30 Monday Jul 2018
Posted in Books & reading, Chit Chat, Painting, Thoughts
Tags
art, creativity, determination, inspiration, intention, procrastination, reading, res
Wax on Wood
Last week I mentioned the absurdity of a health challenged person embarking on time consuming physical tasks such as gathering natural malerials, making paper, prepping and studying new branches of the art tree, and it surprised me that nobody mentioned “productive procrastination” aka Resistance. (dah-dah-DAAAAA)
26 Monday May 2014
Woke up, no headache, with the weirdest sentence in my head. While still in a fog it seemed deeply profound to me, so I decided to repeat it until I could write it down. Now I’m all, WTF? “We operate in the narrow strip between tranquility and normal life”. Um, right….. Who? 😕
I’m feeling a bit odd after last week’s various exertions, not anxiety but something close, like not knowing which foot to put down first. Thinking about some of the topics that came up here as well as related talks on friends’ blogs. You all know who you are, thanks for being so amazingly in sync!
What’s wrong with this picture? I’ll tell you. I neglected to ask for a gap in the middle, so that I don’t have to trundle all the way around this row and back up the other side to get to the veggies behind!
So, what the hey do I do now that I have no chores and no headaches? Let’s make the most of this week, shall we? Paint, weave, spin, the list is long. Doesn’t matter which one I begin with, really, what matters is getting on a roll and stay. Heal. The LYS is having a sale later. With cake. (I shouldn’t eat the cake). First I’ll be waiting for the postman to bring me an extra loom, usually they are here early on Mondays. Ooops, I promised myself to do one load of laundry! No biggie. Just one look on the used items page to search for a jack loom, then I’ll get my butt out of this chair, it’s 08:19, I’ve been reading enough interwebs. Closed nearly all my tabs, job well done! 😉
Used loom ads check – checkTime: 09:50
The thing about chores is, I don’t really mind them, as long as I get to do my other things. I do not want them to be my second full time job however.
10:42
Trying to get restarted on the micro canvasses, pretending to ignore stink from table cloth. Pick 6 off the wall I wanted to finish next, can’t really remember what I meant to do. Do something else just to get the paint flowing? Hungry. Ha, go away procrastinator, you ate already.
Read in the garden instead? This sometimes helps, because if my brain is scattery it will try to get out of reading by throwing images at me. Not today, however.12:25 Postman been with loom and gone. I can put on painterly clothes now and not scare anyone.
Yarn shop open, not in the mood. Money saved.15:30 Tired. Using blog post to procrastinate. Get off and hunker down with some task, any task, now! Something easy, no stress. 2 hours, then dogwalk.
All in all a pretty scattered day with too much web clicking so far – but I’m happy to be on my feet and ignoring the floor and various other surfaces 😉 It always takes me some time to change gears even when I know I simply need to do it, not think it. I’ll get up to speed eventually.
Question is, if I’m too preoccupied with the loom to focus on the painting and simply need to give in and have a go at that first. It’s the same type that I already have but with a much finer reed, I’m hoping it will be suitable for my purple warp. And it’s always nice to be able to sample things even if you have a slow project on one loom. I have plans to turn in into an optional multishaft loom too.
14 Tuesday Jan 2014
Tags
I’ve given up remembering my unfinished writing projects from last week, so I’m doing various photo things, camera and Shop, in between watching the circus. Luckily they do take quite a few naps!
I actually need/want to take some photo trips for naked trees, but ugh, the cold and weather prevents me as well as roads being diffícult to stop along and park sometimes, without being in someone’s way – I want the vistas, not the forest this time. Everything is cultivated right up to the edge of the hard top, and you can’t just walk in somebody’s field, not even on the borders. They’re pretty a*** about it here and I hate this. I dream of being able to walk half the day with my camera without wearing a traffic safety vest!
Today it’s foggy, so it’s not even optional for the shots I want. I guess I’ll be kitten spamming you all week instead.
30 Saturday Nov 2013
Tags
art, colour, creativity, determination, inner conviction, inspiration, intention, procrastination
I’m slowly getting back to hands on tasks, and I’m determined to break a barrier or two before the year is over.
