Week 11 in my yearlong sketchbook practice. I’m in the Adirondack park for a few days with minimal internet and without my scanner making due. I hope you’re having a lovely weekend too.
sketchbook : week 11
Tag: creativity
my big creative year : paper mache
I have a long, happy history with paper mache. It’s always been one of my most favorite mediums, I loved it at first sight. I love the simplicity, the economy, and the endless possibilities. I don’t think you need a lot of skill to have fun with it and it invites improvisational thinking. I love to dive in to creating something without plan – just an idea and a pile of cardboard boxes, newspaper and masking tape. All sorts of problems and happy accidents occur – both spark new ideas. I think it’s good brain exercise. I spent part of this past weekend on an big paper mache experiment that failed dramatically but I learned a ton and it sent me in a new direction, I landed on and idea that intrigues me, a new approach to a project I’ve been stalled on for months – more on that soon.
In a similar experiment a few years ago I made a classical style bust while I was spending a weekend upstate – just for fun – with whatever was on hand. I like him, he’s silly and and I decorate him every Christmas.
Here he is in progress – lots of taped together cardboard and bunched up newspaper – I had a blast.
If you’ve never tried it before I have 2 free tutorials with templates and lots of instructions – paper mache boats and teacups. The tea cups are lovely for Mother’s day and both make great parent child collaboration projects.
sketchbook : week 9
Week 9 in my yearlong sketchbook practice. For todays entry I painted my sewing machine – my mother’s old cast iron white rotary, the machine I learned on. I’ve always found it beautiful – other old machines too – elegant lines- so much thought put into the aesthetics of it. I saw it’s twin at a flea market a couple years ago – regret not getting it.
sketchbook : week 8
Week 8 in my yearlong sketchbook practice. Sketchbook will be back to it’s regularly scheduled Saturday posting time this week – I was teaching in Philadelphia last week. I was super stretched and would have loved to blow the whole thing off but I’m glad I didn’t. Getting it done the second half of the week was a little torturous and it feels pretty awkward to share things I don’t feel good about but it’s part of the exercise and this exercise has been incredibly good for me.
my big creative year : permission to rest
I took the day off yesterday, for reals, like I haven’t in a long time. I didn’t set an alarm and erased my agenda for the day. I had coffee in bed and got up around noon. It was not not exactly by choice – I was just useless.
I came back from teaching at the Sweet Paul Makerie in Philadelphia late Sunday night and I was completely out of gas. Even this morning my brain and various other important parts are just starting to work again. The weekend was fabulous and I’ll post about it after I get caught up on things – like getting last week’s sketchbook scanned, formatted and posted. This week is pretty discombobulated because of being away, and so very, very busy while I was away, but things will be back to posting at their regularly scheduled times next week.
For this week’s Big Creative Year post a couple thoughts on something I need to pay attention to: down time, rest, real rest. My inclination is to fill every space with something to do and ignore or under value the need for rest. It feels good to spend it all once in a while, to exhaust myself completely like I did this past weekend and it felt good to spend a day doing nothing yesterday. It was glorious, I had the afore mentioned lazy start and I hung out in the big chair, drank tons of licorice tea and looked at magazines for hours (I can’t recall the last time I did that).
My bigger concern is my chronic need for some downtime – I don’t really take significant breaks – relaxing will happen at some undetermined time in the future when I’m less busy. That idea doesn’t work. My new plan, my new experiment is to find a way to take one day a week completely off. To plan for it and make it mandatory. It’s alarming that at this moment I can’t even imagine what that would be like. I’ll tell you more about how I plan to make it happen in next weeks BCY post on a subject I’ve been understanding in a new way lately : margin.
my big creative year : working and listening
While I sew I listen and learn. I love a day with a big stack of sewing to do and no other distractions or obligations and a days worth of podcast’s, interviews, ted talks etc. to listen to. There are some episodes I return to again and again. I’ve chosen a few of my favorites to share with you below and I’ll add to this list – please check back for more and if you have favorites to share please do in the comments. And listen with me today – at this very moment I’m packing kits for my Sweet Paul Makerie workshop this weekend and I’m about to tune in to Abby Glassenberg’s interview with Rebecca Ringquist. I’ve been looking foward to this one! I’m a huge fan of Rebecca and her work.
The Unmistakable Creative – writer Esme Wang – Diagnosed with devastating mental illness as teenager Esme talks about coping through writing – her story is powerful and she tells it honestly and beautifully.
Ted Talk – writer Elizabeth Gilbert – on genius, success, creativity, work and inspiration.
While She Naps – Jess Brown – I love Jess Brown’s rag dolls and enjoyed listening to how they came to be and the challenges, twists and turns in nurturing and growing a very personal business.
The Unmistakable Creative- MacGuyver creator – Lee Zlotoff – on creative work, ideas, and the power of your subconscious. I use the thinking tool learned here everyday.
The Unmistakable Creative- Founder of the 5 Minute Journal- UJ Ramdass – on the power of gratitude.
