Taking a Nap

There was a fear that I had when I stopped working, that I would have so much time on my hands I wouldn't know what to do with all of it. For the first year of unemployment I really didn't have much to fill my time up with. I would spend the day trying to invent things to fill up my time. Some days I would take a walk, or wonder around stores, or maybe just play around in my sketch book. I didn't really have a direction.

As I have spent more and more time as a stay at home mom I have added to my plate of responsibility till now, I have filled up that void of time. I have a kid to watch. I work on my art daily. I teach art, have church responsibilities, go to play dates, and try to maintain an orderly house. It is all great. I have systems and schedules that keep all of this together and for the most part things run smoothly.

Lately though I have added too much to my day all at once. It works for a while but it kind of ends up like this ( http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html ). I like to have responsibilities. It makes me feel not only productive but also important, like I am needed. I love the accomplished feeling that I get when I have done all of the things on my to do list. It is kind of like a high of some sort. The good feeling of accomplishment can be addictive to me.

Sadly, I can only keep this up for so long before I begin to burn out. There will come a time where I will eventually have to give into the fact that I cannot keeping going any more. People wear out, just like any machine part we are not meant to run on full blast forever without repercussions. None of this is helped by my cat who seems to think she needs to tickle my face with her whiskers at 3:30am every day.

So, I have been taking naps rather than spending more time on my art. Not that I have neglected doing art all together, I just haven't been working on it as much as I could have.

Taking a nap makes me feel guilty. I feel guilty for both logical and illogical reasons. I don't like the fact that I am wasting waking hours with sleep. I could be active and productive, but my body just doesn't want to. The other reason that I feel bad for taking a nap really doesn't make sense. I feel bad, because people all over the world are working right now, and I am just being lazy here taking a nap. I shouldn't be such a bum when other people are out and being productive contributing to society.

I know that naps are probably not the best use of my time. I also know that the kind of guilt I feel for napping is ridiculous. I just need to find a balance. I need to find a way to maybe nap every once in a while, to keep from burning out, but also stay productive so that I don't feel so guilty for taking breaks.

I am continually reminded that I must find balance in my life. The only way to keep going is to go slow and steady, then I will keep from crashing. Burning low and slow is better than fast and bright, so that you don't run out of fuel so fast.

Mistakes

I make mistakes all the time. Mistakes are not the same a failure, but they can be just as discouraging. Mistakes mean that you have to do more work than you originally intended. Mistakes can be defeating and are often the difference between success and failure.

The thing about mistakes is, that unlike a failure where there is little positive to be found at the end, a mistake is like an ellipsis. It is like a pause where you can fix, change direction, and even improve the finished product. Though you may not have made what you had planned on making, you have still made something, and you can still change it because you are not complete.

This week I was working on my commision piece that I started last week. I don't often paint humans and thus I don't often mix up flesh toned paint. I have always had difficulty matching flesh tones. it is much more precise than any other colors, because as people we spend all day looking at the flesh toned faces of other people, and just like being able to tell the physical differences between a set of identical twins we can discern the slight differences between the flesh tones of all individuals. This is part of why I spend so much time painting scenery and monsters, because people don't really have as vast a color vocabulary for those things as they do with skin.

So I was painting my luchador. He is for once human (as far as we can tell) under the mask, and being human has, well, skin. I mixed up quickly a skin tone color and blocked in where his torso would be, and then, because I hate painting flesh, moved onto his mask and pants leaving the skin alone for a couple of days. When I came back I realize that I had not really created a tone that matched the face of the man in the original painting. So I applied another layer of paint hoping this one would be better.

Feeling much more confident that I had done better this time, matching the skin tones, I immediately filled in the details of the torso giving him abs and pecs and belly button. I let it dry and came back a little later, only to my dismay, did I realize that I had still not matched the skin tone as well as I had expected.

This was incredibly disappointing to me as I thought I had worked hard enough to get it right, and I should just deserve for it to be right, even if I hadn't really gotten right. (If that sentence makes sense to you then kudos.) If I were to spend all day with full conviction and effort trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole, it still isn't going to change the answer. It just doesn't work. And just because I put all that effort into making it fit, doesn't mean I deserve the answer to change simple because I tried. It doesn't matter just how you look at it and how hard try, there is a right and wrong answer and you cannot make a wrong a right even if you think you earned it.