It’s funny how I can happily mess about with painting abstract backgrounds / washes forever, and then I get stuck. Or any idea I might have doesn’t work out – probably because I’m so scared to ruin it that I overthink, and then paint over the failure with a new background. It’s quite clear I have a performance anxiety here that I don’t experience with photography, probably because I can’t trust my hands to be able to do what’s in my head, the craftsman part of it. And we all know how that part is achieved!
It mostly happens when I paint without a plan, which is what I’ve been trying out for a while. Just picking a set of colours and see what happens. Of course, it could be that I’m simply not suited for the so called intuitive approach. I do have several complete illustrations in my head, but they don’t even get started apart from some very preliminary sketches or even just descriptions. And I have a feeling they’re kinda blocking the doorway for any new ones…
So I’ve decided to just make them, force myself to begin – and if they’re no good, I can make them again. Totally new experience to me, I never did the same image twice. Or rehearsed them.
As for the backgrounds sitting in a pile, I’ll try to put anything on there now, even if it’s not what I think is my usual topic matter. For instance, even though I love gardens and take copious photos of flowers, I never considered myself a floral painter. But I quit resisting when all this canvas wanted was some poppies – now I just have to work on them a lot, as you can see they’re going through multiple stages before being even close to a sketch. (I was interrupted the other day, as usual. By the same person who interrupted me with the same painting a month ago, when I was doing the background! I just hope it won’t be another month before I get back to it – last time I completely forgot my actual plan with it. And well, the famous thumb and all…)
I don’t really wish to paint from life – that’s a camera thing for me. Painting is for the world inside my head.
I actually have a third hurdle, as if the first two weren’t enough. I never painted or drew people. I never take photos with people if I can help it, even as a tourist I wait until everybody is out of the frame before I click. But it appears that some of my “illustrations” have people in them. Which means I have to learn from scratch and develop a “style” if I want these images to live. It’s not going to be easy, I’m no good at people in any aspect. I even avoid mirrors.
I’m still not certain whether this new thing is really coming from me though, or if I’m simply influenced by all the mixed-media art journaling I’ve been seeing around. So the figures may or may not happen.
And that’s what I’ll be dedicating December to. No more touchy feely I’ll bloody well do what I feel like-a-day. I’ve got a job. Not like pretending to make art, no, this will be deliberate and planned destruction. Because I am in the mood and still nothing happens, as opposed to not really feeling like it but thinking you should.
I don’t know why I persist, but it seems I have to give it a go. And yarn. Silly, useless, colourful string. I always have my Adobe studies to fall back on if my hand acts up. And plugins..
All I know is, I spent many years doing just tedious jobs and nothing creative at all and I don’t like the person that turns me into – I don’t think anybody else does either. So I need to keep giving this as much space as possible, because even if it sounds like I struggle, it really is the only thing that keeps me alive. It doesn’t have to end with painting – after all it’s been on the shelf for 20 years while other crafts are more recent and perhaps more likely to yield “products” I’m happy to call finished. But just as I always considered myself a horse rider even when I didn’t ride for a decade, I still have this image of myself as someone who paints. Weird, huh?
21 Friday Jun 2013
Photography seems to be the main thing these days.
Time for another ramble! Must be either the humidity or hormones, LOL.
I was hoping that my new resolve about knitting would help me also generally get better at not having to do all the things all the time. Seeing it as having various picture making options in my toolbox, and instead work project oriented using whichever media each project requires. And I must say, it’s going pretty well. I don’t freak out if I haven’t painted for a month, I just follow the flow. In fact lately the flow has been getting the garden organized again now that we finally have a small pocket of nice weather.
Now, when I said I would work project oriented to free some time and calm the monkey mind, I didn’t mention the ginormous list of projects that I have of course. But you already knew that, if you know me just a little bit. 😉 I write down all my ideas, but I’m actually ok letting many of them hibernate or even just stay on the list. I feel that by aknowledging an inspiration that way I have already done part of the job, I’m saying yes to the ideas and in that manner inviting more to come.
