Journal | Jeanne Beck Studios

Shifting with the Seasons

Jeanne Beck
Aug 25
3 min read

Updated: Aug 26

***I took this photo when the Full Sturgeon Moon was rising on August 9; the landscape was dark but the sky was still bright enough to view the bands of clouds passing by overhead.***

Change is in the air. The light has shifted, it suddenly seems less intense, almost pale. September is approaching.

Time to Focus on Moving

Home sweet home! This is where we are as of today - new concrete floors in the garage and basement, steel beams in place, new raised septic bed close to completion. The framers will be here September 2 - hooray, I'll soon see what the house will look like when framed out - and so will you!

Our building project is speeding up and my time is getting consumed by small but important decisions. It looks as though the house will be completed and ready for us to move in by December 1.

Although I will continue to write and post (I like it!), I'm putting the 13 Moons Project on hold. I dont have the time or the mental capacity to organize and try to do anything other than spontaneous sketches through these next months. I'll resume more painterly efforts once we're moved and settled into our new home. And my new studio!

Celebrating Nature

This month the wild bergamot finally bloomed - this plant, part of the bee balm family, is a super star for attracting bees! I love both listening to their steady hum and watching them. The number of hummingbird moths attracted to the bergamot have amazed me. Have you ever seen a hummingbird moth? They literally extend a tiny probiscus into a flower to draw in the nectar and then retract it before they move to the next blossom.

This one wild bergamot plant is over four feet tall this year (I planted it a year ago and it didn't bloom then), but it stays upright and compact and doesn't seem to get leggy or fall over (and we get strong winds here). I am eager to add a nice cluster of this variety to the pollinator gardens I will create for our new home. This garden was my tester to see how various native plants grow, spread and deal with our hard clay soil.

Drawing and Sketching

This has been a busy month for drawing and sketching. I've spent more time looking at plant life and flowers around me and doing studies in my sketchbooks. Committing to developing an abstract landscape drawing and painting practice has dovetailed beautifully with my desire to interact more with the beauty of the natural world.

Here are some of this month's sketches, which I enjoy just for how enjoyable they are to create and how they help reduce my stress levels!

More Creative Stimulation

I'm trying out a Patreon membership this month with Chloe Briggs, an American who lives in Paris. Chloe creates a themed project booklet with exercises each month that encourage all types of drawing. On the third Thursday of each month members can attend a 1.5 hour drawing class Chloe offers live. I attended my first one right after I joined and loved drawing in response to different music video clips.

Chloe also offers Drawing is Free, an online figure drawing practice every Monday from Paris (it works out to be 12 PM EST, six hour time difference) doing faces from the people who attend. It was fast-paced and interesting. I tried it for the first time today and found it scary-fun - I have little to no experience in figure drawing, but decided drawing anything is great practice and I actually enjoyed myself.

My first foray into drawing faces - it's all about learning to see, no matter what the subject!

I'll write again soon, enjoy the beautiful shift in the seasons that's just beginning.

To close, a Metta prayer for all:

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be safe.

May all beings be free.

With loving-kindness,

Jeanne

Under the Buck Moon: Sketching in Nature

Jeanne Beck
Jul 24
5 min read

Updated: Jul 27

I am keeping my focus in these posts on the natural world and creative expression. I hope once we complete our new home, we can restore the current property to a healthy, thriving eco-system - even thinking about that future is medicine for my spirit. I know I'm not alone - thousands and thousands of others are helping to make habitats for birds and pollinators and learning to be stewards to all living beings. May our numbers swell to millions.

This month's moon is called the Buck Moon because this time of year bucks grow their new sets of antlers in preparation for the mating season later in the Fall. We have many white-tailed deer on our property. If you want a quick read about bucks and antlers, here's an article on a government US site that explains everything you might want to know.

New Moon - 6.26.25

My previous journal is not complete but I am starting the new journal at the beginning of this lunar cycle rather than midway - hope beyond hope this is the month I will get all caught up! Much time and energy has gone into planning for the new house build, so I am accepting there's going to be less time for creating until it's done and we're moved in.

Still, I am delighted with how much looser and more spontaneous my sketches and samples are, maybe because I do have less time to fret over them. The threads of my writing, drawing and gardening practices are starting to weave together and I feel great about how they inform each other.