I could have just left it that way, but then would I have really put in the effort needed to make this piece a success? What would I feel towards this painting if I did just leave it? I realized that if I were to just leave it this way that I would always see the bad color matching job I had done and come in the end to actually resent this piece because of its failings.

So for a third time I attempted to match the skin of this luchador. Since I was putting in the effort to repeat my work for a third time I wanted to get it right this time. I didn't want all of this effort to be for nothing. This mistake forced me to see the skin tones of the original differently than I had been looking at them before. I started to see the layers of color, and the wonderful workmanship that was put into the original piece. This time I was able, as well as I could with my limited color pallet to match the skin of the original figure.

This taught me something about mistakes. Mistakes are opportunities for improvement. For whatever reason that the mistake was made in the first place it gives us a moment to pause and assess our work. Whether we made the mistake on accident, or due to our lack of skill mistakes are what make our work interesting. They can give us better ideas, or show us new strategies, or if anything they can give us the motivation to try harder and make it right. I had, had such a hard time matching the color of the original because I hadn't really looked at the original the right way to understand the colors that had been used. The two mistakes I had made in color were soon repaired by my new understanding of the color in the piece. I came away with a new ability to see, because of my mistakes.

Mistakes are not bad. They happen all the time and we should use them to improve ourselves rather than to prove that we are no good. They are not evidence that we are bad at something, but that we have potential for something and that we are working towards becoming great.

New School

If you have read my past posts you will know that I don't completely appreciate my college education. I learned many things that don't really apply to life; like how to pass a test and then immediately forget all of the substance, or how to show up to class but not really learn anything. Going to school also made me a bit dependant upon having an assignment. I am not very good about creating something from scratch. I rarely have completely original ideas and working with the constraints of an assignment has always helped me to form ideas.

I am still not sure how I feel about this. I like that I know how to direct my artistic thought process so that I can create something, but I don't like the fact that I have to depend on parameters and outlines in order to come up with something and that I am unable to come up with something new without them. I don't know how other peoples' artistic process works, so I have know idea if this is a common way of working, or if I am handicapping myself by my need for assignment type work. I think that this need for rules and guidelines has been part of my creative dysfunction lately. I have been trying to create something new but things just weren't coming because I didn't have any of these assignment type requirements.

I feel like this is why I love the thrift store pieces so much. I don't have to decide what size to make the piece, or what color pallet I want to use. My creativity has to work within the already established space of the piece that I find. This gives me the kind of direction that I need in order to fill the space in. The structure of the process reins in all of the half baked ideas that I may have and helps me to focus on something specific enough to actually be completed. I love working this way. It is how I function best.

So when I got a request for a custom order I got excited. I was contacted a while ago for a custom piece of art. It was wonderful. I could lay out rules and outlines for the piece that were to fulfill the need of the customer. I was givin sizing, subject matter, and even material requests. I can work with that, and I have embraced every moment of this piece.

It has been nice to be able to take a moment and relive my college days. I have been allowed to just fulfill an assignment. It is almost like taking another mini vacation. I know I just took a break to build a pinata, but this time I am being both productive and taking a mental break.

I don't know if this kind of indulgence is good for my overall personal growth. What do we really know about the creative process in general to be able understand if this kind of work is positive or negative. All I know is that has been great getting to work on an assignment again, and also have more encouragement that people like my work.

My current assignment in progress.

Summer distractions

Summer is one giant distraction. I have a ton of stuff that I want to get done before we get too close to the holidays again. That means that this stuff has to get done now, because if I wait to get working on it I will not get it done in time. Much of the art I make is for family and friends as gifts. This means that I have to be prepared for the holidays. The thing is that summer is the busiest time of the year for me.

I don't work, but I do live forever away from my family. This means that while they spend the school year working and being productive I don't have as much going on in my life, so I can work on my art. This also means that during the summer when it is time for me to buckle down, and get stuff done that has building up throughout the year, I get all kinds of visits. This can become distracting. Having family in town can be fun but also, well, distracting.