The Good Life Project – artist Debbie Millman – serendipity, fear and creating happiness.
sketchbook : week 7
Week 7 in my yearlong sketchbook practice. I had a really good time with my sketchbook this week. I painted my favorite upstate houses, I got super into it. Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was all the time in the world to spend driving around in the country looking for forlorn houses and painting their portraits. That’s my new escapist fantasy.
sketchbook : week 5
Week 5 in my yearlong sketchbook practice. I really struggled to find the time this week – lots going on – but I did and was always happy in that little drawing and painting part of my day. I was often miserable thinking about doing it but not once I got started and settled in to it. I don’t always, or even usually love what I make but I do try to stick with them until I feel like I’ve gotten somewhere. This truly is an exercise and it is becoming a habit.
my big creative year : getting organized
I like to celebrate March with a big spring clean and organize and this year I’m in desperate need of it, particularly in one area. My work fills this place but the center of it all is a wall of shelves that hold most of my supplies, fabric, antique garments, tools – everything. Over the last year or so it lost whatever organization it ever had and it’s overflowing. I spend a lot of time looking for things, the stuff that gets used the most and should be easy to access is buried, it’s a big time waster, it looks terrible and it’s kind of depressing. I’ve been spilling over with new ideas lately and I have no room for them physically or mentally.
I love this from Sarah From on why organization is so important to creative work ( find the full blog post here):
“Organization is in part about being prepared for the moment when insight strikes. It’s about creating the conditions for creativity to flourish, so that when you enter into creation mode, your physical world is set up to support you. ”
My physical world was not set up to support me, not at all – and it was making me intolerably anxious so I made it the priority this past weekend to fix it. I took everything out, got rid of a ton of stuff and put it all back in a more thoughtful way.
I can see at a glance where everything is and the things I’m using the most right now are easy to grab. I even ended up with a couple empty boxes. I made labels for everything and attached them with clothespins for flexibility. I’m happy with my brown file boxes (I get them from Uline) and I replaced a few that had gotten crumpled and sad looking. And while I was on a roll I attacked my work table too – it had become a place to park piles of things lately – not much empty space to work.
It’s all still a work in progress but it’s such a big improvement! I felt instantly so much more able to manage my tasks and ideas. I was excited to get up and look at it this morning – I gazed at it adoringly with my coffee. It was a big time investment I hadn’t planned on this weekend but it was absolutely worth it. Onward!
sketchbook : week 4
Week 4 in my yearlong sketchbook practice. Each one of these was a complete surprise to me. They always are a surprise in some way but especially so this week. I was overwhelmed with work and each time I sat down in a little bit of a panic, with no plan, no inclination, no idea at all of where to begin, my mind racing – impatient to get back to work. And each time the little experiment slowed me down and focused and steadied me – like taking a deep breath.
my big creative year: productivity – the most effective changes
In terms of getting things done more efficiently simple changes have made the most difference. Part of my mission this year is to manage my time better, to be more efficient and more productive in everything I do, to get through necessary tasks more quickly and efficiently, in part to free up time for experimenting and also because creative work benefits from consistent forward motion and structure. So I’ve been trying things and some have helped. The things that have helped the most:
Standing
I work standing up. The idea came from a news blurb about the health benefits – it sounded tedious but I was curious so I gave it a try. My sewing machine has always been at standing height – it landed there accidentally. My father’s tool chest is the most stable surface here and my mother’s very heavy White Rotary machine requires a steady base. Plus they belong together.
So the machine sewing part of my day has always been standing but that’s a pretty small part usually and I have developed some bad habits for all the other work I do. I gravitate to the couch and spread out from there. The photo below is from last May, making a big flamingo order.
The last two big orders were made standing up ( I still made a big mess- that didn’t change). I was remarkably faster and more focused, I enjoyed it and I had more energy. There a couple things I can’t do standing up – like very small hand sewing – so I try to balance tasks out and I limit the standing hours to between 10 and 5 (I can go over if I feel inclined and often I do). The first few days I got tired after just a few hours but that improved quickly. I haven’t gone crazy with fancy equipment or anything – I’ve got a file box on top of my ironing board – it’s getting the job done. I’m surprised at how much standing agrees with me and I think If this was the only change I made I would still come to the end of this year having accomplished more.
lists
I’m a list maker but over the last few years my to do lists migrated to the computer and got fancy: lots of different lists, spread sheets, multi-tiered affairs etc. Lately I went back to no frills paper and pencil list – a little notebook with a list for the day that I make the night before. There is something to writing things down, physically writing things down and it is somehow infinitely more satisfying to me to check something off with a pencil. I need to harness my obsessive compulsive tendencies for good whenever possible. One other change to the to do list – I got a nice notebook. For sketching and recording thoughts I don’t use anything fancy, I find it intimidating and don’t want to spoil it, but for the to do lists it adds something to the ritual.
Structure
I talked about this in last week’s post about how the new things I’m trying are effecting me creatively but it gets a mention here too because the structure created by scheduled blog posts, a weekly (mini) news letter ( you can check that out here) and the daily sketchbook practice have been causing me to schedule myself more thoughtfully and more importantly, more realistically. What must be shall be. My tasks have a more defined container and it’s making a huge difference.
sketchbook : week 3
Week 3 in my yearlong sketchbook practice. I’m so glad I started this – I look forward to the little part of my day devoted to making marks on paper. All sorts of things creep in – they feel like little adventures and it feels good to be spontaneous and truly experiment – to respond and let things occur to me, especially in a week where everything else I’m doing is small and precise. And a note on the 3/1 sketch – the quote is from an essay by Poet Charlotte Mew:
“The real things are happening in the forest still.”