Trying out an idea in Photoshop before ruining the canvas…
Then the other day I had a really crazy-clever idea. I’ve often been joking that what I’d really like to do is just have ideas, design and plan stuff. Then I’d have staff to handle the actual production so that I could be free to attend to more ideas…. So, what is the low-grade version of this scenario? Well, since I’m basically tired a lot, and sometimes even more when it comes to actually digging into my creative projects after some time away from them, what if I simply left it at that? Sitting around getting a multitude of exciting ideas, do the colour samples, the sketches, the fantasies in particular – and just kept doing that bit and not bother produce them? I’d have SO much money available instead of buying wool and paints and I can do it while trimming the hedges… And maybe then I wouldn’t spend half the day clicking the interwebs because I’m too scared to start painting the idea I had last night after bedtime (very convenient to have them at that time, you can just pretend you’re sorry it’s too late).
It wouldn’t actually work of course, because I do like making things. And when I do get stuck, perhaps I should try to simply write down brain chatter as it happens, bringing the dialogue out instead of repeating it inside. Have a little discussion conversation with inner critic, the over-achiever and their little friends lazy-bones, obstinate and pitiful. I don’t know if they’d like to come outside like that, but it’s worth a shot. I wonder which one of them came up with the idea of only making brain art?
So, am I still procrastinating my way through tasks, more, less, not at all, and how about energy levels? There’s room for improvement. And that’s mostly the voice of ms. perfectionist. If you ask me, I’m definitely on my way and the pace is just fine. The worst moments are, like I said, transitions between one type of activity and the next. I’ve never been very good at taking half an hour in between (or even a day) to be creative, if I start my day like that I know I won’t be able to stop, so lately I’ve been doing the chores that need doing first. And then I’m usually a zombie around 3 pm already and not in the mood. Once I get past the early summer hump of de-jungle-fying the property, I expect I can reverse the priorities again and save housework for last.
Kale
The 3 pm slump is the worst when it comes to making excuses, but for now I think I’ll just have to accept it unless I want all-day slumps again. Or all-week slumps. At least I’m getting pretty good at keeping myself in motion, even if it’s just remembering to water things in my greenhouse and brushing the dog. It’s still a kind of evasion from doing arts and crafts, but at least I don’t just sit and click. So it does seem to be working, I mean, things get done and I hardly have any lists. I rarely feel stressed and busy, I just potter about. And, well, I do have days when I can’t get my A into G no matter how many times I get up and start doing one little thing. But they’re fewer and I try to not feel overly guilty about it. This is where the small camera comes in, it’s hardly a chore to just walk around and click aimlessly.
The one thing system – no todo lists
What else have I been doing to beat procrastination?
Well, my interlibrary reservation list is down to 1! book and I’m not going to add more for a while no matter how tempting.
I practise finishing old wips to declutter both mind and house. Working on my featherweight cardigan and the pin cushions right now (ok, I had an excuse for the latter, I needed appropriate filling)
I do things that I know I can do – such as building tapestry looms. I have various simple designs that I want to try out. Got a few supplies, now I’m just waiting for someone to help me lift wood from the garage rafters 3 m up.
02 Tuesday Apr 2013
As some of us discussed in a previous post, I have a tendency to act against my better knowledge because I’m impatient or too lazy to take that extra step of preparation before I can move forward. And I’ve often wondered how I can train myself to not only pay attention to my inner voice but also stop in my tracks and do what it says, because it really is quite clever sometimes and doesn’t deserve to be told off.
Is it about slowing down in general, in thought and actual physical movement? A question of planning and making a structure before you push ahead? (I know people who keep doing that to perfection and thus never getting started – argh! But alas – I guess this is why I don’t play chess) Being more mindful in general, less goal oriented? Just a matter of habit?
Then Birdie suggested there could also be an element of self-sabotage in there. But who would want to do such a thing?! Which in turn made me think of having subconscious fears of succes. After all, once you really make it, there is even more pressure, because now you have to top everything you’ve done previously. And keep doing it! I still don’t quite get how this applies to ordinary daily activities, unless you take your life way too seriously for anybody’s good. But it’s a theory.
