Well it may not look like much to you, sunshine, but that, my dear, is a very big step forward.
That is the sea off the Cornish coast, storm tossed and filled with fabulous creatures like snakelock anemones, brown velvet crabs and tompot blennies. And mermaids of course. Work in progress; creating oceans takes time, y’know.
It’s the wholecloth background for my next major work, to be called Pearls of Wisdom, sitting in its second dye bath prior to wash out. This piece has been in my head over a year and with design sketches on paper for about six months, so it’s about bloody time I actually started on it.
It’s not finished art, but it is a big step symbolically. Yay for progress at last. Huzzah for AEDM day 1!
Turtle steps*, turtle steps… that’s what I’m telling myself right now.
No need to go mad with Art Every Day Month. No need to go full steam and run the risk of crashing and burning. As long as it’s a concrete step every day, I’m going to be happy.
I see lots of other participants are actually making a little complete piece of art every day – wow, how cool is that? I admire them.
But it’s not the way for me.
I need to focus on steps towards my dream of being a Real Artist who actually makes art (not just thinks about it) and really get to grips with my tendency to leave big projects until the very last minute, when I become motivated solely by panic that I won’t make the deadline.
So today’s turtle step was a very small one, because I was tired, tired, tired and what with the boiler breaking down again (oh joy) cold, cold, cold as well.
I put my full size sketch-cartoon of Pearls of Wisdom up on the wall and started considering all the practicalities of getting A3-size drawings enlarged to fit a fabric painting that will be 5 foot square. New challenges; I’ve never made a piece quite this large before. Still working on the plan for that!
Sketch-cartoon for Pearls of Wisdom
So here it is, on the wall of my living room where I can’t ignore it.
Again, might not look like much is being achieved, but believe me, I’m encouraged. Turtle steps, turtle steps, baby.
Until tomorrow.
*Turtle steps are what the kooky and hilarious life coach, Martha Beck, author of Finding Your Own North Star calls baby steps. Because she likes turtles. And because they might not be big and they might not be quick, but they get you where you need to go.
There were times in the last month or so when I thought that drawing would be a long, long time coming. I thought there would need to be lots and lots of warming up and relaxing and letting myself play.
Wrong.
What was missing was simply a case of applying bum to the seat and pencil to the paper. Telling the fear of the blank page to shut up, and just doing it. No messing around, sister, just pull your finger out and just get on with it. Sometimes it’s that simple.
So I did.
Something fishy?
This is the initial drawing for the mature mermaid on the left of the piece – she’s much older, wiser and a little arthritic but still commands respect from the younger mermaids. They know she’s done it all and seen it all before and they come to her for advice, comfort and pearls of wisdom (geddit?).
You can see I haven’t got all the shapes right for her yet – I’m not great at drawing the figure without a reference, so there’s a lot of refining still to do here, and I’ll need to check my anatomy books, even if mer anatomy is not exactly the same as human! There are aspects I haven’t decided yet too, like where her gills are located, and what shape her dorsal fin should be, but it’s a good start, and I’m pleased to have worked on it for an hour or so today.
The next step will be to bring her up from her current size of about 10 inches high to at least twice that for a detailed drawing to be coloured, probably with Inktense pencils, but I may revert to gouache. We’ll see.
After that, she’ll need to be photographed and projected onto fabric to get her up to full size, which is roughly 4 feet high. The fabric version will be the one I paint finally and then apply to the background, stitch and embellish.
So, a good effort today. Turtle steps.
And the boiler is fixed so we have heat again. Huzzah!
It’s been a couple of less-than-creative days, I’m afraid.
I’ve had two days in a row working down the coal mine (aka at my old day job) and it’s really wiped me out. Long story, but there are health reasons – as well as my artistic dream – that I don’t usually work there more than alternate days. I just can’t hack it.
Usually, I’m there just Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I had planned to at least take a notebook and do some doodling, or do it when I got home, but y’know, sometimes you just have to face facts: right now, on work days I’m just too drained by the time I get home to be creative. I can beat myself up about it as much as I like (you know, the “If you really wanted this, you’d work all the time to achieve it no matter how tired you are” Voice), but it won’t change it.