There are all kinds of other things about the nature of summer that create distractions in my life. I have a rather energetic kid that demands to go out all of the time or he will drive me crazy. Then because it is summer it is hot. That is a given. This means that when I go out I have to go prepared. I must have skin protection, a change of clothes, bathing suit, towel, snacks, hydration of some sort. All of this extra stuff I have to have and haul around makes me so much more tired at the end of the day that when it comes time to get to work on my art I have less motivation.

There has been so much going on lately that even this post has come days late. I knew all week what I wanted to write about, but because of the distractions and schedule changes and stuff, it got pushed to the last minute.

I could use a little down time to find my artistic zen. Sometime I don't need a vacation to relax, I just need to return to some kind of scheduling normalicy to regain my composure.

Oh well, it only lasts a couple months of the year then I can go back to a more tame version of my life.

Taking A Break

It is good to take a break. People take breaks from everything. We get breaks at work, we take a breather, it goes to show that even if we are working on things we like we need breaks. It isn't just about wanting a break, but needing on. We are living breathing creatures, and our bodies as well as our minds need a break every once in a while. Otherwise we would just burn ourselves out unable to cope with the continuous strain.We sleep every night, we take vacations, and in fact we have a tendency to schedule our whole year around the breaks that we take.

I have been working pretty hard at my art for quite some time now. I love my art, but even that has its limits. My imagination seems to be broken, (Whenever my imagination seems broken this is all I can think about:  http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail99.html  beef stew.) The other day when I sat down to think about why I have been having trouble coming up with new stuff, I realized that it has been months since I have really taken a break from work. My kitchen table has been cluttered up with art stuff for so long I don't really remember when I last saw it all cleared.

I am pretty regular at working out. I may hate even though I know it is good for me, and whenever I am working out I reflect constantly on the week I take off of my routine, and that only comes around after a 6 week period. But I don't really ever look forward to taking time off of my art. I stay dedicated and happy with the work the entire time. I really only realize that I need to take a break when my imagination starts to shut down. I would love to keep working on this stuff non stop, and if it weren't for my brain failing me I don't think I ever would stop working on my art. It is just too much fun for me to keep creating so long as the ideas keep coming.

Sadly, though I ran out of creative juices this last week. I have resigned myself to the fact that I need to take a break from my art. I don't really think I could stop creating all together. In my effort to stay active despite my artistic vacation, I have decided to start building myself a piñata for my birthday. I have been wanting to make one for ages, and with my birthday coming up it seems like the right kind of diversion to reset my imagination.

I used to have a most active imagination when I was working in data entry jobs. The work was mindless and my hands were busy so my brain could wander in infinite space creating and imagining for hours. There are now many more things in my life to tug at my brain and pull me from the world of imagination. This pinata will keep my hands busy so that my mind can get the chance it needs to wander the in vast landscape of my imagination and find new ideas to play with.

I don't have any tips or tricks to resetting my imagination, and making ideas come when things are broken down in there. What I do know is that when I take a break from my work, and come at it again my imagination comes back fully rested and ready to make something new. There is no reason to think that you are a failure because you cannot come up with something new, you just need to let your creative mind have the rest that it needs, because our minds just like our bodies need rest.

Your mind is just like any muscle, if you don't use it regularly to come up with creative ideas its creative capability becomes weak. You are never not creative, the muscle doesn't just disappear because you don't use it to just loses mass.  You just need to give it a rest and come back to it again building up its strength with use. Don't neglect the creative muscle, but also don't try to over extend it, either of those will only end in break down. The best thing to do is to use your creativity regularly but also take breaks before you completely burn out.

Now back to my piñata. I have some paper-mache to mix up.

I don't want to change

I don't know why I am so resistant to change sometimes. I have a way of doing things, and I like my little systems for getting things done. I used to get critiques all of the time when I was in school. People would push me to go outside of my box, and try new styles and techniques of work that would open me up to new discoveries in my artistic practice. It is always good to be willing to change. Making changes in how we work, is the only way we can make improvements. The only way to make things better is to make changes.

It is like that saying goes, "Insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." If I use the same techniques and procedures to do all of my work forever; I will no longer be improving my work, and eventually will no longer be relevant.

