How the butterflies turned out

   

I finished up those butterflies. They were fun and I thought, hey, maybe I could cut them out and use them for something else in the future, like a garland or... something. And a new set of acrylic paint arrived today, so that's exciting.

I've been trying to think, how can I best organize this self-teaching experience? Because I want to learn techniques and practice them, but I also want to be thinking about style, and about what direction I want to be ultimately moving in. I feel like there are so many different paths I could choose from. So many appealing and inspiring art styles and applications. 

And maybe this is what had me stalled out so many times in the past. It feels like too big of a risk that I will waste time of pathways that are ultimately not right for me. I do recognize this as being unhelpful, but my impatient mind wants quick results and certainty. Not trying and failing, and trying and failing, and trying and maybe learning a little something, and trying and maybe, kind of, sort of, creating something I might actually like, and then starting that cycle all over again. Not trying something out, realizing I don't like it much, and then moving on to the next endeavor. But that's all there is. The sooner I can get my brain to accept that, the better.

How to be a Painter

 Yeah, I don't know. You just paint, I guess. And I guess that makes me a painter because that's what I've been doing. Badly, but what are you gonna do?

This is a page full of butterflies I've been working on today. They're not finished, but they're mostly experimental anyway. A lot of water added, a little water added, no water added. Using this brush, using this other brush, or how about this one?

I pulled out my watercolors yesterday too. I won't show you the results because I just how it turned out that much. I can't make the pigment do what I want it to do. But I'll try again. The thing about watercolors is that I actually have a nice little quality set--Windsor and Newton--but it doesn't seem to make a difference with how things are turning out. 

The acrylics, though...I still need to purchase myself some quality supplies, but even so, using them feels easier at this point, and I'm getting better results than I am with the watercolors. 

Just keep going. Try this, try that. I painted, so I'm a painter. I made art, so I'm an artist. 

If you say so, lady.

This Past Week's Creativity

 Firstly, I just want to make note of the fact that I am catching up on my 52 for 52 Challenges and I think I will be able to finish all of them by the end of the year. The challenges are (and I'm listing them here because I don't think I've ever put them all in one place): 52 creations (currently 5 behind), 52 Ordinary Beauty photos (currently only 1 behind), 52 blog posts (currently 4 behind), 52,000 words of fiction written (currently 26,314 behind, yeah, this one is the hardest for me), 52 books (currently on track), 52 albums (A-Z album titles, then Z-A artist names, currently on track), 52 dates (weekly dates with Pat, currently on track), 52 movies or full seasons of a series (currently on track), and 52 board games played (currently 12 behind). I feel like it's important for me to note this to myself because it's giving me clear evidence that being in school actually did hinder my ability to do all the other things I wanted to do, including being creative. That seems obvious, but I do think I was pretty harsh on myself for getting behind on my challenges even though I had classes for the whole first part of the year. Classes that required a lot of reading time, a lot of writing time, and a lot of general study time. The fact that I am managing to get caught up now should give my brain permission to give myself some grace and understand that time is finite (as is the amount of mental and physical energy I have to devote to these things). Whether or not I manage to keep that in mind moving forward is another story.

During the last week I finished completely my latest abstract hoop. In fact, I finished it before I had written my last post (about painting) but I didn't feel terribly motivated to share it, since my decision to step back from embroidery (for the purpose of selling) for the time being was at the forefront of my mind. But I did finish it and I do intend to add it to my Etsy shop in the very near future, along with the Orange Crush Cloudburst hoop I finished a while back. 

As for painting, I took my two pages of messing around with making marks from last week and I added Posca marker to each of them, thus turning them into something a bit more intentional. I wouldn't call either of them ground-breaking or anything, but I kind of like them. 

And finally, I did a somewhat more intentional painting on a previously used canvas. This, also, was an exercise from the painting book I currently have on loan from the library (Start Here: Paint, by Moira Clinch). 

So, a couple of things I want to acknowledge about this painting. One, I don't like it. My lack of skill here bothers me. I think if I had executed it better, I actually would like it, so it's not the subject matter. Two, as usual, my phone camera is not showing the colors as my eyes see them. There are shades of blue here that actually look purple in real life, and the greens look more like blacks in the photo. And while I do think that that is a real issue with my phone's camera, I am also realizing, in this moment, that it's also a problem in terms of my color choices. I have seen videos in which people reduce their artwork to grayscale so that they can tell if their pieces have enough contrast and I think maybe I'm seeing a version of that here. So, that's something to keep in mind as I move forward. Something to learn more about. 

But that right there is a demonstration of the success of this painting in facilitating what I want it to be facilitating: learning! And, so, as much as I do not like the way this painting turned out, I do like that I feel like I have learned some things along the way. The yellows in this painting, for instance, started out much more translucent, which was frustrating to me. But the book said something about adding a bit of white to create more opaqueness, so I tried that and suddenly the yellow was just popping off the canvas (so to speak). 

