The Wayfaring Wordhack

I spent yesterday in bed for the most of the day.  Whatever crud the kids had, I seem to have gotten, too.  Only fever is the only unifying factor in how we have all been affected.  Ti'Loup's was vomiting, Farmer Boy headache, and mine is mostly respiratory.  Another difference:  Theirs was a 24hr thing, and mine is still going on. :-/ So I am wiped out today, too, which is not helped by the fact that I couldn't sleep last night from discomfort, fever, etc.  


Our Internet is not working today (using my phone's data to post this), and of course the house is a mess.  This is Lebanon, so a tech *could* come by today even though it is Sunday.  Because the family is at church, I have to stir my weary, aching bones to straighten the house a bit.


The art I was talking about before is found below.  Forgive me for not expounding a lot.

This was an exercise suggested in this video to get different characters than one would normally draw:


And this was just something from my mind:



I tried to finish it up yesty while in the worst throes of ick, but I see things I need to fix when I feel better...if I want to bother. :P

ok, rant erased because I really don't feel like rehashing everything.

Moving on.

I did another small painting on the toned paper with a red underpainting, going for a more illustrative style.  It was not really a success. :P.  I wanted to paint our sad little lemon tree during a thunderstorm without worrying overly much about anything like perspective, etc.  Raindrops were falling all over the painting, and I was quite cold by the end of it.  I will try to salvage it, perhaps, with ink because colored pencils didn't do much.  In any case, I did art, and that counts for something.  Again I tried to photograph it and my phone just refuses to focus.  I have no idea how to fix it.  So annoying.

With only two days left in the month, I figured it was time I checked in with Artober and my doings so related.

I drew steadily until the 19th when birthday preparations and shingle flare-ups dictated that I reduce all "non-vital" tasks to a minimum.

When I started to feel better and the birthdays were past, the desire to do the challenge just wasn't there. In fact, I was regretting my choice of challenge and wondered why I didn't pick something more in line with my goals.  The inertia was strong enough that I didn't resume the challenge  or revise it to suit me.  C'est la vie.

I did however, finish my book cover assignment, and that involved a lot of arting. :P   I also made good progress on my cardigan, even though I am still about 15 rows away from where I will have to start leaving space to insert the sleeves.  I worked a bit on my Dynamic Sketching, finishing up (at last!) the scorpions and doing a final drawing in the bug section of a spider, which led me into the part about "automobiles."  Less exciting than bugs, but still very useful.

My middle grade story that is a follow-up to the one I wrote in 2016 during NaNo also got some love from me this past month.  Since NaNo is right around the corner, my thoughts naturally turn to toying with signing up.  However, it will not get beyond toying.  I am going to be very busy and will be traveling for a week to a place I have wanted to go ever since I was a kid.  Stay tuned. ;)

In other news, we might be closer to getting a new flat and that has taken up a considerable amount of energy, albeit mental.  Our move date is still at the end of the year, but it would be nice to have something settled well before then, yeah?

 I bought a 6-pack of Dongxu-Art Black Woodless Graphite Pencils, opting to try them out rather than a more expensive (and already-known-to-me) brand.  I regret my decision.  I don't really like the way they lay the graphite down, but I have had worse.  My biggest gripe with them is how breakable they are.  I dropped one and it snapped.  Ok, I thought, that one is on me.  But yesterday, I was holding a paper against a window, and using the sunlight like a light-table to do a reverse tracing on some fancy lettering for my Jack and the Beanstalk cover. 

I was not applying excessive pressure, and the pencil just snapped in half in my hand.

:(

Not happy.

 These are some random things, in no particular order, that I want to jot down for myself

-- I learned that the "blue light" filter on my glasses falsifies paint colors, which can give an artist serious angst!  I kept insisting that the colors on my floor were not right, and everyone else said they were fine, not jarring, etc.  Finally, I took off my glasses and realized that my lenses had severely yellowed my tones. :-/  Good to know for the future.  Since I am going to get serious about this illustration thing, I think I need to get myself a very cheap pair of basic glasses to wear while doing art. 

-- I need to do a better job of focusing on what is the primary purpose/mission of a task.  As I pointed out in my post about the first day of the workshop, this was an illustration class!  No one ever heard or saw my story, not even Maya.  It was all about illustrating key scenes.  I did not need pretty sentences or flow.  I just needed an idea of what to show on the storyboard.  I wasted sooooo much time on non-essentials, which led to a loss of time and opportunity to do the needful things, not to mention it created unnecessary stress and fatigue by having to work at home, etc.

