Sanity Check

In the midst of all the chaos of my current life, I have relied on creativity to keep me sane.  

Or to allow me to express my insanity.  Something like that.

I found this recipe that seemed interesting, and I sent a link to my daughter to see if she wanted to make it for her upcoming birthday.  She was very enthusiastic, so we decided to do a trial run.

It's called a rainbow cake, and it uses no fat in the recipe. But it was so sweet that all three of us found it difficult to finish even one slice! So, we decided to make the recipe but bake up cupcakes instead.

I also decided to finally make a project I've been thinking about for some months now. A case for my crochet hooks.





I've seen many different types of things like this, used for crochet hooks, colored pencils, and other similar items. I was inspired, but sometimes it takes being under stress to make something like this happen. All in all, I'm happy with it. Now all my hooks are in one place and I will know right away if one is missing.

After these creative bursts, I felt that I wanted to draw with pen and ink. I'm also itching to use my colored pencils, but I haven't gotten to that yet.
To mix things up a bit, I decided on white ink on black paper. And I just sat and drew without any plan or idea of where I was going.




After I got to a certain point on this one, I decided to try and add some color with the colored pencils, but I wasn't pleased with the result. So I went back later and drew this one.



These are highly reflective of the craziness and indefiniteness of life right now, but drawing them was keenly satisfying. They are sort of sprawling doodles which I drew as fast as I could and let my instincts guide me. The first one seems sort of like underwater life to me, while the second one looks like plant life. The state of mind the work put me into in process was one I really yearn to enter again, soon. It was restful and challenging at the same time. Especially when my family wasn't interrupting me....




And lastly, for today's post: the Leetle Birdies have been spotting in cyberspace! Cuteable has included them in her latest post. Let's hope that generates some sales!

Over Thinking It

You know how, when you look at a word too long, 

for example,

the word AQUEDUCT, 

it begins to look like you've misspelled it?

I had a similar experience recently. 

After the last quilt, I knew I wanted to continue working in this series, but the ideas weren't quite crystallizing in my mind. So, I set down to do some sketching.

I really liked the idea of these eggs or bubbles or whatever, the motif, overlapping. But then what? I continued drawing, but it wasn't coming together. So I tried again.




Nope, that's not it, either.
Naturally, I'm skimming through all my art quilt books to try and get ideas. And I'm being bombarded with ideas for layouts and color schemes and it's kinda confusing me. So I press on.




And now making these sketches is becoming a bit tedious because of all the detail I'm tempted to include. So I leave the detail out and go for a sort of shorthand, and even that is not making me happy. I'm beginning to get a little panicky. I don't feel like making any of these sketches into quilts would be fun or would be worth the effort.

Keep trying, I tell myself.




Now the big doubts are starting to surface. Why did I think I could be an artist? And other mental junk like that. I ignore it. Mostly.

In desperation, I sent all of these sketches to my sister.

Her advice?

It's only fabric. Start playing around and see what you come up with.

Playing around.

Playing.

Around.

Why do I insist on thinking that making great art is going to mean grueling, frustrating work? 

Well...I'll be in my studio. You know what I'm doing. I'm having fun.

Not A Sketch

My daughter was doing some watercolor paintings yesterday while I worked on the quilt. For her last painting, she used a straw and blew blobs of paint around on the paper. It got me thinking about doing that with ink, a project I did in high school. One inspiration led to another, and I wound up with this:



I stopped coloring on it because I didn't want to anymore, not because I felt like it was finished. But it was fun. I was doing the coloring after the ink had dried, after dinner, actually, and my husband and daughter kept seeing things in the blobs and in the spaces between the blobs.



And we are now into the yellows. Almost done, actually. I'm liking it!

Pepper Mill

I am enjoying making these sketches. I like the place my mind goes to when I'm drawing. But I'm finding it difficult to find things I want to draw.

I think I might just be too picky. I thought this pepper mill would be boring to draw, but I really like how it turned out. So maybe there are more things than I think that would good make subjects for future sketches.

Now I need to work on getting the photo right so that when I adjust the levels, the background totally drops out.

The Sketching Continues

Well, I continue to be surprised by the final result of the day's sketch. Working in marker is really challenging, and I usually am not real happy with the contours. But once I fill in the shadows, things start to look better and better. Both yesterday's and today's sketches are a bit awkward and wont be going into a frame anytime soon, but I'm still pleased.

My goal is to do this quickly, even tho I know my drawing classes were 4 hours long. I don't want to spend half the day, I just want to have a small success, do something that requires me to see more than I usually do, and have something to blog about. Ok, that last one isn't a priority. But it is a bonus! And I know it's common knowledge that this type of discipline opens up creativity in many ways.

A Lightbulb Moment

I used to not like sketching without a pencil, because I couldn't erase. If I had a pencil when I started this sketch, I would have erased. Lots. But, I made a discovery: the more detail I added, the better the lightbulb started to look. Instead of subtracting, I added, and it got better. Weird.

Another discovery: if I fool with the levels of my drawing in my photo program, I can make the background disappear. It looks better than the last sketch, no?

Inconsistent Blogging

Well, further to my goal of making a sketch everyday, it was suggested that I could post my sketch everyday.

Don't count on it.

But I decided to give this one a try. It's so blue! That's because my windows in my studio are tinted blue.

I'm not really trying to accomplish any big thing with these sketches. I just suspect that if I keep drawing, it will open up new windows of inspiration and creativity for me. Plus, I like to draw. Especially when I know no one has to see it but me. So, that's why I'm making no promises about posting the drawings. This one isn't any masterpiece, and I felt ok about posting it, so we'll see....