I would for instance LOVE to just sit at home in my snuggly little corner and get paid to write books. Never risk having to do another slave job in my life. They’d be great books of course and I’d like to make a truckload of money. Well, a fair amount anyway, enough to make a good life for myself and some extra to share the love around. What I don’t want is to appear in magazines and tv-interviews, even a book signing tour sounds pretty horrible. * Now, that’s really sending a mixed signal to the universe, right? I want the succes, but only the nice bits! Disregarding my chances of producing a best seller or not, could this and other similar disharmonies of intention be causing some of those weird reactions? “I want to paint but I have a million excuses before I can get started.” Later is not as real as now, so it’s also safer in terms of showing what you’ve got.
This is definitely something I need to be working on and thinking about.
-~*~-
* I don’t mind putting in the long hours of research, writing, editing etc. But is seems that today, if you want to sell, you don’t have to just output great stuff, you also have to be a travelling circus. In fact I have a feeling that publishers only bother marketing the authors that look good in pictures. (ok, I’m a lost case already….)
-~*~-
I’m also trying to teach myself, not to stop procrastinating, because I don’t think I can at this point in time, but to do it differently. Trick myself into not wasting time; and by that I don’t mean well deserved naps, but the times when you hang out in front of the computer, checking the weather page (again), looking up new tags on WordPress, read Facebook (I’m a stalker – never post, only comment my friends’ posts). All because you want to avoid spending 3 minutes walking to the (chilly) back room to start a load of laundry. Or stack firewood, trim horse hooves etc.
So what I’m practising is: Say that I plan to spend the day painting because it’s sunny but cold, so I have enough light but want to be inside, I’ve been having some ideas, perfect, yes? And yet I find myself pottering about not really doing much of anything, getting more coffee (which I honestly don’t even like much), clipping my nails, or getting overwhelmed with exhaustion, feeling the flutter of moths (not pretty butterflies) beating hard inside me; instead of flopping down for something completely brainless, I now do useful displacement activities. So I may not have beaten my performance anxiety, but at least the floor is clean, the laundry all done, my desk is shiny (very useful) and I feel a small victory in not having spent 4 hours reloading silly webpages. (not counting those of you wonderful, inspiring people whose pages I read regularly of course 😉 )
This has also (I hope, since this is a fairly new practice) solved another old problem of mine: having too many hobbies. This used to stress me out completely, because I felt I had/wanted to do all of them all the time, with equal skill, attention and results. Painting and knitting ended up on a shelf for many, many years, the horses were gone for over a decade too, but then all of them insisted on coming back as well as the photography, the computer graphics, new ones entered such as gardening, spinning and dyeing. And, well, you still have to cook and clean and mow the grass, fix the fences, and if you had the money it would be nice to fix up the house too. I’d love to start writing again. I want to learn to felt, and how about using all that plant dyed yarn to make tapetries? Calligraphy is cool. Collages. I love to read – for days. Etc. etc. So no matter which activity I chose for the day, I felt guilty about the others. And sometimes (often) not doing any of them just from the stress of juggling them in my head (clicking webpages again while I worked on my decision). And some of you may have noticed, I didn’t even talk about jobs…
Now I’ve decided that
One benefit is, that some tasks are so boring (such as housework) that I have to procastinate my way through those by doodling a bit, slather some random paint on a canvas for a background etc. in between tasks – or actually during if I break up laundry into sorting, washing, hanging, folding. So the method works both ways. I get more things done without rushing or stressing about a todo list, I pretty much choose my current activity in the moment. Being a world champion of list making, this is incredibly liberating! I mean, I have the making of to-do lists as a whole hobby/activity in itself. I still need them to declutter my head, but I don’t actually look at them very much – and I still get as much done if not more. Cool huh?
But all this sounds really complicated. Am I in reality just fighting windmills a lazy nature? I know my body doesn’t seem to want to move about much of its own accord, as in sports, dancing etc. Maybe I should just lay down arms and embrace who I am; but I’m worried that is someone who sits on the sofa with a book, eating cake all day, house falling apart around me…. I have this inner drive – but I’m nearly always tired.
-~*~-
Synchronicity again: I finish the post, then read this:
We are generally torn between two opposite sets of instructions programmed into the brain: the least-effort imperative [entropy] on one side, and the claims of creativity [discovery] on the other.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
If you made it this far, you deserve a reward. 😉 I’m sorry I didn’t find more pictures to distract you.