I'll continue to make quick practice pieces, get more comfortable and confident working outdoors, celebrate all the beautiful native plants that are flourishing on our property, and make plans for a fully native lawn, meadow and pollinator gardens around our new home.

Drawing from Nature

On my first trip outside to draw, I worked next to my perennial garden, appreciating the array of leaf and flower forms on the different plant varieties. I used several dilutions of ink, Artgraf, a water-mister and charcoal, desiring to keep my marks loose and expressive. Within minutes I got totally absorbed in what I was seeing, alternating between three sketchbooks of varying sizes, so if one was too wet to work on, I could quickly grab another. I had put everything in a tote bag and discovered when I was packing up that one of my ink containers had leaked all over it, even with the top on it.

Before I went outdoors to sketch again, I purchased a tool bag for carrying supplies. It has a flat bottom on the inside and multiple pockets inside and out so it stands up when open for easy access to art materials, and a shoulder strap to make it easier to carry. Bottles nestle in pockets so they don't tip over and leak. I will practice on our property until I feel comfortable with my supplies and how best to work away from home. I could try a blanket instead of stool but that would be one more item to carry. I'm learning by doing, which means adding new items and editing out ones I don't really need (like the large plastic container of powdered charcoal).

For this outing I used some Japanese shoji paper (very porous, doubt I will use it again) and some drawing paper (which worked well), a handmade long-handle horsetail brush, plus fat and slender bamboo brushes, which hold a lot of water and are great for ink washes.

In a pinch, I will take just sketchbooks and charcoal to visit a location away from our property and sketch. I still want to keep practicing here first and keep finding lots of inspiration right where I am .

Full Moon 7.10.25

I went outside to watch the beautiful orange moon rise one night in the southeast; it was stunning. Many fireflies were flashing their mating signals and it brought back happy childhood memories of chasing, catching and putting the little beetles in glass jars with holes punched in the top so I could watch their magical lights blinking on and off up close. I thought they were magical, like Tinker Bell in Peter Pan!

I've cut the large pieces I worked on outside into smaller 8 x 8" samples. I'm starting to add layers over them, using pan pastels, gesso, acrylic inks and paints. Enjoying the freedom to let them stay samples.

I feel calm and steady as I explore the mark-making ideas and tools. The above are efforts to try getting the feeling of landscape without a strong horizon line. I'm considering how far I can move into abstraction and still create something that references the landscape around me.

It's a natural tendency to want to make a leaf look like an actual leaf or carefully draw petals just as they look on a flower. That's not what attracts me in nature, it's the spirit, movement and emotion of the natural world I want to express.

Last Quarter 7.17.25

I'm glueing and assembling pages for this month's journal at the dining room table, incorporating my samples, photos and some writing from my journals. It feels so much more spacious to have a space dedicated just to working on sorting, arranging and gluing. Now I can use my studio space for sketching and painting and there's less risk of getting unwanted blobs or smears on book pages and covers.

With the abundance of rain this summer, everything is lush and growing and green. My experimental meadow (planted last year) filled in much more this year with what our local Cornell Cooperative Extension garden expert calls "early meadow stuff" - tickseed, white daisies and Black-eyed Susans. Of course, the Common Milkweed returned too. I love seeing it evolve - sadly I won't be here next year, but will create an even larger meadow next door over the next few years. Earlier in the season many Sweet Williams also bloomed here in a nice variety of colors. I felt fortunate to take a lovely, detailed photo of a giant swallowtail on one of the coneflowers in front of our house, too.

Dark Moon Wrap-Up 7.24.25

The construction progresses. Not very pretty yet, but it's happening! Today they are pouring cement into these frames for the foundation walls. We have to enlarge the window opening in the kitchen to meet code, so now we need to redesign the kitchen! Framing will start in early September.

My Fave Pieces from this Lunar Cycle

I did create some pieces that feel "complete" - they have the blend of looseness, movement and suggestions of landscape and plant life that are what I most want to express about the natural world.

Thank you for your interest and for taking the time to read - may there be many lovely days ahead for us all to enjoy.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be safe.

May all beings healthy.

May all beings be free.