Again, as I said in my last post, it's not that I have never, ever painted in this way. It's more that I haven't ever done it with the intention of learning, growing, and maintaining a steady practice. Here's to the beginnings of that journey!

Painting

 In my last post I wrote that the embroidery piece I was working on was helping me re-evaluate my relationship with embroidery. As is sometimes the case, I wrote words about something I was feeling without fully realizing I was feeling them until that moment. I had to sit for a bit with the truth of them. And in doing so, I realized that what I actually need is to take a step back from embroidery, at least in the sense of my embroidering pieces to sell. 

I don't even know if I can explain it more than that it's just a feeling I have that I need to follow through on. But one aspect of it is that I want to devote some time and effort to learning more about painting, with acrylics, watercolor, and maybe gouache at some point. I've dabbled, but I haven't put serious effort into learning techniques and improving skills, or even into figuring out what types of painting I most want to paint (finding my style, I guess). And I think a lot of the time when I am choosing a creative activity, I opt for embroidery because I am comfortable with it, instead of choosing something that leaves me feeling so much more out of my element. But the only way to get more comfortable is to be uncomfortable first.

I also have been having some ambivalence about Etsy and social media, and I have been wondering whether those platforms are part of the right path for me, but that's a musing for another day.

The point for now is that I want to get more serious about learning how to paint. In that vein, I picked up a couple of books on the subject from the library the other day. Yesterday I did a very simple exercise, just making marks, getting a feel for my brushes and what kind of viscosity I can get with different amounts of water mixed in to my acrylic paint. Unfortunately, I learned that a lot of the paint that I currently have is getting old and kind of globby. It's high time I purchased a new batch of colors, so that's next on the agenda. 

When Is It Done?

 I've been working on this piece for so long. Or it seems so anyway. It's becoming filled up, maybe even too busy, but I also think it wants more stitches, more beads, more elements. There's one long meandering chain stitch in there that I think could be symbolic of the piece as a whole. I meandered. I took my time. I took breaks when I felt like I needed to take breaks from it. Sometimes I'd just add a few small stitches and call it good for the day. 

I also think this piece is helping me re-evaluate my relationship with embroidery right now. I don't know if I could tell you where I've landed with that, but I am realizing that there's something in this piece and my stitching of it that feels transitionary in some way.

Another bit of art: a sketchbook spread of a mushroom forest. I wanted to play around with bright colors, make use of my Tombow markers and colored pencils, and kind of figure out how I like to make weird mushrooms. Not sure I've made them exactly how I want to have made them, but it was fun.

A Quick Trip, A Few Photos

 Over the weekend, we (Pat, me, one of our adult children) took a quick trip to Utah to visit family and celebrate my Grandpa's birthday. It's been a long time since we've even been out of town, so that part was good and so was the opportunity to see family members. Not so good was the fact that we weren't really escaping the heat of Vegas since it was nearly as hot there as it is here. Thankfully, there was a bit of rain on Saturday that cooled things down considerably. I took some photos of the aftermath and I am counting two of them for my Ordinary Beauty challenge, which catches me up completely.

Speaking of Ordinary Beauty photos, here's one I have not yet shared. It was taken in my house; just something on the shelf that caught my eye.

Upside-down SUMMR

Butterfly Painting

 So, it is August. In July I had intended to, again, catch up on all of my challenges for the year and I, again, failed to do so, but that doesn't matter because I did get closer to being fully caught up and the finish line isn't until the end of the year, and we aren't there yet.

I've temporarily abandoned the embroidery project I was working on that I showed photos of in my last post. Why? Because it just wasn't pulling me to work on it anymore. I find I still have a lot of work to do to let go of internalized messages about being "wishy-washy," indecisive, and/or lacking follow through. The embroidery piece is still there on my work table. It will wait for me to get back to it. It's feelings won't even be hurt if I never do. 

It's a process to get to a point where I feel comfortable following my own inclinations and honoring my own desires or lack of desire when it comes to my creative work. A process that maybe never really ends. Pivoting direction is okay. Moving to different projects is okay. Even quitting outright is okay.

In the meantime, I started and finished this painting of a butterfly based on the one I put on one of my bubble wrap packages recently. I used Posca markers and in the middle of making it, I took a trip to the art supply store so I could buy a different purple than the one I had. I bought 5 other new colors while I was at it because the per piece price goes down when you buy more than one marker. So, that was exciting and I can't wait to try out some more of my new colors.

Speaking of potentially quitting creative endeavors (or techniques, in this case), I may or may not abandon the blogging format I adopted for my previous post. If I do, I can just look at it as an experiment that didn't work out and leave it at that.