteers who worked tirelessly to save as many sketchbooks as possible. I'm also forever thankful for the opportunity to have been a part of that amazing collection. Lastly, I'm thankful my work, though physically destroyed, still lives on in these photos. 

My Western Adventure: National Parks, Monuments, and Sketches

At the end of October, my family went on our long-awaited Western Adventure - a two-week vacation in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. We visited three national monuments and seven national parks, put about 3,000 miles on our rental SUV, and took O-H-I-O pictures at every stop, as Ohioans are bound to do.

The irony of writing all this about national parks and monuments in the midst of a government shutdown is not lost on me. If you're preparing for a visit to any national sites, please try to wait until the shutdown is over! Many national parks are operating on a skeleton crew, or are semi-closed. You may be able to get in, but facilities are not being maintained. Not only will the parks be extremely unpleasant (garbage is overflowing, and many visitors have deemed that the great outdoors is their toilet, since bathrooms aren't being maintained). Already, damage has been done that may never be remedied. Besides that, accidents happen and you or your loved ones could be at needless risk without the usual park staff and rangers available! A few of the parks I'll mention here are open and staffed, currently operating at the state's expense, which is astronomical. If possible, postpone your trip until congress has worked things out and the parks are back at full-staff and proper maintenance, on federal dollars!


El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico

I saw this trip not only as a family vacation but as an opportunity to kick-start my languishing art-making, and it definitely worked. I took along my DSLR camera, watercolor pencils, a paintbrush, and a large, unlined blank book to use as combination journal and sketchbook.

My family and I flew from Cincinnati to Denver, and drove about 6 hours from there to El Paso, Texas, arriving in the wee hours of the morning at my sister and brother-in-law's home.

We relaxed in El Paso for the next few days, enjoying the gorgeous mountain sunsets, Texas barbecue, and Lay's Chile Limon potato chips (my new favorite!) from the Mexican grocery store.

El Paso is a fascinating city, particularly for someone who has spent her entire life in the rolling green hills, forests, and corn and soybean fields of Ohio. I'm pretty sure over the course of this vacation I saw more shades of brown than I ever had before, many of which were in El Paso. Yet I also saw color in some of the most unexpected and beautiful of places. Turquoise trim on the highway overpasses, pale green cacti, and the bright red, white, and green flag marking the US/Mexico border.

Pretty soon, however, it was time to get on with the adventure...

We started with a day-trip to Carlsbad Caverns, spending my brother's 16th birthday trekking into the cavern and through the Big Room.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

I didn't expect my fear of heights to bother me inside a mountain, but the birthday boy ended up holding my hand and helping me inch back and forth down the narrow switchbacks as we made our way into the heart of the cavern. Once inside the Big Room, the trail was mostly flat, with only occasional drop-offs on one side or the other. Much more Cailey-friendly terrain!

However, I still found myself clutching the handrails, even on those flat areas. I don't know if my feeling of unsteadiness was the low-level anxiety I have constantly running in the background, or if it's a normal reaction to walking through these dark, stunning, massive, alien-like vaults inside the mountains. I've never experienced much claustrophobia, but maybe it was related to that. I don't know.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a fairly large portion of the Big Room is wheelchair accessible, with an elevator bypassing the steep trail that we took to reach it. If you're an adventurer with mobility challenges, Carlsbad Caverns may be a good stop for you.



The next day saw us off on the big road trip. The nine of us packed into our two rental SUVS and made our way across the gorgeous state of New Mexico.

Taking turns sledding at White Sands National Monument

View of White Sands from Tularosa, New Mexico. Colored
pencil on paper, October 2018.

We stopped briefly at White Sands National Monument for sledding, lots of pictures, and a very messy lunch of barbecue ribs, fruit, and my new favorite flavor of potato chips, chile-limon.

The white sand was enchanting - even in the warm sun, the soft gypsum grains felt cool on our bare feet!

Then we were off again, driving diagonally across New Mexico, our ultimate destination: The Grand Canyon. 

However, we made a couple of side trips...

Horseshoe Bend and the Colorado River. October 2018.

