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.

New Blogging Format Test Drive

 I had the idea a bit ago that if I inserted a bit of structure to my blog posts it might be easier to be consistent in my posting. So, here is me, trying that out.

Making: Currently I'm focused on this abstract embroidery piece. It's all in pinks, purples, and blues--colors I'm drawn to over and over again. I am following the shapes on the printed fabric mostly. The lines I've added so far weave in and out of the negative space and I've filled in some of the petals of the batik flowers, concentrating on highlighting that almond-like shape. It's slow-going because I only add a bit at a time, which feels like a fine pace for it at the moment.

Reading: I'm still in the middle of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I am re-reading in anticipation of reading James (Percival Everett). But I was waiting and waiting for the 7th Matt Dinniman dungeon crawler book, This Inevitable Ruin, from the library, watching my number creep ever higher in the hold-queue, when I saw that the e-book version was actually available without a wait. Which was weird because when I first looked at it, the line for that version was longer and waitier than the line for the print version, which is why I didn't bother with it. I guess they overestimated how long the wait would be for the e-book because now I'm finally getting my fix. (But I'm still number 2 in line for the print version and I'll switch when it comes in because e-books can trigger headaches for me.) This series is... something. I'm surprised by how much I'm liking it and I don't like having to wait between books. 

Watching: I recently returned to some 90's and 2000's era movies and watched Father of the Bride (which Netflix is insistent that I know is leaving soon!!!), 27 Dresses, and High Fidelity. I don't even know what to say about these movies except that they give me a straight dose of nostalgia that feels so good. Makes me want to do another re-watch of Friends or something.

Playing: We recently bought a board game called Hummingbirds, which involves a whole bunch of sand timers and magnets and is fast-paced and fun, while still being super simple to learn and understand. I didn't take a photo when we played, so I can't show you and fully fill out this section like I probably ought to, but I can always save that for a future blog post.

Listening: In my album-listening challenge, last week I was on "artists starting with X" so I chose an X Ambassadors album called Townies. I liked it enough to give it four stars out of five, but apparently haven't listened to again since, so... ?

Adventures: This section is for talking about places I went when venturing out into the world; "adventure" in both big and small interpretations. So, the most recent little outing I went on was to the Hoover Dam, with Pat, and I already showed one photo from that day. I don't have a lot more to say about it because it was very, very hot and we didn't stay that long. We live close, but it's been quite some time since we've been there. Here's a few more photos:

Okay, well, I did the format. I am not sure I did it justice, but maybe I can settle into it as I do it more. But, frankly, I'm not completely sold on it. We'll see. (I did have potentially some other categories to add as well and, again... we'll see.)

Loose Reading Challenges

 I wanted to write about a couple of reading challenges I've given myself. They're not part of my 52 for 52 Challenges. They're just kind of... some interests of mine that are guiding some of my reading choices. I also, every year, do a reading challenge called Around the Year in 52 Books. It's from a Goodreads group and every year they come up with a list of 52 prompts to fulfill using your reading choices throughout the year. I like to read at least a book a week and this gives me a good set of ideas to draw from when looking for books. These loose challenges are also something different from that.

Both of these kind of, sort of, follow from experiences I had while earning my college degree recently. In some ways, I was disappointed in my learning experiences and felt like some of my classes were too short to fully delve into the topics. The way these classes were set up, they were meant to be easily fit into the life of a working adult, so each semester was split into two seven week sessions. Ostensibly, they took the same material that would be in a longer class and just presented it all in a shorter period of time. Practically speaking, I'm not sure that's how it worked. I do think some content necessarily got lost in the shortening of longer classes. Then again, maybe it's just the nature of institutional learning. Maybe it's a me-problem. I'm an autodidact at heart and I think I learn better at a leisurely pace.

The first is an extension of a project I did for an English class. I was to create a public-facing piece of media on any topic of my choosing under the broad umbrella of literacy. I decided to create a blog about retellings. What I mean by that are fictional works that revisit older pieces of literature. Sometimes these works tell the story from a different point of view. Sometimes it takes the narrative further into the future than the original author brought it. There are all kinds of ways authors approach retellings. I read and wrote about a few of these (Wide Sargasso Sea which grew out of Jane Eyre and Vinegar Girl based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew) on a blog that I set up for that project, thinking I might continue with it even after the class was done, but I haven't. I don't expect that I will, but I am still interested in the concept. One book that I read after finishing the project that would have fit well was called Longbourn and it was inspired by Pride and Prejudice. It's the story of the servants of the house and takes place at the same time as the the events in Austen's novel. Those events serve as a backdrop, but the main story is completely different. I want to continue finding new examples of this and reading both the original work, if I haven't read it already, and the new spin. Currently I am re-reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in anticipation of reading James, by Percival Everett. (I read Huck Finn in school, but don't remember much.) 

The second loose challenge has to do with children's and young adult literature. I took classes on both topics and while I felt the classes were okay, I wouldn't say I got as much out of them as I was hoping to. So, I decided that I am going to read all of the Newberry Medal winners in reverse chronological order. So far, I have read the winners from this year and last year. I am sure I have also read some of the older ones previously, either in childhood/young adulthood or later with my kids, but I intend to re-read them when I come to their year of winning. What will I get out of this? A better understanding of children's literature and what makes it good, which will be helpful in my own writing journey, as well as, I hope, just a good reading time in general.