So maybe it’s time to acknowledge that downtime is allowed too. I do have a bit of a problem with that. The Voice is pretty loud.
Because I’m only at the coal mine two days, but also trying to be a Real Artist, I feel very much that the rest of my time should be devoted to that. All of the rest of time. Days, evenings, weekends as well. But only, of course, after everything else is done first – like chores and errands and family duties. Because art is well, you know, frivolous and fun and WE CAN’T BE HAVING FUN UNTIL OUR HOMEWORK IS DONE.
Which means my internal conversations go something like this:
Fi: “OMG, I’m so tired after that day at the coal mine. I just want to lie down and chill.”
Voice: “You can’t. You have a blog post to write. And you haven’t done anything on Pearls of Wisdom today either.”
Fi: “I can’t draw now. I’ve got a headache. Too damn tired.”
Voice: “Then you better do some internet stuff instead. Work on your online shop. It’s only 8pm.”
Fi: “But my head!”
Voice: “Never mind your head. Stop whingeing.”
Fi: “Fine. I’ll do some website stuff.”
Voice: “Did you empty the dishwasher yet? You better empty the dishwasher and clean up the kitchen first.”
Fi: “Oh fine. I’ll do the kitchen.”
Voice: “Then you can go do the website stuff. If you’re not drawing, at least you should be working.”
Fi: ”But… headache? Tired?”
Voice: “Stop whingeing. If you really wanted this, you’d be working to achieve it no matter how tired you are.”
~
Who is this woman? And why does she keep bullying me? Does she really think this is helpful?
Then again, maybe she’s right. Maybe I should be listening and not whingeing. What do you think?
Okay, okay, I lost a few days there somehow. Man, I really hate those random time-slips that just swirl up out of nowhere and suck you forward without the slightest warning, leaving you stunned wondering where the weekend went. Or is that the champagne?
But enough of this levity – back to the molto serioso business of Art Every Day. How are you guys getting on with creating something every day this month?
I had to go to London on Monday, and anyone who knows me knows that I freakin’ adore travelling into London for the day. NOT. The stress of four hours of cars, trains, tubes and crowds en route, along with noise, dirt, millions of people and too much pollution in the air, always means two things: one, I catch some hideous lurgy from the foul miasmas, and two, I need a day to recover afterwards. So yesterday was my recovery day, spent napping and nursing a headache, which had more to do with stress and travel than the champagne reception* the night before. Really, it did. I know this because I always get one from London and I certainly don’t always get champagne.
Despite that, I was determined to make the effort to at least do something tiny and creative. I had taken a Moleskine sketchbook with me to London, but I was on one of those new-fangled swingy, tilty Virgin trains on the way down, and believe me, if you’ve ever felt travel sick while reading in a car, you don’t want to be reading when that thing does its scrambler-fairground-ride corners at 100mph. Nuh-uh.
And on the way back, it was nearly midnight and there was the effect of the champagne to contend with as well, so I’m not really sure if that one was a swingy, tilty train or not.
Eventually, after my recovery day, though I finally managed to pull out that sketchbook and do some doodles while watching a film. I’ve been wanting to play with some line work for a while now, as there’s a style of illustration that really appeals to me, using a lot of strong line and vibrant colour. It seems to suit some fantastical subjects really well, and portrays things like drapery, costume and texture beautifully. So here’s my doodle from last night, which started out as swirling lines and somewhere along the way turned into a woman’s hair:
Line doodle that became hair
I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, whether it will filter into the textile work through stitched lines, or whether it’s something I need to pursue with traditional media. I did this with a black Pigma Micron pen because I wanted to force myself to commit to the lines and not continually sketch them until they were right. When you’re comfortable with a lot of redrawing in graphite, it can be intimidating to commit to ink straight away, so I’d like to develop more confidence in my line for when I need it.
I’d love to fill this notebook with nothing but black line doodles to explore all the possibilities here. Look out for more anon.
*The champagne reception? I still work part-time at the old day job with some lovely, creative, generous people and Monday was a big company meeting held at a West End theatre, followed by a champagne and canapé reception and a VIP visit to see the musical Jersey Boys at another West End theatre. With a backstage tour after the show. Very cool. And fun. And yes, I am a very lucky girl sometimes.