First, Four Corners National Monument, where we got in trouble for playing 4-square in four different states at once... At least Dad got to cross that off his bucket list!

The second side trip was to Horseshoe Bend, Arizona, the world-famous curve in the Colorado River as it meanders its way to the Grand Canyon and beyond. Reaching Horseshoe Bend involves a short hike. The path is well-established and easy to follow, but steep at times, and the elevation (4,200 feet) isn't helpful for those accustomed to about 500 feet.

Following a quick picnic lunch at Glen Canyon Dam, we got back on the road. Grand Canyon or Bust!



Grand Canyon National Park from Lippon Point, shortly before sunset. October 2018.

We got a quick first look at the Grand Canyon that evening, but the next day was to be our Grand Canyon adventure. We walked a few miles along the South Rim, marveling at the vast canyon. When people say the Grand Canyon is big, what they really mean is that it is unfathomable. It's aptly named, because the only proper word for it is grand.

We all agreed that, impressive at the view was as we walked along the South Rim, it was not all that exciting. I think, to truly appreciate the Grand Canyon, we would have had to do one of the hikes down into it. Unfortunately that would have been well beyond the skill set of most of our group.

One of the highlights of our day at the Grand Canyon was simply sitting on the rocks at Lippon point and enjoying the sunset. It was really nice to just sit, talk, laugh, and enjoy the view. We arrived early enough that we had our pick of spots on the point, and the view was incredible as the sun set beyond the canyon walls.

Bryce Canyon National Park

View from Zion Lodge, Zion National Park,
watercolor pencil

As night fell in Arizona, we got back on the road, bound for a rental house in a small Utah town tucked away between Bryce Canyon, Zion, and Cedar Breaks National Monument. We stayed there several days, zig-zagging between the parks, hiking, relaxing, even worshiping under the stars at over 10,000 feet elevation.

Bryce Canyon was beautiful and otherworldly, like it had been nestled in the Utah wilderness by a pack of aliens or elves (depending on whether you prefer sci-fi or fantasy!).

The vivid orange and white sandstone walls and hoodoos were spectacular. We compared them to rows of stone gnomes, nature's answer to the Chinese terra cotta warriors, or the ruins of some massive ancient castle.

We spent the next two days roaming Zion National Park, adventure shoes tied tight.

Zion quickly became my favorite park.

Unlike Bryce, where you can look down on the bowl of the canyon as if from the top of an amphitheater, Zion is entered from the canyon floor. Peaks and cliffs soar above, and if you look closely you may see climbers inching their way up the sheer pink, orange, white, and grey rock. Our visit fell in late October, which meant another layer of color - bright yellow foliage on the trees lining the Virgin River winding its way through the canyon.

The first day at Zion, we hiked a portion of The Narrows, a narrow stretch of the Virgin River with towering cliffs on either side. It was grueling, exhausting, wet, cold, and beautiful.

The second day there, half our group went on some tough hikes while the rest of us (the tired and the acrophobic) took it easy. We finished out Zion with a Mexican fusion restaurant just outside the park.


At the Lower Emerald Pool, Zion National Park. Watercolor pencil and
water from the fall

After leaving Zion, we packed up again and headed toward the city of Moab, Utah, lodged between Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park.

But first, we had to stop at Capitol Reef National Park for pies and petroglyphs!
 

Capitol Reef National Park

Capitol Reef contains quite a few historic buildings from an early Mormon settlement.

This settlement includes a fruit orchard and a small shop where you can get fresh pies, ice cream, honey, fruit preserves, and souvenirs. It felt as if we were visiting a historic village in some park at home in Ohio, but with great orange mesas in the background instead of more trees.

The home-like feeling vanished as soon as we left the ghost town-turned-tourist-center.


Petroglyph at Capitol Reef National Park

Entering the canyon was like entering a prehistoric movie! I imagined that at any moment, pterodactyls might pass overhead in v-formation or a squad of velociraptors might race past our SUVs on their razor-sharp tip toes. 

Indeed, there was some prehistoric action in Capitol Reef. Ancient petroglyphs mark the orange stone walls, answered by a multitude of carved names and messages dating from two to two hundred years old. The graphitied walls of Capitol Reef look like America's illegal guest book. 

