The ADD Clinic

I used to live in a area where there was an ADD clinic we used to drive passed on occasion. The first time I ever noticed it was when I was in the middle of a conversation, instantly mid sentence I knew that I just had to point out this wonderful moment. Stopping the conversation with a sudden exclamation of "ADD Clinic?" made for a nice moment of beautiful comedic effect. We spent the next few minutes busting up over just how perfect the situation had been.

The thing is though that I do suffer from a serious case of self diagnosed ADD. I have a hard time spending serious amounts of time working on anything. If cleaning takes more that ten minutes I get bored. If a painting takes more than I week it usually gets tossed aside. It is not really a commitment issue, I love getting started on a project and I envision myself doing all of the work and see what needs to be done, but most of the time I get half way there and get distracted, and finishing the piece becomes a chore. I don't really want to keep working on it I want to move onto the other new shiny idea, because it is way more interesting that what I am currently working on. This doesn't mean that I want to completely get rid of this disorder. I love it, that is part of why I never really went to anyone to get help with it. Having this propensity to jump from idea to idea is part of my creative process, and to kill it would kill my creative half, but I cannot let it have too much power either.

This year I have been challenging myself to finish things. Well, not just to finish things. I already do that, but to finish them well, with the same amount of commitment and execution that I had dedicated to the beginning. I don't want to fizzle out. I want to be able to get done with a piece and have the result be a good as the original idea was.

I have been using different techniques of trying to get more out of my ideas. I have been slowing down paying attention to details. I have been working on my skills. I have been standing back for a day and getting perspective. I have been trying to distance myself from the work, so that maybe I can come back at it with more interest because I haven't had my head stuck in it for days straight.

Though I am more proud of the work that I have been doing since implementing this thinking to my art, it is like peeling my skin off. I am not going to lie, it is flat out torture to keep my mind on one piece for so long. I know that it is good for me to be pushing myself to put more work into something, but some days I look at the half finished piece and think, wouldn't it just be better if I moved on?

Reining in my natural desire to jump from project to project has been hard. I know that some people can spend years on a piece, it can consume them and take them for a journey. I have never found a piece of art that had made me feel that way. Sometimes I feel that I am doing things wrong because I don't have that kind of long lasting passion that others have. I know that my art could be so much better if I would be willing to put more effort into it. The thing is that, I don't need to be like other artists, I just need to be better than I am now.

I know that I am not other people and I do art differently than they do and that I am not making their art. I just need to be myself and make my art, but I also need to be better than just me. I need to push myself further so that I can grow while making something new,. Not letting my ADD run my life is part of that journey for me.

I have confidence

After last week were I spent my time admitting that I pretty much suck at selling my self and my work, I spent some time thinking about other reasons why I am having trouble selling it. I suffer at times from crippling self doubt. It is odd really. I usually start off a project with all of the confidence in the world. New projects make me feel like I can do anything. I work on it with vigor, thinking to myself that I have just come up with the most brilliant idea since cheese and the no one will be able to resist it. I generally have an over abundance of confidence when I start out on a new venture in life. Sadly though as time progresses on the project I tend to become filled with doubt, and become more and more self conscious of my work.

I begin to think to myself that maybe I was a little over enthusiastic when I started. Maybe I didn't think things through and the concept of my work is really only cool and interesting to myself. Maybe I didn't execute it very well and people won't like the finished product and that I was promising more than I had delivered. The more time I spend on a project the more of these doubts find their way into my mind.

So as I am sitting here coming close to a year of having my Etsy shop, where I am still producing the same types of paintings that I was a year ago, I am beginning to doubt wether all of this was really a good idea in the first place. Every day I have to shake off these insecurities and think to myself that the one year of work I have put in has seen very little of this world and cannot, as yet, be deemed a failure. I cannot rightfully call this a failure yet, because it hasn't been given a chance to flourish. I have read about other shops and know that it takes time for things to get moving, and I just have to give it a chance.

I cannot assume success or failure of anything that I do until I have given it the opportunity it deserves. I cannot spend time being down on myself when I still have so much more that I can do in order to help this work that I have started. I have to see this through to the end to determine if it was good work to begin with. I cannot let self doubt kill my work, and as hard as it may seem, I need to push through the hesitation and worry and put myself out there even if I have doubts.

Everyone has doubts, nothing in  life is 100% guaranteed. What I do know is that if I never work past this mental block and try harder to get my work noticed, then I will never know if it was a success at all.

I'm not a salesman

I have weaknesses. Everyone does, but that should not be an excuse for me. I completely suck at selling myself. I don't like bothering people with advertising. I don't want to be a pain, and I don't want people to think less of my work because I have plastered it all over the place. I hate feeling like I am annoying or an inconvenience. I also don't like being social purely for the reasons of selling items.

