Ojalá, Selah, Lateda

IF: Packed

September 30, 2008 on 8:40 am | In Illustration Friday | 11 Comments

“The cares of this world were

 so tightly packed around her

that it was all she could do

to guard her kernel of truth.”

For Illustration Friday: Packed

---

This is actually the cover of my new notebook to write my morning pages for The Artists’ Way. I started with a quick sketch with blue ball point pen that I scanned in and printed out larger. I then cut it out and pasted it on scrapbook paper which I pasted on a composition book. I was just going to do a few touches of color on it and then cover the whole thing with contact paper, but I got carried away and the image just kept getting bigger and more colorful, packed full even.

Artist’s Way: End of Week 3 - Beginning of Week 4

September 24, 2008 on 1:30 pm | In Artists Way, Post-Its | 2 Comments

I wrote the title of this post in a textedit window at about 6:15 this window. I made the window small in the upper left corner of my screen and started my work. I figured that throughout the day I would slowly build up a post. But its now just an hour from time to go and this is all I have. I think the problem may be that I don’t have much to say about week 3 of doing the Artist’s Way, but I didn’t want to go onto Week 4 without giving week 3 so much as a mention. Sooooo, let’s just get ‘er done.

Week 3 was difficult for me. I was in a bad mood most of the week. I thought it had to do with politics and the state of the world in general. I didn’t figure it actually had anything to do with the Artist’s Way process until I started reading other people’s comments on the hub. It made me feel much better to know that I wasn’t alone.I felt especially convicted by the statement, “Many artists begin a piece of work, get well along in it, and then find, as they near completion, that the work seems mysteriously drained of merit.” I have unfinished art work all over the place. I have a painting on my easel that I haven’t worked on in months, a pile of just started paper maché masks from January under the server in the dining room, and a at one time oh so promising relief in the garage, just to name a few. Apparently this is a “routine coping device employed to deny pain and ward off vulnerability.” Wow. So I’m going to be working on finishing some art. I am really really going to try and let go of worrying about whether something is going to turn out good or bad and just finish it and move on. I am going to try and focus on the quantity and “let God take care of the quality.” Illustration Friday has been great for me as far as actually finishing pieces. I’ve finished more in the past few months of doing IF than in the past 4 years combined. And I think this week of not reading is going to really help as well.

Today is my second day going without reading or listening to my podcasts. When I open my internet browser my feed reader comes up first so it has been really hard not to start clicking and reading. But I have been enjoying listening to my music and this morning I was in a great mood when I woke up. And I’m still feeling pretty good. I’m sure it must be related to the absence of political/financial news and opinion in my head. Ignorance is bliss? Back several years ago I wrote a couple of paragraphs about how reading a good book was just like recreational drugs. I’ve been trying to find it but I think it might have been in an email or a comment on someone else’s blog. I may have to try and rewrite it in honor of this week being on the wagon, literarily speaking.

IF: Clique

September 23, 2008 on 12:40 pm | In Illustration Friday | 5 Comments

For Illustration Friday: “Clique”

I have had so much fun creating this image. I sketched and colored several ideas then scanned them in and played with them, then I pulled in some scans of doodles and kept playing. I then printed it out and added some more by hand then scanned that back in and played some more. A very enjoyable process.

IF: Island by Sebastian

September 16, 2008 on 6:30 am | In Illustration Friday | 8 Comments

This is my seven year old son’s first piece for Illustration Friday, his take on “island.”He has watched me work on my submissions the past few weeks and has been very supportive of me and now wants to participate as well. I am proud of him. 

Artist’s Way: Week 2

September 14, 2008 on 7:19 pm | In Artists Way | 2 Comments

This has been a very intense week for me. My emotions have been all over the place. Politics, weather, global issues, office issues, and family schedules all seemed to be boring down on me to keep me from focusing on the week’s reading and tasks. Friday I didn’t manage to do more than write the date in the notebook where I keep my morning pages. I was wondering if I needed to just call the whole thing off and go find a hole to stick my head in ostrich style. But then yesterday morning, Saturday, I woke up enough ahead of my family to spend half an hour in meditation on the Prayer of Saint Francis and then start on my morning pages. I thought I would write 6 pages instead of 3 to make up for the day before. Instead I wrote 14. The time spent meditating on the prayer right before the writing really helped me zero in on my strongest block in letting myself be an active artist. The prayer is a well known one but always worth reading again:

Lord make me an instrument of Thy peace;
That where there is hatred I might sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I might seek
not to be consoled, but to console,
not to be understood but to understand,
not to be loved, but to love.
For it is by giving that we receive,
by pardoning that we are pardoned,
and by dying to self that we are born into eternal life.

It was as I was repeating that last part that I realized that a big part of me still thought that making art was too much about myself, about my being understood, my being loved, about creating little images for the sake of my own pleasure in them. I couldn’t see how making visual art was going to do anything at all the further the kingdom of God. I realized that I could see how words or music could be an outreach but I was completely devaluing the power of images. But as I scribbled through page after page I came to feel the Holy Spirit’s assurance that I am being led down a path. That though I can’t see it from here that there is a way that God can use my images for something and that I was not being selfish or egocentric or un-Christian by trying to make art. I am not doing justice to the moment, I am uncomfortable when I read myself starting to sound too mystical, so let me just say I had a great spiritual/artistic breakthrough. I left my waking family and took a leisurely walk through my neighborhood to enjoy the feeling for a while before beginning our day.

