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Mission Accomplished!

Three days in and I’m finally finished with this project. As I said last night I will never be able to charge enough to cover the amount of time I’ve spent on this project, but I had a few mishaps along the way, as well as some areas where I rethought the way I was doing things. I’m pleased with the finished project. In all there are thirteen pages in this miniature accordion folded book. Each about the size of a business card. It has a velvet ribbon inside to keep the accordion in place, and the same ribbon to tie it shut. I’d really like to expand on this idea. The one I created for Dan has photos of us, and more personal notes and quotes. As I thought about the piece today I thought it would make the perfect vehicle for a romantic proposal. I may offer them with blank pages for personalization, places for photos, song lyrics, anything that someone might want to add to make it a really special gift.

I admittedly have still not really bitten the bullet and put any of my art up for sale. Dan and I talked about my artistic insecurities again this morning. I really don’t understand what’s fueling these feelings at this point. I’ve produced a lot of work I love including what I did tonight, but I can’t seem to shake the insecurity. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a good cook, actually a really good one. Last night we had dinner at the winery. My food was good, not great, but considering how fussy I can be it was really good. I got up this morning determined to recreate last nights meal, only better. I didn’t hesitate, it never once occurred to me that I couldn’t do it, I recreated that dish and it was better. I am completely fearless in the kitchen. I want that fearlessness when I pick up a brush as well as a spatula. I’m going to put at least five pieces up tomorrow. I need to force myself to get over the hump. I know that as I move forward there will be judgement and rejection, it’s part of the game. I just need to find that belief in myself so that what anyone else thinks won’t matter so much.1 26 (2)

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Tailored To Fit

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Back in the saddle. I had a good day today. I had planned on painting in oils, but as I’ve mentioned in the last few days, I’m fighting something. I also have chemical allergies, thanks to too many years of using art products without correct ventilation. I decided for once to err on the side of caution and not expose myself to any fumes today. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do as an alternative, but a quick trip to the Goodwill helped make the decision. One of my little secrets are resale shops, not only do I use them to find odd pieces for projects, or small furniture pieces, I also always take a look at the art for sale. Most of the time, actually 99% of the time, I think the art isn’t very good, usually extremely amateur paintings, framed jigsaw puzzles, or mass-produced poster prints. However, some of that art is very nicely framed, and that’s why I buy it. As is the same with most starving artists I have no money for framing. Good matting and framing can cost a lot, its money I just don’t have. Since most of the frames are standard sizes it’s relatively easy for me to find a piece of my work to fit, or to take a blank canvas and create something on it. That’s what I did today. My original intention was to make a print of one of my paintings with my home copier to fit in the frame. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work out that way. The painting that I wanted to make the print of was too small and enlarging it wasn’t the answer. The opening in the mat board was roughly 5 3/4 inches by 12 inches, an odd size to say the least. As I promised last night, I wanted to paint. As I said earlier, not the day for fumes, so I went with watercolors. A few months ago I did a quick sketch of a photo I took at Monet’s house in Giverny. It was of a gardener standing lost in thought as he contemplated the tasks at hand. It was one of those moments a photographer dreams of where a perfect subject appears waiting to be captured. It is one of my favorite photos from our trip. I measured out the size of the mat opening on a piece of watercolor paper and taped it off with painter’s tape. A quick rough sketch, an hour of watercolor painting, and a matted and framed painting, all for $7.99 and a little God-given talent. I’m really happy with how this piece came out, I feel like I got a little of that lost self-confidence back.5 261 23 (1)

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Self Reflection

I had a real crisis of self-esteem yesterday. I think it was reflected in my work last night. I’ve been spending months building my artistic self-esteem project by project, and in one bad afternoon I allowed myself to undermine months of hard work. I thought a lot about that today. I don’t want to give power to those feelings of inadequacy. I’m disappointed that I let those old demons out.

I again find myself having a day where art got pushed to the back burner. I had a lovely afternoon with Gabby (my nine-year old friend). We did homework, and then we made banana bread muffins, and a couple of deep dish pizzas. I have promised myself the full day tomorrow to paint, and I fully intend to keep that promise. For tonight one more mirror pen and ink. I wasn’t up to much, still struggling against something, still have a headache. Grabbed some vitamin C today in hopes of keeping the flu away. Either way I’m painting tomorrow, promise.1 22

