Process Drawing

I avoid this meeting place, to not have to feel the trepidation, the sense that I can’t do it well enough. When I attempt something creative and it doesn’t turn out like I want, it’s not that gratifying and starts to create a resistance. Like when too much electricity goes through a too small wire, heat builds up where the electricity can’t pass through.

The next morning when I have some quiet time, I get out my sketch book. I love trees. I love their structures, the character of each species and the way they vary.

I love the shapes of leaves, and the veins that show the growth patterns. The veins are really important when you draw leaves, they inform the whole shape and help show the 3D-ness of them.

So, I’m journaling in my sketch book and I ask myself to draw just a small part of the redbud tree beside my porch. I am intrigued with just that one place where the low branch meets the trunk. I find that day, that working small and focusing on what intrigues me most feels good. (focusing more on the observing than the actual drawing.)

As I do this, I am falling in love with the morning sun on the trunk of the tree and the way the clouds cause the light to change, the sound of the wind in the new leaves. The sound that I had missed so much this winter.

My requirement is that I make the attempt, feel what comes up, spend time observing visually, and keep coming back to the playfulness of it.

Probably all this is in the Artist’s Way and I had just forgotten it, or is it in the Drawing on the Right Side of your Brain? Certainly much of it is coming from the study group with Sarah Oblinger. It feels like the kind of thing I just had to experience, will experience over and over, in order to get it from the inside. It seems to be the only way to call up the commitment to do it, to match the will with the desire.

As I’m journaling this in my sketch book, I keep asking myself to come back to the tree trunk. Just look at the place that is attracting my eye, soaking up the feeling and letting the pencil do as it will.

process and commitment

I ended up drawing avocados this week... go figure.... with markers in my altered book and just designs with color. There was something floating around my consciousness about commitment and focus. At a workshop, process painting seemed easy. But at home, I was bolting when I would make an attempt and not like it right away. But now I am trying to hold my own hand as I start a piece and ask if I can stay with it long enough to see where it might go, if I might not find a way to like it again if I start to judge it. Or just use it as an experiment if it seems "ugly."

I did one earlier that felt "garish". But I also know that if I saw it and it was someone else's work, I'd think it was cool enough. It feels like the more I ask my critic to stop awhile and go have tea, the louder it can holler. I saw an article about left/right brain stuff this week and am toying with ideas about games or activities to do before I paint to help switch from my left brain /work-a-day mode to a more accepting right brain mode. I do just try to hear it and log it as "that is one way of looking at it, but there are other ways to look at it too..." The left brain is so bossy and so sure it is right!

Above is a picture I call Abalone soup. I was just playing around with some booty from beach combing. Do you have any fun games you like to do to just get playful?

myth of control

I have been knitting more than
"making art" lately.

As I have been trying to let more sensory awareness happen in my art making, just gently letting the subconscious drift up to consciousness, I noticed all my feelings about the things in life that are out of my control, which are many right now, make it hard to let go into something creative that might be out of my conscious control as well.

(Ok guys, ou can skip the past the knitting part to the last paragraph) I think that is why knitting is so appealing right now. It seems that while it is a fairly left brain activity (linear, stitches, etc.) it also puts that same part to sleep with its repetition. It feels like a nap or sometimes a meditation. My study group facilitator said that she attempts to “knit with attention” (my words) that she stays aware of her body, her position, hands, feet, is she holding tension somewhere in her body. She said she applies the same “rules” of process painting, sensing what color is calling to her most, not pulling out stitches when she has made a “mistake”. So now I try to notice if I am a million miles away, and ask, where are my feet? Are they cold, hot, comfy, squished? What do I notice about the yarn? Am I tensing my right shoulder?

I have started a pair of wrist warmers with a silk wool blend that is soft and nicely colorful. I am using a periwinkle and spring green along with snatches of other colors. They were the colors that were calling me this week. That green just wants to happen in my soul and the light periwinkle is very soothing and balances the brite green. I think the periwinkle looks like the sky in one of my paintings. I am also in love with my bamboo knitting needles. They feel like they have a “feng shui” to them. I am not sure what bamboo is, is it wood? For that matter what is wool/silk yarn? But anyway, they feel right in my hands, comforting and grounding. They have a softer click and a “warmer” feel than the metal ones.

There are just times when knitting is what I need to balance the emotional and physical demands of the week. What I do when I can't dive into the uncontrollable malestrom. But then I feel the pull to something more and still want to gently stretch into: -is there a way to make art that expresses uncomfortable feelings but doesn't swamp me with overload, when life is already overloaded right now. (end knitting discussion!! you guys can start reading again.)

This picture above is where I'd like to be right now to get away from winter....

I'd love to hear your experiences with the process of creativity and any times you have felt blocked or too busy to slip into your creative self, and also what happened to help you get back to it.