Despite all of this I am still often resistant to change. I am a creature of habit and feel comfortable in my life of ritual. I have had pointers and suggestions about my work from several different sources, but I have been unwilling to change. I think it comes down to two things.

The first reason that I may be resistant to change is that I am lazy. I like the way that I do things. It is easy to repeat the same procedures on every art piece that I am working on, then that way I don't have to try as hard to produce something. Also the suggestions that I have received are more labor intensive than what I have been doing previously. Why should I do more work for an end result when I could just do it the easy way? This is no way to think because a better process cannot be found if I am unwilling to try a new things.

The second reason for my resistance is that my creative mind seems to be dead lately. I mean I have a list of projects that I want to work on, but they are all things that I have been doing. I will finish them, because they are what I want to do, but when it comes to working on something new none of my ideas have been able to come together into something that I can actually make. I get these hints of an idea but nothing that is strong enough yet to form the basis of a new piece.

I don't know what to do about this mental block I have against this new process. I have been waging a battle against the artist's block that has been holding me back for weeks. The only reason that I have been able to keep working is, because when I was still able to grasp things from my imagination I wrote them down and have stored up ideas to keep working on. The thing is that if I continue to battle with my creativity like I am right now I am going to run out of things to work on.

If I get the the point where I don't have anything left on my list of projects then I will become inactive. When I don't have any active projects I stop working, and go into my lazy depressed phase and don't work on anything for months.

What I need is to figure out a way to implement the suggestions people have made into my work. I need to take these things and run, use them to inspire my next pieces of art. This will kill two birds with one stone. I will be able to avoid falling into the lazy inspiration-less pit of depression, and I will be able to implement the changes to the work that will improve it. I just have to work harder at finding my next inspiration so that I can get onto making these changes.

Though I don't have any strategies to defeating a creative slump. If I keep working at it I usually come up with something.  If only beating your head against the wall actually worked to help you come up with ideas. Oh, well inspiration will come and if it doesn't I will just have to do creative exercises to make them come. One way or another I will keep moving forward.

Many thanks

I have quite recently started teaching art to a kid in my area. It kind of just happened, and I am making up lessons on the fly with not real curriculum. The classes are informal and take place at my kitchen table where I do all of my own art, but it is kind of fun.

Getting ready to teach each week has made me reflect on lessons I had when I was learning how to draw and do art. It has also made me thankful for all of the art teachers I have had through the years. I don't really think I would have discovered my love for art without out them.

I have one teacher in particular that I am especially grateful for. She taught outside of school like I am with this kid. I learned things that no in-school art teacher would have ever gotten to. She was and is still an actual practicing artist. I learned from someone who makes art that I admire. It was great to gain insight that is so fundamental to my own art practice.

The most important thing that she taught me was how to see. She taught me the difference between symbols we use to communicate and the lines of the real world. In our lessons she broke me out of the habit that most people never break, that compulsion to draw with symbols rather than drawing with their eyes. I am a very logical person and at times it can be quite difficult for me to see real life through the symbols that permeate our lives. Up until the point in my life where I had that lesson, I had always thought that I didn't posses the skill to become an artist. I thought the most creative thing I could do was write. I was pretty sure that I would end up doing some kind of average desk job.

I have leaned to see the shapes of things. I have learned the difference between the weird almond shape that has a circle inside it that is a symbol for a eye and what a real eye looks like. I didn't know what I was doing when I was learning these lessons. They were just assignments. She managed to teach us without us realizing just what it was that we were learning. Now that I know what she was teaching I am eternally grateful for these lessons.

With the new objective I have to teach another how to draw, I feel like I can actually do this. She prepared me so well with the fundamentals of drawing and the lessons she taught me were simple enough I feel like I could easily pass on this learning to others. She broke down the concept of drawing so well for me that I feel like anyone could learn to draw if they had the desire to.

I am so thankful for the gift she gave me, that I have learned how to express myself through art. I don't know that I could ever express to her how much I appreciate this skill in my life. Though I may not ever see her again I just needed to share my gratitude for her lessons. I would not be the person I am today if I had never attended her classes. They became the direction of my life and continue to help me as make my way through this world.

I don't know who I would be without art, but I am thankful for what it has done for me in my life.