I enjoy the process of creation more than I do the process of selling. As it is right now I have two completed pieces and a third one that I will finish soon. None of these pieces are not up for sale yet and I have been a little lazy about doing so. I also haven't been following my rules about how to keep up my social media presence.

All of this sales and social stuff is draining, and I don't feel like I get what I am looking for out of it. But I also realize that because I am not consistent about it that I will not get the results I want. I just keep dragging my feet. I make up excuses, and instead I waist my time doing things that are neither creative or actively selling my wares.

It is difficult trying to work on something that you are weak at. It is like trying out a new piece of gym equipment that works new muscles. Your body doesn't want to do the work because it hurts, and you aren't strong enough to do very well at it. But you find that the more you practice it the better you will get. The thing is that even though I am pretty good about consistency when it comes to working out, I am not very good being consistent on working on my social networking.

Some days, I wish I could find an easy way out. I imagine hiring someone to do all of the social stuff for me, so that all I have to do is be the creative hermit that I love to be. I imagine how much more fun for me that would be. The issue with that dream is, that unless I do the work to become successful enough to hire someone, I will never obtain that dream. I have to muddle through the hard stuff in order to move forward.

I have to remind myself all of the time, that I have to struggle doing the things that I hate, or are not good at, before I can see any results in my life. I may hate to eat my vegetables but there is really no other way that I am going to get healthy if I don't. The results I want don't come fore free, I have to do what needs to be done in order to get those results.

I hate to face the facts some days, like today, but I have to work in order to be successful, everyone does. There are always parts of life that are not going to be comfortable, but you just have to get through them or you are never going to get what you wanted out of life in the first place. Discomfort is what pushes us to be more than what we currently are.

Justified by the nets

The internets can be a trap. Everybody complains that they get on their computer to be productive and then get sucked into some social site, and then get nothing done. This is not the trap that I am talking about. That is something that we are all aware of. I am talking about a different kind of trap, the "like minded people" trap.

We spend time online connecting with people all over the world. This can be good for many reasons, we can network, and spread the word about things. We can work together to brainstorm ideas and be productive, we can learn, and share, and do all kinds of good things with the ability to access the countless people who are also on the nets. The down side? We find like minded people. These people think like us, they share like us, and like the same things as we do. That is great we all need friends and support, but they can also trap us. When we don't associate with people who are different than us, how can we learn to see things from different angles?

What happens is, that we go on line and see images and read quotes and talk to people who all agree with you. You want to feel good about yourself? There is someone out there to stroke your ego. There is a person who thinks you are beautiful no mater how you look, overweight or anorexic there is someone to tell you that what you are doing is great. Don't feel good about something? There is someone who will tell you that you are great, and that what you are doing is just fine. Don't really feel like going outside your box, there is someone to tell you that the box is a good place to be, and you shouldn't leave.

This can become a problem. We spend our days reading "uplifting" quotes and looking at inspirational pictures so that we can feel good about how we are right now. This is not how a normal human is meant to improve. This is how we become stagnant. We read these things and think, well, everyone likes me just they way I am I don't need to actually go out and do anything to improve myself. We end up giving up on life, without even realizing that is what we are doing. We think that we are great the way we are and never again think it necessary to get better.

Change and improvement is part of the human experience. It is what make us better people. When we think we are perfect the way we are, we couldn't be more wrong. There is always room for improvement, and if we are content with who we are now then we will never try to become better. How do we expect to make progress as a society if as individuals we refuse to do the work necessary to become better people. When we all think that we are good the way we are, we are essentially dooming our future.

Everyday is meant to be a day used for self improvement. When we surround ourselves with a pillowy, flattering social life that encourages us to stay the same as we were yesterday, we are killing the person who we once had the potential to become. Life is not about finding a state we can be happy with and just staying there. Life is about constant and continual improvement, even if that means things get a little uncomfortable along the way, and even if we fail every once in a while. We must keep moving forward or we are going to fall behind.

Overcoming the allure of depression

I go through periodic bouts of depression. They are very difficult to get myself to move on from. As anyone who may have depression would understand, all you really want to do is to sink into the couch and stop existing. I don't have motivation to do anything. It isn't that I don't want to do anything it is just that I cannot get my body and my mind to match. Things just don't add up. For some reason, for me these periods of depression feel like everything is wrong, that 2+2= -100. I have two working arms and two working legs and yet somehow I feel like I have nothing.

As bad as all of this is, it has it's own allure. It makes it hard for me to pull myself out of it. I feel more comfortable there. You hate being depressed, but for some reason your brain tricks you into thinking that doing something will somehow be more painful than sitting on the couch all day, living in this guilty self loathing cycle. You think that maybe experiencing life dealing with these everyday things could be worse than the depression. It is an interesting place, where you become comfortable with the pain.