Blessings and peace,

Jeanne

Strawberry Super Moon Landscape Painting Practice

Jeanne Beck
Jun 28
4 min read

6.25.25 This is my review of the activities, insights and explorations that took place during the Strawberry Super Moon cycle, 5-27-25 to 6-26-25. I'm ending the month far more positive than I felt at the beginning, but also more stressed about when we will be able to start building our house. We are still waiting for our building permit from the town and it is unlikely it will arrive before next week, if then.

New Moon 5.28.25

On a rare dry day, this photo was taken standing on the spot where our house will be built, looking towards the road. Even though the land has been cleared, I could still feel it welcoming us, as if it knows our good intentions. While I am saddened by the disturbance to the soil that comes with building, I am also envisioning what a beautiful eco-system planning, care and attention will create here after the house is up. A new chapter is beginning for us and for it.

The new cycle threw us another curve as well when our oil tank sprung a leak. We weighed our options and decided to put in a new electric hot water heater and a new propane furnace. Hopefully, that will help us sell this home quickly. Of course, the whole replacement process took two to three weeks from estimates to installation, but we did get the water heater in right away for hot water and our air conditioning still worked, so we were comfortable through it all.

Full Moon

For the first half of this rainy lunar cycle, I printed out one of my photographs of the Falls near Pulaski, New York from last summer and started doing some samples of the rock formations and water flowing over them. It's hard to simplfy the natural world because there are so many beautiful details! But I am doing samples (almost!) daily. I stayed with this same photo reference for several weeks, varying tools and techniques. My intention was to try ways to capture the feeling of moving, splashing water with paint.

Waterfall reference image for paintings — I love visiting this waterfall each summer when we go to our cottage near Bernhards Bay. The Falls have been developed into a state park now, safer than before but much less of a magical, secret place! This is the photo I used for reference for the slideshow of sketches below. I have kept at it, trying just about any material and tool I have that could communicate water rushing over the rocks and the rock formations themselves. I have a very hard time staying loose and abstract when I'm looking at a photograph and have a tendency to try and make the elements look real, but as a baby abstract landscape artist, that's A-OK!

WaterFall Sketches Slide Show

Full Strawberry Supermoon Slide Show

I stayed up to catch some photos of the June 11th Strawberry Super Moon rising in the front of the house towards the Southeast and then woke up again late at night and caught a few shots of it setting at the back of the house in the Southwest. However, with no cloud cover, the direct light from the moon refracted and distorted through my phone camera lens, so I had fun playing around in my editing software and creating some interesting colors for possible future paintings.

Third and Fourth Quarters

Seems like we had nothing but heavy rain and dark skies for most of June, but there were some sunny days, plus a short but intense heat wave. My native perennials continue to grow and flourish in my new meadow and pollinator garden. The hummingbird feeder is up and we have frequent visitors.

I have made many landscape sketches. For the final two quarters of the cycle, I worked with ink, charcoal, acrylics and pastels. I see potential in them and lots of ideas to continue to develop and improve.

I also arranged for a wonderful adventure to celebrate the Summer Solstice. I went on a mushroom foraging with my friend Jeannie through Smugtown Mushrooms. A group of us were led through the woods by Smugtown's owner Olga Tzogas, who is a wealth of knowledge about plants and trees in addition to her expertise on fungi. We learned about and collected some mushrooms, then enjoyed a meal Olga prepared, spanatakopita made with foraged greens, a fresh greens salad plus she sauteed the mushrooms we had found on our walk so we could all enjoy them. Everything was delicious and the weather was beautiful, a perfect Solstice celebration.

New Moon, New Cycle Begins - June 25

There are numerous names for this moon, including Buck Moon, Salmon Moon, Berry Moon, Thunder Moon and Hay Moon. The Haudenosaunee, who once lived in harmony with this land where I live before they were driven out and the land was parceled and gifted to settlers, called this the Ripe Corn Moon, so I will call it that in honor of them.

I'll close with the Metta prayer as a blessing to us all and with hope that compassion and loving kindness will grow in the hearts of every human for ourselves as well as for each other.

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be safe.

May all beings awaken to the light of their true nature.

May all beings be free.

Blessings, my friends, may there be peace in our hearts and in our world,