And what a day we had. We had breakfast as a family before my husband went off to work and the kids and I headed to soccer practice. My daughter made a new friend and they played without incident as I sat sketched out ideas for my Illustration Friday submission. We came home and showered and dressed and then since I had taken my solitary walk in the morning we went on a 3 person artist date. My kids and I drove up to Dahlonega and had a great lunch at a neat little Italian place, listened to live bluegrass music in the square and then drove through the mountains to the Funky Chicken Art Project which I have been meaning to visit for several years now. We really enjoyed ourselves. When we came home we rested for a while and then the kids worked on painting their birdhouses while I started turning my sketches into a painting. We ate our leftovers from lunch for dinner and kept painting till bedtime. It was a lovely day.

The painting is not lovely. It is very awkward, but I posted it for Illustration Friday’s “Island” prompt anyway. The image is an honest one and painting it helped me in dealing with the political/spiritual angst I’ve been feeling. Besides I am really embracing this “it’s ok to make bad art” concept. Now I can’t wait to get started on week 3.

 

IF: Island

September 14, 2008 on 6:16 pm | In Illustration Friday | 5 Comments

I have really hesitated about posting this image for Illustration Friday this week. I have never much liked political art because it often comes off as forced and awkward. It seems like some political artists are willing to compromise artistic quality in order to make their point. I think I have completely fallen into that trap with this image. I find the image very awkward and full of mistakes of technique and scale and posture. But somehow I’ve grown very fond of it anyway. I feel like it honestly represents my feeling of being an island of liberal thought in a church, county, state, and quite possibly a country that feels the opposite as I do. And hopefully it also expresses that despite politics I am still sitting beside those I so intensely disagree with as we pray to the same God we all love and are trying to follow the best we know how.

First Artist’s Date

September 9, 2008 on 7:59 pm | In Artists Way | 1 Comment

I can’t believe it is Tuesday and I am just now writing about the end of my first week working through “The Artist’s Way.” -sigh- I have a lot of good excuses but I’ll skip them for now. I am happy to report that I wrote morning pages, or early afternoon pages if necessary, every day this week. I wrote a lot of affirmations and worked through several of the tasks. I didn’t get to go on my artist’s date until Sunday and I didn’t go where I originally wanted to go, but at least I made it.My family and I live in a very small town (we just got a Wal-mart in the last 2 years) north of Atlanta and we don’t get out all that much. My husband is a huge American football fan but all we have hooked up to our tv is a vcr and a dvd (read: no cable) so he asked if we could go down towards the city to a sports bar where he knew that supporters of his non-southern team congregate to watch the game Sunday after church. We went and had lunch and a beer and then I left my sweet family to watch the game with the fanatics and I went to spend an hour at the new Barnes and Noble. It was lovely. First I just wandered around, not sure what to do with myself in a store without whining children asking to either be bought something or to be taken home. I browsed the bargain books, the art books, the Christian books, the general spirituality books and spent quite a bit of time comparing prices and designs of blank books, journals and moleskines. I debated on just how much a good cup of coffee was worth to me and then found the magazine section. I had forgotten just how many magazines are out there. I secured a rather comfortable (though not padded) seat near a window and pile of magazines. I leisurely looked through 3 art magazines and a design magazine. No one distracted me in any way what so ever. Weird. Very weird. I was not very moved by the art I found in the magazines but as I was putting them away and getting ready to leave I walked by the craft magazine section. There a magazine called the “Artful Blog” jumped off the shelf and into my hands. It was a full color magazine printed on high quality coated stock featuring photographs and text from web logs! I was flabbergasted but fascinated. I sat back down and studied it for a while. I was familiar with one of the blogs featured, but all of them were beautifully presented. I jotted down a lot of urls to add to my reader for future inspiration. I can’t even pretend to understand the state of media these days. What a confusing yet exciting time to be an artist, everything seems to be in such flux.  I could go on and on, but, again, I won’t. I bought myself a small hard bound blank book that I can carry around in my purse and a Spanish translation of a Magic Treehouse book for my son and headed back to the sports bar to pick up my children. Overall I am very satisfied with my first artist’s date. I hope the next 11 will be as good. I have some other issues from week 1 that I consider significant and would like to discuss, and week 2 already has my mind racing but it is bathtime so I am done for now.

IF: Clutter

September 9, 2008 on 12:20 pm | In Illustration Friday | 8 Comments

For Illustration Friday: Clutter

Unfortunately clutter is something with which I am very familiar. 

IF: Memories (Take Two)

September 3, 2008 on 6:36 am | In Illustration Friday | 6 Comments

“She carefully filed her memories away to be retrieved later for pondering.” 

A second attempt at Memories for Illustration Friday: I posted my original pen & ink sketch of this yesterday but then last night I went home and worked on taking it further as a painting. I think it is much more interesting. 

Bad Art

September 2, 2008 on 8:38 pm | In Artists Way | 2 Comments

Yesterday one of the quotes I ended my post with was “In order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner.” That seems to be my quote of the day today. I worked on some of the time travel exercises and thought about all the different careers I might have chosen, but in my morning pages and as I fruitlessly checked my Illustration Friday post for a comment more times than I would care to admit I realized I really really don’t want to be a bad artist.  My father is an accomplished artist and as a child everyone thought I was a natural. Even in kindergarten I would not have called myself a beginner. But as someone who only makes art in fits and starts it is silly to think that I could just pick up a brush or a pencil at will and create a masterpiece every time. It is ridiculous to see myself type it out, but I believed it. I’ve created myself a list of the major things my censor repeats to me that I need to battle. Being willing to be a bad artist may not be my biggest obstacle in becoming “brilliant and prolific” but it surely ranks in the top 3.