01 Friday Mar 2013
Posted in Chit Chat
Tags
art, cartoons, horses, mandala, Painting, Photography, procrastination, spring
Do I feel a slight hint of spring on the frosty breeze? When the sun is out, I can almost imagine…. So I put the laundry outside on the line! Aaah, yes, I’m definitely ready.
Not quite there yet…
I’ve been working on a few things this week that I thought I was going to blog about, but none of them are quite done yet. I did finish my dry leaves printing experiment and I’m not very impressed, so that project post got archived vertically as we say here. As in, I’m not even going to bother scanning the results for you. Cochineal prints lovely on paper though, but it also pokes a lot of holes, LOL.
Knitting and spinning progress = 0
I’ve been thinking a lot about my painting etc. which normally is a really bad sign, and probably is in this case too, but I seem to be all over the place and that’s not very constructive either. To improve your skills it really works best to pick a theme and make multiple versions. You rarely fix all your mistakes in one go.
One minute I’m into intuitive abstracts, the next I’m trying for the impressionistic turneresque landscapes in my mind which on canvas then looks more like a naive illustration for a childrens’ book. Which I kinda dig too, in fact it could be a very good way to warm up for a picture book which title has been floating in my head for 7-8 years about my horse Charlie. Problem is, I have the format in place, but the actual plot is missing. Would be a great tribute now that he’s gone. I also had wanted to do a series of cartoons around the critters, probably for 10-12 years, but made TWO crummy attempts. Now we have Fergus who is everything I wanted to do exactly, and I’m not jealous, I LOVE Fergus, but I’m not going to copy any of it when he’s obviously so much better than anything I can output at this time. 😉 However, my brain has produced a couple of cartoon sketches this week, nothing original, but I may just work on them anyway – for the practice.
Charlie’s favourite trick – as you can see I take my riding dead seriously
So it’s a lovely day out today, and even though I’d really like to work on my mandalas and one of my wip paintings, I should go be outside. I’m sure I’ll feel all the better for it. Dog to be walked, firewood to be stacked, maybe I should actually go riding on the old silly? And all the frozen horsepoop in the paddock is probably going to unfreeze real soon. It’ll be so good for my back and biceps….
And, well, spring on the way also means photo weather, if my old Canon 20D is still willing (shutter has passed the average number of exposures for this model). Not that it’s impossible in winter, I just don’t like being outside in the cold wind and the batteries die to quick. Anyone want to sponsor me a 7D house?! I promise I’ll do at least one excursion every week to a new location. 😀
19 Wednesday Dec 2012
Time for another report from my ongoing quest to beat painter’s/writer’s block. I can’t say that I’ve done very much besides tend to a sick cat, get a skin biopsy on my face and knitting/reading/baking/cleaning to take my mind off it (well, the cat mostly, to be honest). But I did climb into the hayloft and found that I had quite a large pile of stretcher bars stashed up there, so I’ve ordered a roll of canvas. Just the cheap cotton variety for now, to take off the pressure of “ruining expensive supplies”. I obviously must have intended to get back in the game, since I’ve been moving these around for the last 20 years (and some of those moves involved very cramped quarters).
Another challenge is how and where to store my papers. Not just various unused watercolour pads, but the finished or half finished products such as my leaf prints. I want easy access to browse them in case I think of a project where I can use them, rather than stow away and forget. I feel this is important, but maybe it’s my overachiever speaking. My office is woefully small and very full… Spare room has my fiber in it, as much shelf space as I can possibly steal. (“Sweetie, those old OS/2 manuals aren’t really required anymore, are they? Fancy a trip to the dump? And what are these, 386 motherboards?”) Score: I just discovered a lot of VIDEO TAPES on one shelf, it’s not like we even have a player anymore…. And, well, I can’t deny that I sometimes think up plans for one half of the sideboard under the tv. To those of you who think “poor man”, well, his only hobby is his job and can be done in an office half the size of mine. Besides, he’s got a mouth and a throat, I assume he knows how to make noise with them if he feels inclined.
All the leftover, non-coordinated furniture…
my shrinking book collection, every time I get something new I have to throw out.