After the breathtaking golden hour passed into a quiet sunset, we got back on the road to Moab. 


Buckeyes will be Buckeyes... even at Arches National Park!

In Moab, we did a doubleheader - two national parks in one day. In the morning we visited the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands National Park, the largest and least-visited of the Big Five national parks in Utah.

After a quick lunch at Wendy's, we went to Archest National Park.

Like Bryce, Arches was otherworldly. It looked as if some massive baby had left their building blocks sitting about, some in towers and arches, some left tumbled about on the ground.

These cliffs, gargoyles, spires, hoodoos, and of course, arches seem to obey physics only out of a spirit of generosity rather than the obligation of nature.

Arches was a beautiful way to wrap up our tour of national gems. But that last evening in our Moab rental house, spent relaxing, playing goofy games, and enjoy takeout barbecue and Chinese food, was another trip highlight in its own right. The next day, we'd part company - my sister and her husband bound for Texas, the rest of us bound for Ohio.

Two weeks after first departing from CVG, we arrived back home. It was an amazing trip. We saw breathtaking mesas and mountains, played on perfect white sand dunes, saw horses, deer, cattle, and ravens, explored underground caverns, and stargazed about 20x above the elevation of our hometown.

Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, I have four words for you:

You stole my heart.

-Cailey

p.s. the sketches and drawings here ain't nuthin. There's more art from my western adventure and it's headed this way soon, so stick around!

Haitian Collage

Around this time four years ago, I was headed to Haiti for a week-long service trip. If you take a look at my Etsy Shop, you might find that Haiti is a common theme in my work. And if you were to look at my sketchbooks, especially the ones I used around that time, you'll find it was even more common. That week has a very real and lasting impact on my life.

And recently, I added yet another piece to my Haitian collection: 

I love this little collage. Each part of it has meaning, thought it's not a big piece, just 8"x12". I feel like that's fitting, as I didn't spend a large amount of time there, but every minute was meaningful. To start with, the bright, cool colors remind of the guava milkshake I had there, and the cool air on the mountaintop from where I saw the whole city of Port-au-Prince. 

One of the things I did soon after the trip was make a little 4"x5" painting of a mango tree that I sketched several times through the week. I've kept the little painting around, but honestly, it was too small to really do anything with. I never looked for one, but I don't even know if I could find a ready-made frame that small; I'd have to get one custom-made. So when I decided to make a Haitian-themed collage, I knew just what to include. 

With a flat-head screwdriver I removed the staples attaching the canvas to its wooden support, flattened it with a heavy book, and then included it in the collage. 

What's with the house, you ask? The house, my friends, was inspired by a Haitian painting my aunt gave me. She spent a whole summer in Haiti a while back, and over the past few years she's passed several of her Haitian things on to me, including the painting. I traced the outline of Haiti and inside it copied some elements of the painting:

And finally, the blue stripes. It looks like I painted them, right? Well, fun fact, they're actually parts of a little blue and clear striped plastic bag I got some of my souvenirs in, which I glued on the white cardboard. 

In 2010 I was just beginning to keep a semi-regular journal; I wrote in it about twice a week. I really wish I had written every day while in Haiti; the fact that I did not makes me sad. But I did take a small sketchbook with me, and I carried it around a lot. Between that and my pictures, airplane boarding passes, and other odds and ends from the trip, I still managed to document about every minute of it. But friends, please learn from my mistakes! If you've got any upcoming travel plans, especially international travel, and especially to a third-world country, and especially if it's a mission trip, please make journaling a daily habit before you go! You'll thank yourself later, and it'll save you a lot of pain because you won't be kicking yourself over not keeping a journal for years afterward.

As I said, my mission trip to Haiti is a recurring theme in my artwork. Why? Because it was such an eye-opening experience for me. And that's what art should be about, I think. A good art piece, in my opinion, should express something either very emotional, very profound, or both. My time in Haiti had a profound impact on my life, and so that impact is reflected in much of the art I make.

Have you got any insights on international travel, Haiti, or art? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
-Cailey