-- While it was an intensely fun experience creating with other artists, it can be tiring for a certain personality (mine) when surrounded by so many people who have doubts about their abilities/projects.  I like to serve people; I am a caretaker.  I am geared to encourage others, build them up, see to their needs, but it can be terribly draining doing it all the time for so many people.  NO ONE expected me to do anything for them, and often people probably didn't want my feedback, so I was quiet.  But at the same time, I was *feeling* it all.  It was interesting to learn this about myself in this context.

-- I have mentioned before that I don't visualize things like some other creatives seem to do (many people say they see a movie/scene in their head and then proceed to write or draw that movie/scene).  For me, the movie is never there in more than tiny snippets and those snippets only appear for me *after* I have pieced them together and polished them, *creating* the movie that I can then view.  This initial creation comes about after careful pondering, much research, and lots of trial-and-error.  Once I get an idea, I tend to stick with it.  This can be bad if the first thing that occurs to me is banal, stereotypical or cliché.  So it is important that iI feel my way forward and follow what resonates with me without boxing up the idea too soon.  Part of my fleshing-out process is asking myself questions.  Case in point from the workshop:  Why was the stranger willing to sell/trade his beans for Jack's cow?  What in the world was that man up to? What was he hoping to achieve?  I got really hung up on those questions and wanted to understand before I could write version my of Jack and the Beanstalk, which would serve for my storyboard.  The guy never made an appearance except as a character study and as an indistinct figure in my thumbnail sketches for the storyboard.  I don't know where I am going with this except to note that Maya looked at me like I was an alien when I tried to describe my process.  She contents herself with saying, This character is poor, this one is rich, and drawing accordingly.  This need to know more, I told her, is why I don't want to illustrate other people's works, only my own where I know *why* things are the way they are.  But seriously?  I need to loosen up just a tiny bit and draw what seems fun and interesting without sweating everything so much.  But even typing that makes me cringe a little...

-- The space in which you create has a big impact on how you feel.  Believe it or not.  Maya's studio is gorgeous and I *felt* like being artistic while there.  I need to remember this and work as hard as I can to create an inviting space for myself.  Maya would put on music whenever we had electricity (She pays to have electricity all day, but:  Welcome to Lebanon), and while I didn't always like it, it was nice to have on and even nicer to have the other ladies singing along to it. :D So, note to self, put on music you like while doing art.

Here, have some eye-candy:
I think there were more things I wanted to say, but as often happens, I have not been able to write all of this in one go and the lateness of the hour now make it too hard to think.  Because this is post for me, I will probably come back and add to it if I think of anything else rather than making a new post.

ETA:  
-- Don't under-estimate the power fatigue has to derail and demotivate you.  Be aware that this is always going to be a roller-coaster ride of emotions and self doubt. There will be no moment of, "I have this now and will never have to fear failure again!"

And something I said to myself in the shower before the workshop began:  Being precious never finished a project.  Don't be afraid of making a wrong line or putting down the wrong color.  That's what you need to do to find the right line and the right color, just like saying the wrong thing can help you define more clearly and truly what do do want to say.  So speak up, boldly put down the wrong line, and courageously apply that color.  If it is "wrong," take it as an opportunity to get closer to what "right" is.

 I will try to do a wrap-up this weekend  There is a lot to say and something to show. :P

Right now I want sleep and a lot of it.

I have dedicated as much time and energy as I could this past week to prepping for my workshop with children's book illustrator Maya Fidawi.  Her beautifully-colored work is fun and fresh, full of heart, whimsy and glimpses of Lebanese life.  I am very excited for the opportunity to learn from her.

( What I have been up to on the creative front this week )
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* The ending is still pretty wobbly, and I don't know if I can fit in into a 32 page format; might have to go for 40, which is not the best for a Mrs. Newbie No-Name.

This week, instead of showing you the inside of my sketchbook, I shall show you the outside because asakiyume  recently spoke about stamps. :)

I actually have several sketchbooks, but one of them has a paper cover that is stained and looks rather ratty, so I decided to cover it with stamps (back when we were still in France).  This is taking a while because snail mail is not much in vogue these days and we are living in a country where we don't receive mail through regular channels. :P.  Also, glue-stick adhesive doesn't seem the best for the job and I am forever sticking down the edges of the stamps.  It, therefore, continues to look ratty but in a more artistic, well-used way...or so I like to tell myself. ;)


On the creative front, some writing and some art happened.  I guess we can color me happy.

