Artist Feature: Reujo
The wintry chill is dissipating from the air, soft rains and fresh breezes on the horizon-March storm clouds brew over leafy clovers and kudzu. As the water droplets drip from the vines, roots drinking deeply while winds test their strength under grey skies, a storm is rolling in.
It feels only fitting, then, to introduce an artist who knows how to navigate storms.
This month, Skip Sketch Studio turns its lantern light toward Reujo — an artist whose quiet exterior belies a world of turbulence, resilience, and relentless creativity beneath the surface.
On the surface, he carries himself with steady calm. A little grumbly (he owns it), deeply dependable, rarely rattled. He’s known around the studio as the one who will show up, stay late, figure it out. As an artist. As a mentor. As someone who doesn’t flinch easily.
But if that’s the surface — what lies beneath the ink?
The Working Storm
“Ideas pop into my head that I need to sketch out, or a doodle that becomes something more.”
-REUJO
Reujo’s mind doesn’t idle.
Past the steady exterior, there is motion. Bone-deep turbulence crashes in waves — distractions, creative sparks, dark muses, and relentless ideas applying pressure to a stitched heart. Ideas interrupt each other. Sparks land mid-conversation. Distractions tug at his sleeves. There’s a constant internal weather system — and somehow, in the middle of it, he remains steady at the worktable, grounded within a raging storm.
Art, for him, didn’t begin as a grand calling. It began as a coping mechanism.
“ADD caused a need for doodling, to occupy my mind, in order to pay attention.”
Margins filled up first. Then scraps of paper. Then whatever was nearby. What started as survival slowly became language, a way to express the very things there are no words for.
Maker, Finagler, Builder
There’s a particular kind of artist who can make beauty out of whatever is on hand. Reujo is that kind.
He’s painted on canvas, yes — but also furniture, wood panels, walls, vehicles. He carves. He builds. His architectural background shows up in structure and patience. He plays flute. He cooks with the same experimental energy he paints with (and if you’ve eaten at his table, you already know: measurements are suggestions).
He crafted his own color codes by working with cheap materials — stretching pigment with water until it reached the desired shades and thickness. Recently, upgrading supplies has thrown him off balance.
New materials don’t quite mix the same way.
He calls that adjustment “annoying.”
There’s something beautifully punkcraft about that.
Mastering the scrappy way first. Learning control through limitation. Then having to relearn when the tools improve.
Growth isn’t always glamorous. Sometimes it’s just recalibration (no matter how annoying).
Beneath the Ink:
When asked what he’s currently working on, Reujo admitted — almost casually — that he has eighteen active WIPs.
Eighteen.
When we blinked at him, he shrugged:
“Ideas pop into my head that I need to sketch out, or a doodle that becomes something more.”
Apparently, this is how storms operate. One front moves in before the last one clears.
The piece he’s sharing with us this month is his Wooden Winged Beetle.
Painted directly onto a board, the beetle is emerging slowly from the grain itself. Bright color pushes against raw wood. It feels like something deciding to exist.
He’s honest about where it stands:
“There hasn’t been a moment where this piece fell together and ‘clicked’ for me. Not sure if that even will happen with this one.”
It’s impossible to express how much we love his answer. Because creative ideas do not always materialize as complete-they brew, humidity spiking, winds gathering, as grey clouds block the light. This piece has an origin story of raw emotion, a concept birthed from a stretch of time locked in a survival mindset, his Wooden Winged Beetle tells a story even unfinished.
Lighting Lantern Light for
Wooden Winged Beetle
Beetles carry layered symbolism-
Across cultures, many different meanings take shape: perseverance, transformation, rebirth, humility, strength. They inspire fascination and discomfort alike. They remind us of life emerging from decay, of resilience housed in small, armored forms.
Looking at the Wooden Winged Beetle in progress, any — or all — of these meanings could apply. That ambiguity makes it thrilling. The piece feels alive, storm clouds still brewing. Much like its creator, it refuses to settle too neatly into one interpretation.
Forward Focus
Internally, Reujo describes crashing storms — but also pockets he has intentionally carved out: warmth, kindness, peace. Those pockets shine through his work. Through the boldness of color. Through the willingness to sit with uncertainty. Through the act of continuing — even when a piece hasn’t “clicked.”
He does not claim to know where this beetle — or the other seventeen projects waiting in the wings — will lead him. But he trusts the movement. The process. The necessity of beginning.
March is here….
….carrying that same storm surged electricity. Storms have the potential to destroy and create-from knocking down trees, all the way to preparing soil. What looks chaotic from a distance could also be growth taking shape.
And like the Wooden Winged Beetle, like the man behind the moniker Grumpy Butterfly, transformation is already underway — steady, stubborn, and chaotically incomplete.
This month, Reujo inked this month’s free coloring page for Oddbrushes-it’s on the community page for everyone! We hope you’ll check it out.
Thank you so much for being here:)
Until Next Time,
The Skip Sketch Studio Team 🩶
