Patti,
Glad you liked the list. And yes, you can use it as your permission slip. Sort of a creativity doctor’s note… cool. Oh, and keep it up with the frustration! You haven’t lived until you’ve spent a good amount of time banging your head against the wall… err, maybe that’s not the way to sell it. On the other hand, maybe that’s the way the Muses set it all up; you know, kind of separates the folks who are in love with the idea of being an artist from those who actually are.
I’m not a teacher; I’m just some guy. The daily focus is my thing. That is to say, “That B. Fuddled guy is a short, funny looking guy who’s a might too intense. We should turn the lights off and make like we’re not at home.” Focus can be a two-edged sword; and I can’t really turn mine off. Best to aim the focus at something positive.
Little aha moments happen all the time; aha, everything feels right as I push the charcoal to imply the bark on the branch of the tree I’m sketching. Maybe those are more ahhh moments than aha moments, though. It’s that certain sense of relief that it’s all making sense at that moment.
Big AHA moments are usually done in retrospect… AHA! Looking back I can see that’s the moment when that terrible thing happened, I bumped into someone who happened to say, so I bought this book, that began the journal, that had that doodle, that prompted me to make a sketch, that opened me up to the idea that perhaps all my art is simply the gathering of, and so I started a project that mushroomed into four ideas and now I can’t stop! Wow, seven years have passed.
Medium is kinda not the point for me. When you build a house, you don’t focus on your hammer or decide you’re a screw driver person. You focus (that word again) on the house and what it takes to build it. Reminds me of them three pig fellows: a whole house of straw, a whole house of sticks; of bricks. Blech! Unless you’ve got a wolf in the neighborhood, what’s the point? I’m doing a still life right now that I see as being a watercolour wash (watercolour looks so much cooler in British!). But I’m pretty sure the figures I’ve drawn on my light box will be brush and ink; I mean, they just look that way… who am I to argue? Oh, and that tree in my sketch book looks so right as a pencil sketch, I’m sort of wary about developing it in color; unless I were to use a big brush and some acrylics; maybe get all textural and stuff (hmmm, I should write that down somewhere).
Here’s me waking up in the morning: “Bother! You mean that was just a dream? Well, there had better be coffee!” That’s when I begin my morning routine which ends with me in the studio picking-up the threads of where I left-off yesterday. I always leave some threads dangling. After all, let’s face it! There’s all that morning mishigas in your head like; ‘fear of failure’ and ‘doubt’ and ‘who do you think you are, posing as artist-type person,’ and ‘why couldn’t you be more like your brother, the middle manager and when am I going to see some grandchildren and you can’t dream your life away and are you really going to wear that shirt?!’ Uhm… sorry. Anyway, no. No, I do not have any medium/technique/combo thingy that gets me out of bed in the morning.
Lady, I totally get the ‘mystery’ vibe! If I can get the bossy part of my brain to shut-up (usually I occupy it with some music. The little bugger can be such a loud know-it-all, but it’s easily distracted) then I can just start drawing. Of course, once the song ends or whatever, I wake-up and realized what I’ve done. Then the bossy voice starts evaluating and asking how, exactly, did I do it so that I can do it again?! Which is followed by that cold, sweaty, queasy feeling of, I have no frikkin’ idea! All this ends one of two ways: I either revel in the mystery of it all and turn my iTunes back on, or, hours later my wife comes home to a dark house with me, huddled in the fetal position in a corner somewhere. I mean, I’m o.k. with either outcome, but one is definitely more productive than the other.
Oh, oh!! And process need not be slow! Dive, baby! Slow can be read as relaxed, quiet mind, flow. Ya can’t breath easy, quiet your mind, flow, dive; if you’re all tense, jervous and nerky! Sing, dance, laugh… dive!