( because I need to stop worrying about things sucking and just share from time to time ) How about you?  How was your week?

Following my post yesterday, I sat down and wrote a couple hundred words (Actually, I just counted and I got 750!). I meant to storyboard my children's book this week, too, but did not get around to it with all the social whirl and sick kiddos.

My art this week mainly consisted of doing lots of abstract landscapes, following YouTube tutorials with varying degrees of success. Some pieces only yielded tiny snips of interesting effects. While it is great fun to play with paint*--learning how to produce different effects, seeing how the pigments react, etc--I don't know that I will do many more because I want to build certain skills at this point and don't see an immediate benefit to mastering abstract-yielding techniques.**

Salvaging:

( mini abstract landscapes )

These are small, the two on the left only being min 6  and max 10 cm per side, and I cut them large in case I want to frame them with a mat.

After five months in Lebanon, a fellow expat asked me how we are settling in and if there are any challenges I am facing or things I am missing. Not to sound blasée, I told him, but I am used to the moving and adapting to different cultures, climates, and commodities--or lack thereof--and don't feel overwhelmed by anything in particular at this point. However, when I left the USA for France over two decades ago, one of my responses to this question was New Mexico skies: its sunsets, mile-high cloud formations, and thunderstorms. Prompted by that, I sought out a landscape photo that spoke to a bit of that longing and tried my hand at capturing that awesome sky presence:
( New Mexico landscape )

Of course, it must be acknowledged that it is (yet again) an over-worked attempt. Part of that can be explained by a trip to the art supply store giving me the indigo that I actually needed for the sky instead of the ultramarine blue I had on hand when I laid down the first swirling mass of color, but still. Compositionally, I know the two downward sloping edges allow the eyes to "run" off the sides of the page. The leftward slope was present in the reference photo, but the land on the right was flatter. However, I could not bring myself to cover those serendipitous, feathery bleeds that looked like distant rain. C'est la vie.



For the above painting, I used some of the things I learned in this tutorial, while refraining from working too much into the foreground as suggested in the video. When I did the piece below by following the tutorial, I feel like working over the foreground made the piece more illustrative, which was not what I was going for. This is not to say that what the artist did was not good, but that my attempt at applying the advice did not yield the results I wanted:***( stormy sky )




The exercise I was probably the most pleased with this week was this tiny collage inspired by French artist Manon Gauthier:

( little collage )

A nice side benefit of having lots of "throwaway" watercolor pieces is that they can be salvaged for other projects.


* Also the cost of art supplies being rather ouchie, especially watercolor paper, makes me disinclined to continuously engage in play. Sheesh, even my asterisk comment needs an asterisk so I can acknowledge that I am indeed well-versed--being an unschooling mom and all--on the virtues, benefits and necessities of play. ;) I am not knocking play, but I need some structured practice as well.

** On the other hand, the point of doing abstracts was to encourage me to loosen up, a lesson not yet acquired as evinced by the showing. I might not be done with them yet.

***If you do watch the video, you will see that the artist does two works, the (in my opinion) more successful thumbnail for the tutorial and then the piece she makes in front of the camera. Further proof that you can't win them all. Looking at that thumbnail again makes me want to have another go, especially since I have some Payne's Gray now.

 After doing a great job meeting all my art goals, I had a rough beginning to this week, starting with a stomach bug and um, all that ensues.  This is exactly the sort of thing that comes along and totally knocks me off track when I set myself a certain goal.*  When one has work or school, say--some outside entity holding one responsible for work accomplished--it is easy (easier) to look at what needs to be done and get back to doing it.  I always lack that with my personal goals. 

Now that I am better, I am going to dust myself off and get back at it.  I think that "Ok, what did I miss and what do I need to make up?" has been missing from these derailing incidents in the past.  Not the looking at it and seeing what needs to be done,** but the attitude of "outside entity" and treating my projects with the same respect I would treat a friend's or employer's projects.


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* I have been doing stuff but not the stuff I said I would do, thereby assuaging any feelings of failure.  This might read like I am coming down hard on myself, but that is not what I am getting at.  I am trying to understand the psychology of how I drift away from doing the thing I said I would do; how it is that one day I look up and say, "Hey, wasn't I supposed to be doing X?  Whatever happened to Y intention?"

** I almost always look and often feel overwhelmed by a sense of "being too far behind," whereas what I want to cultivate is the idea that accountability to and respect for myself is valid and deserves my follow-through.