That is the allure. Like that saying goes, better the devil you know, it is easier to just live with the depression. It becomes your friend, it becomes your excuse, it becomes that discussing habit that you try to hide from family and friends, like the addiction you still have to sucking your thumb. You push people away, because you like this depression friend, just like you enjoyed that tub of Ben and Jerry's. It tastes good and you don't really care about what it is doing to you. Who cares you haven't left the house in days or are wearing the same clothes you had on yesterday. Depression doesn't judge.

It takes awhile but eventually my logical brain shouts loud enough at me through the blanket of depression that I can actually hear it again. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Why is is necessary to live through so much pain? What's to say that you won't find something less painful if you go do something? You were happy doing things before, why would it be any different now? I finally remember what it was like to be happy, to do things, to go out and have friends. There is no need for me to be this sad. I must just remember that Depression isn't my friend. All it has done for me is make me sad and hurt. I have real friends that do actually make me feel happy, I used to to things that made me feel accomplished.

I swear to myself that I don't have to be sad ever again, but I know that these feelings will eventually creep back in. So I just need to try to remember that I don't have to be a victim to my own sadness. I can fight and be happy no matter how alluring the call of depression can be.

A different kind of creative

I enjoy allowing my creative side to take over. The only down side is, if I spend all day doing things that are widely considered creative, I will not get everything done that needs to be. I would just spend all day playing with paint and producing stuff and not get any thing else done like, cleaning, or brushing my teeth, or getting dressed. I have learned that the idea of creativity can be more broadly applied to things. Creative is another form of the word create. By breaking down the word to just the world create, being creative can mean much more than just the crafty notation that is normally associated with it. Basically the word can be applied to any activity that is productive or positive or constructive in any way.

By writing here I am being creative. By working on my finances I am being creative. By doing anything proactive really I am being creative. Exercise is creative, play with the kid is creative. Thinking this way means that anyone who does anything is being creative. I don't have to feel bad about a day that I haven't made art. Simply doing something I am exercising my ability to be creative. No one should ever think that they are not creative. You thought about it, and did something about that that thought, you are creative. So you sit in a cubicle every day, but you acted, you did work, earned money, made choices in your live; you have been creative.

When I have spent my entire day doing things that I don't necessarily feel proud of, all I have to do is remember that it was creative. It may not have been my best display of creative practices, but I was still creative. Nothing can take that away from me.

Today I was creative.

Thrift store master pieces

I make thrift store pieces all of the time. You can actually see all of the pieces that I have made here. They all work the same way. I have yet to document the progress of any of these pieces. So here I go. Below are the steps that I follow each time I find a new thrift store painting to add to. 

First you will need to get your supplies. Aside from the given that you will need paint and brushes, I generally use tracing paper, pencil and eraser, carbon paper, and then whatever tools necessary to carefully remove the picture from the frame. When it comes to removing the frame I can usually get away with prying all of the staples in the back of the frame up with a butter knife. What you use to do this is up to you. 

Here is the original. Cute isn't she? this is the space you have to work with. I usually visualize the finished piece with the frame still on the painting. I don't want to pull it out of the frame start my work and then when it comes to putting it back in the frame realize that I have cut something off or that it feel crammed into the space

While the frame is still on, put a piece of tracing paper over the picture and draw in the outline of what you are planning on painting into the picture. I leave the frame on just to better see how the picture will fit into the framed space. Here is where you will be able to determine if the composition fits well into the space. 

After I am content with the outline of my monster I have put on the tracing paper, I then remove the picture from the frame. There are sometimes surprises when you open the frame. Extra borders you didn't know where there, the matting is glued down. Opening the frame can be an adventure. This one was rather uneventful. Once you have the picture free, lay the carbon paper over the picture ink side down and the tracing paper over that, to transfer the sketch onto the picture. 

After transfer remove the tracing paper and carbon paper and make sure that all of your lines are visible and where they should be. 

I then, like to block in the color. You don't want the original painting to show through. This may take a couple of coats of paint depending on the opacity of your paint. 

After you have completely covered all of the original details with paint blocking. You can then feel free to start filling in details. 

Then be sure you do you finishing touches. Fill in shadows around your additions so that your work blends in with the original. It is my personal preference to make the added monsters subtle. I don't want them to stand out like a sore thumb. By adding drop shadows and blending into the back ground the additions don't seems as startling. It will not be perfect. You don't poses the same painting style as the person who made the original but it is nice to get it close.

Once you have completed your work give it time to dry. My acrylics have a tendency to stick to the glass if I put it back in the frame as soon as I am done. Then if you need to ever remove the picture again later for scanning or photographing the paint will stick to the glass and ruin all of your hard work.

After giving time to dry you can then put it back in the frame and enjoy your new piece of art.