Old Habits Die Hard

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Bad day today. Still battling something, not sure what, but woke at four with a headache, then again at five, and finally gave up at about six fifteen this morning. Worse yet I was battling some inner demons. Remember “not good enough”, the evil little tormentor that resides inside my brain? Well he made a return appearance today. I haven’t heard from him in a while, but he must have managed to slip out of his hiding space while my head was pounding. I started out the day investigating print and matte prices in order to sell my work. I was feeling confident, and artistically self-assured. I took a break to take Brian to urgent care. (Sitting in a cesspool of illness I’m sure did a lot for my already not feeling good self) I came home with an even more horrible headache. I decided to look at local art groups with the idea of joining one. I began to look at the work of some of the members, and worse yet began to look at their credentials. That’s when the self-doubt began to creep in. I read the educational pedigrees of these artists and felt inadequate. I thought I was past the chip on my shoulder, but I think maybe I had just learned to turn a deaf ear to the voice inside my head. Today it was loud and clear reminding me that I have had no training. Shortly after that exercise in self-destruction I began to organize my work from this project. I opened a separate file on my computer and began to sort through what I felt was “good” work, and copy those pieces into that file. I came up with forty-eight. I have been working on this project since the thirteenth of April and could only come up with forty-eight pieces that I felt were worthy. I went to Dan and told him how disappointed I was in myself. He immediately disagreed, and told me how much he admires what I have been doing, and that the work was good. After I talked to him I revisited my work, the number grew to one hundred and four. I have come to understand that my new-found artistic confidence is more fragile than I realized. I need to remind myself every day that I have talent, that not every piece will be perfect or turn out the way I want it to. It was a long struggle to get where I am, I’m not willing to lose the progress I’ve made. Tonight I attempted a watercolor portrait that honestly I am not that happy with. It falls under the “I should have left well enough alone” category. It seemed to be headed in the right direction, and then…self-doubt. Not good enough, add more paint, try to subtract more paint (tough with watercolor), in the end I added ink, in the end I think I should have left it alone. Tomorrow is a new day, a day to start over and remember that confidence I was building. One step back, two steps forward.1 21

An Opportunity

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I could take last night’s post and rerun it again. Another day when I found myself unable to get to the art I wanted to do. This one brought on by myself. I volunteered to make a cake. Did I invite Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines into my kitchen? Of course not. Dark chocolate with homemade raspberry filling, and chocolate ganache, then wrapped in a coat of dark chocolate frosting. Yum, right? I’m sure it is, but after tasting and tasting and tasting all day I’m done. All made from scratch, everything has to be tasted, I know you’re thinking, “tough job”, but when you taste it over and over, yuck! I actually felt sick. It looks amazing, and I’m sure once my stomach has a chance to recover I’ll be in love with chocolate all over again, right now we are on a trial separation. We would like to remain friends.

Larger art projects will have to wait, I didn’t finish my cake until near dinner, and I have a busy weekend ahead. Of course before I made the cake? Oh, I cleaned the family room, my bedroom, two bathrooms. Did I leave time for art? No I didn’t. By the time seven in the evening rolled around I was upset with the world, but in all honesty its my fault. I am making the choices, no one is holding a gun to my head, yet I keep putting myself off. A few years ago I talked to my daughter about how I saw the women in our family. My Mom never did things for herself. There are times when I think of her now and am filled with sadness for the girl she once was. We have one photo of her where she appears to be twelve or so. She looks so happy. I sometimes wonder who she could have been given the right encouragement and opportunity. I see some of that in myself as well. My Mom gave everything of herself to my Dad, myself and my three sisters. I have followed very closely in her footsteps, and sometimes I feel my daughter on my heels. I told Jessica that I don’t want her to follow in this long line of people pleasing. I want my daughter to step out of my shadow and do things for herself before she learns to regret the time she has lost. I also realize that I need to step out of my own shadow. I have regrets about lost time and opportunity, but my life is still ahead of me, I have an opportunity here to show her it is possible to love your family, but to love yourself as well.

I decided to do one of my favorite types of paintings, every day objects. Right in front of me was a collection of brushes in water. I grabbed the largest one. “Tool of the Trade”, in watercolor.1 16

Daily Detours

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Despite my best efforts my daily life continues to get in the way of my art. I start each day with the best of intention, but there always seems to be things that get in the way. I had intended to continue work on my cabinet door project but never found the time to sit down and paint. I’m not complaining, I spent my day being quite productive from a two-hour hike this morning, a little house cleaning, and a wonderful afternoon baking and cooking with my nine-year old friend Gabby. We made banana muffins, and frozen fruit pops from a children’s cookbook I bought her for Christmas, made soup for my family and for my lovely Theresa who is very under the weather. There was also forty-five minutes on the phone with my eighty-one year old Dad, who was trying to explain to me how he wants me to make a house for two little figurines that I gave him years ago that resemble my children. I’m still not sure what he wants, but he is going to send them to me and I’ll come up with something. So here it is past seven in the evening and I am searching for a project. I did start a watercolor painting, at least the rough sketch, but it is a gift for someone so I can’t use it until Friday because it’s a surprise. I do have another small upcycling project in my bag of tricks, so that may be it for tonight…

Three hours later…I’m back with a finished??? project. I question the finished part because I’m not sure if I am happy or finished. It’s late, I dragged my feet on this one. Honestly, I didn’t feel like working tonight, but I made myself do it. I was afraid that I took one night off it would turn into two, or three. This project has given me so much, but I still struggle with the day-to-day of making time for art. I’m worried about giving up on myself. When this year is up I most likely won’t be writing every day, but I hope to be working every day.