As I was tearing up old sheets into rags for use when painting, I came to think of another tool to spark creativity: Boredom. In fact I had to take a break already halfway through the first sheet to come out here and begin this blog post! Much to the delight of the kitten, who thought I was making a new toy for him on the floor….
There simply isn’t anything like boredom, or being unable to get to your art supplies, that creates ideas like a stroke of lightning. Showers, driving, visiting boring relatives, cleaning your office. So if sitting in front of your canvas for 3 hours doodling doesn’t do the trick, try the opposite. 😉 (although that sounds pretty boring too, but it needs to be the doing-something-boring kind to work I think)
I even managed to smear some orange onto one of my starter canvasses (finding in the process more old brushes filled with hair and gunk), before whipping myself into obedience and ripping up more sheets. Although I was tempted to hop back online to shop for brushes and other cool stuff (gotta get the most out of the postage, right?).
This is impossible to work with, enough!
For those of you who think I’m not very disciplined, well, I can be if the need arises. I just don’t think ripping sheets is going to save the whales, so I’m cutting myself some slack. Besides, after I decided to test how many layers I could rip at once, it all became a bit more fun and was over pretty quick too. After Arthur was done playing with the pile, I even sat down and folded my rags to put into one of the Expedit boxes! 😉 Then I got rid of the gunk and covered my yellow painting in a coat of white. And then writing this I realize those rags probably have cat hairs on them now – doh!
Doing something tedious but productive with your hands like Heidi mentioned for my last post, such as spinning wool, also helps by just touching and working with the materials. You get ideas for new yarns, the colours of the new yarns my remind you of something and ooops, a painting is pushing its way forward. You need to learn to not think of your grocery shopping list while you do this, however. The idea is to empty your mind to make room for new, if writing down your old ideas in a notebook didn’t work.
Slaughtered an old book to use for mixed media doodling and discovered that glued pages all tend to come loose once you rip out a couple, may have to find one with a sewn binding and cool pix in it to incorporate.
So next trick is hands on: Learn/do something new. If you paint but can’t get into gear, learn to knit, speak French, cook, take a photography class. If your new thing IS painting, it may not work. Anything that gets your juices flowing, make you feel a bit more alive is guaranteed to also set your creative wheels in motion. New stuff has a better chance of achieving that compared to silly old tv shows and Friday nights at the pub. (ok, I admit that I have no idea how inspired you can actually get at the pub, the question is, do you remember your ideas the day after and are they still as good as last night?)
I think I forgot to mention: collect resources. If I did indeed mention it, forgive me for repeating. Every time I see a neat picture, colour, motive, skill, anything that moves me, I consider saving it as a reference. Not to publish or copy, just to look at for inspiration. This works great in this day and age, 20 years ago I had a shelf full of binders, such a waste of space compared to a harddrive.
At the moment I seem to be into collecting skies among other things that happen to appear in front of me. I never really use any of them as an explicit reference, they just get me started. Such as:
–> 
I hadn’t actually looked at the photo in a while, and as you can see I got it totally wrong, but it was nevertheless my starting point. (sorry about the flash – it’s so dark here at the moment) And then I began thinking up other skies at all sorts of odd hours. I’m not sure why, since I actually thought I was going to be painting abstract/intuitive like. But as I’ve been advocating, gotta go with the flow, follow the red thread as we say in DK. Skies it is. Until it isn’t. I’m not going to show you the finished painting just yet, because then I wouldn’t be publishing this post for quite a while. So it’s all WIPs.
Next on the program is refreshing my theory and daring to blend “dirty” colours. Just so I don’t keep hurting eyes out there. 😉
Something that can also be fun is to ask other people for themes. Ask them to make up a random sentence or word (or read a random page in a random book). Illustrate that somehow, not necessarily paint something that looks like a horse, or, if you do get a bunch of random words, combine three. “Blue horse on fire”. – “Usually you just feel him passing, sir, but I have seen him twice, in what would have been the flesh, if he had any.” Your turn! Send me a theme or challenge in the comments below and I promise to post the results of the ones I try out.
And when all else fails, a quote that I snarfed from Tintina’s blog:
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” -Arthur Ashe
To those who don’t know what the h… I’m going on about:
> 1. Finally
> 2. Beginner’s mind
> 3. Creating creativity