Tonight a hat stand. An old wooden spindle, two pieces of craft wood, and some paint. I upholstered the top and trimmed it out. Not sure I like the trim, but it’s late, and I’m too tired to make decisions.IMG_3954

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Lessons Learned

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Tonight I did a countdown on my calendar. There are ninety-nine days (including tonight) until I will have completed this three hundred and sixty-five day project. It has been quite a challenge coming up with the time, the projects, and the inspiration, but I have struggled through, not always happy with what I produced, but always happy that I did indeed produce something. In truth I have created more art in the last two hundred sixty-seven days than I have in my entire life, and I think many of the pieces are the best work I’ve ever done. There are a few projects that I phoned in, there are two missed days, one due to illness, one from absolute exhaustion and lack of time, and those damn fairies. I’ve actually assigned myself an extra day (in case you were counting), on April 13th, the one year anniversary of the first project, I want to create something special. I don’t know what as of yet, I don’t even know what medium I will choose to use, but I want to mark the occasion with a piece of art. I also want to challenge myself in these next ninety-nine days to push myself even harder. I still have Jessica’s portrait to finish, and I won’t feel that this project is a success without it. As for tonight, my title says it all, “Lessons Learned”. I took on another orphan tonight. A few years ago while at a Starbucks in San Francisco I noticed a young woman sitting with her back to me. I love Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”, it’s a favorite of mine. Something about the singular woman sitting at the counter was reminiscent to me of the solitude and loneliness that Hopper’s painting evokes in me. I snapped a few photos of her and put them in my “someday I’ll paint again” file. It must have been at least a year before I looked at that photo again. I sketched it out on a canvas and began an oil painting. I didn’t last long. I had the figure a little more than half painted, had given up completely on the background, and I had decided that it wasn’t good enough. It went into the pile of half done work, my orphans. I hadn’t yet learned my “lessons”.

Lesson 1. One of the things that this project has taught me is that my art isn’t meant to be a xerox copy. Art is meant to evoke feeling, my paintings don’t need to look like an exact copy of a photograph. I need to detach from perfection and paint with emotion.

Lesson 2. Texture, texture, texture. My old work was so one-dimensional. I’ve learned to enjoy painting without feeling the need to smooth out the rough edges. I’ve done a couple of paintings using only my palette knife, they are among my favorites.

Lesson 3. Art doesn’t have to be finished in a day. I’ve learned to let work evolve, taking time to let the work speak, the brush speak, and to not rush things.

Lesson 4. This is a big one. Walk away! I have ruined more pieces in my artistic life from not leaving well enough alone, often seeing something really beautiful happening only to second guess myself and destroy it in the process.

Lesson 5. (If you are sick of hearing me talk about my wonderful husband you can skip this one) Dan is amazing. I have always known that he loves me, but in the last several months he has proved to be my biggest supporter, cheerleader, and all-round best partner I could have. He is always there to make sure that I have the time to work on my art. He cooks meals, falls asleep on the couch waiting for me, and is willing to lend a hand on anything I need. He has encouraged me through the tough days, and helps me with honest criticism, and even posted for me when I had pneumonia last June.

My orphan is still a work in progress tonight. When I took this painting out of my studio tonight it spoke volumes about how much I had given up on myself, how I gave in to my feelings of inadequacy, how often I half-finished things in fear of judgement. It was flat, it was lifeless, I think I was feeling a little of that about myself. I unfortunately didn’t take a photo before I started working today, but here is my solitary woman in progress. She will have to wait a few days to dry until I can finish, but I’m really pleased with where we are both headed.1 5 14

Letting The Canvas Speak

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Sorry fellow pyromaniacs, no burnt paper or cardboard tonight. I had an overwhelming urge to paint this afternoon. This was more difficult than you might imagine due to the fact that my studio looks as though Blick (Art Supplies) has imploded. I decided last week to completely reorganize my space, and why wouldn’t I with Christmas right around the corner? It’s not enough that crafting had put me behind in my normal Christmas cleaning, Christmas decorating, Christmas shopping, essentially everything. I went upstairs today to work and there wasn’t an empty spot to be had, well except for one, and that was the floor. Not that the floor isn’t covered too, but a little bit of pushing piles around with my foot did the trick. I grabbed a few brushes, a canvas, some acrylics, and sat on the floor in the midst of my disaster. I really had no idea what I wanted to paint. I started filling the canvas with paint, layering thickly with a brush. I hated it. I had a full size scraper within reach so off with the paint. Still no idea where things were going I tried again, scraped again, painted again, scraped again, and then something began to reveal itself. A reflection of color from above and below were left on the canvas, really beautiful, but I just couldn’t leave well enough alone, so I started adding paint, and I absolutely ruined it, scraped yet again. Meanwhile silently berating myself for not stopping, for not having enough confidence to know when to quit. Instead of the brush I grabbed a small palette knife and began to pick up some of my discarded paint, and again something began to reveal itself. I noticed in my box of paints a bright, deep pink, I dipped my knife in and smeared a little of it across the top of the canvas, and then I knew where the canvas wanted to go. Quite often when I go outside in the early morning, or at dusk here in Temecula there is a rich pink hue in the sky. It’s incredibly beautiful. I began to see my painting take shape. Mount San Jacinto Evening was born. Its been a really long time since I took the time to let the brush and canvas speak to one another. Sometimes I’m just trying too hard. Too often I concentrate on thinking that I don’t know what I’m doing.  Tonight I didn’t think, I painted, something I need to do more often.

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Restart

The last vestiges of glitter remain in the crevices of my wood floors, but aside from that I’m ready for Christmas, at least on the first floor. As if I didn’t have enough to do I tore my studio apart, the second floor of our house looks like the aftermath of a tornado. I know I’m just a little crazy, but this has been such a bad year that I am determined to head into 2014 ahead of the game, and set up for success. I started this blog/project carrying some very heavy psychological baggage, I am two-thirds of the way through, its time to move forward. I’ve subjected anyone who reads this blog to my working out my artistic issues, and quite a few personal ones as well. Not something I set out to do. Actually I don’t know what I started out to do other than to use up art supplies. I honestly didn’t think about it prior to heading into it. I guess I thought I would create art and talk about it. I never dreamed that my life would change so much, or that I would find myself pouring my heart out to the vast unknown. I think at this point maybe some of you know me more than you want to. There have been nights when I have gotten on a rant on something completely non art related only to stop myself and backspace it into oblivion. I have a steel rod of self-righteousness that runs straight up my spine. It can be used for both good and evil, but when I get upset about things it is bad, really bad. I obsess. I try not to let my obsession spill out onto these pages. I need to redirect my efforts.  I’ve mentioned selling my work in the past, but haven’t bitten the bullet as of yet. I began the steps to rectify that tonight. I opened up a second Facebook account for business, a place to tie this blog, my etsy account, and my pinterest all together . The next step for me will be some serious self counseling for separation anxiety. I don’t like to be separated from my work. It needs to be done. I was hoping that over the course of this project that I would produce enough art that I wouldn’t take it so hard when one left the nest. Unfortunately that hasn’t happened. I still have trouble letting go of my babies, but I want and need to contribute to the care of my family. Sometimes I find myself feeling sad, wishing I could go back and tell my younger self to go for it. To recognize what a gift I have and to do something with it. These days I do a lot of talking myself out of feeling old and regretting I didn’t get a handle on things sooner. There’s no going back, and quite frankly this is a year I would never want to revisit, with one exception, my daughter’s wedding. Seeing your child be so happy makes the separation just a little better.

I’ve been crafting for weeks and not putting forth my best work. Time to restart the project. I decided that I need a little back to basics. I had hoped to have more time to paint today, but cleaning all that fairy dust takes time. In the end I decided to just do some drawing. My scissors, as if I hadn’t seen enough of them in the last few weeks. Maybe its symbolic, time to cut out my nonsense…get it? I know, I should have quit while I was ahead. IMG_3237

 

A Mystery Solved

Just days away from the show and working nonstop. I can’t wait until Sunday for a moment to breathe, but then only for a minute. My house will need a glitter detox before Christmas. I may have previously mentioned the cat hair tumbleweeds that I deal with in my house, but now they are sparkling and spreading the glitter as they travel. I took a load of laundry out the the dryer the other day and it had glitter on it. It’s out of control.

I will probably give myself a day off, or at least half a day off on Sunday, but then there is the Christmas tree we need to get, decorating to do, and of course shopping…I hate shopping. Yes, I am the legendary woman of lore, the one you have only heard tales of, the woman who hates to shop. The mystery woman with less than ten pairs of shoes, who only wears two of those pairs, one for winter, one for summer. Who only uses one purse until it completely wears out. You thought it was a myth didn’t you? I confess, I detest shopping. Hate malls. Hate crowds. I usually do most of my Christmas shopping via the computer, but unfortunately I have been too busy to do even that. Now it is too late unless I want to pay a fortune for shipping. I will have to plan carefully to get through it as quickly as possible. Otherwise there is the danger of my losing my temper and no one wants to see that.

The one thing that I am looking forward to after the fairy marathon is over is John’s apartment. I did another little piece of art for his walls tonight. A watercolor of my Chef’s knife. Just a week away from that project, and I can’t wait.12 10