April 30th, 2011 – the beginning of a new creative me!
I have signed up for a multimedia painting class at Emily Carr, starting June 6th, as a way to get started painting again after my life has been hijacked for 11 years by health issues.
I have been intrigued by the one-a-day photography groups on Flicker as way to jumpstart creativity. However, since I already take one (or 10 or 20 or 50 photos) every day or so, I have revised the plan to be one creative project per day, minimum 1/2 hour for the month before my class begins!
Should I document this process? YES! How much time should I spend documenting the process? Less than I spend on each project, that’s for sure…
Here is the April 30th’s test project: purple parrot tulip sketch and photos
May 1st – blew my creativity project on my first real day. But I did take a lot of photos, and the ones of these steel origami sculptures got me thinking about incorporating folded metal into some of my other work so I guess that counts. Plus while we were at Van Dusen Gardens I scouted out some locations for slowmotion photos (the jade waterfall). And found some areas that would be better wet (Japanese garden and jade waterfall). There was so much stuff there to sketch I was overwhelmed. I hadn’t brought my sketch book because I was accompanied by Al, who as usual was bored and ‘hurry, hurry, hurry’. I ended up buying about 10 plants; then had to spend a couple of hours digging and only got about five of them planted.
May 2rd – one jewelry project turns into two
May 3rd – my one-a-day creative project is already falling apart
Blew it again. Turbulent day… traumatic business meeting in the morning, and battling with php coding (web shit) all afternoon. I did a sketch but only spent 20 minutes… just making it through today was a biggie! Okay, I may have overestimated my energy, health, time, ability to cope, etc. on this one-a-day project. Perhaps I would be better off restricting my off-work computer use to half an hour a day!
May 4th is spent just trying to get about half of my old jars of paint open
Looking over the list of supplies for the first day of my multimedia painting class, I see I need a lot of acrylic/brushes so I am now going downstairs to go over my acrylics which haven’t been opened in 11 years.
LATER: Spent an hour or so just going through bags of paints in the basement. I found a couple of unlabeled yogurt containers full of clear slime; retardant? After soaking 20 or so jars and tubes in hot water I managed to get about 15 open. But when I think of how I was one year ago, I couldn’t have gotten anything open. Yeah for me!
May 5th – thinking in black & white
May 6th – fold, bend and mutilate: trying to capture the essence of a jungle palm
May 7th – It was pouring so I spent the morning downloading my photos from the last three days (129) plus found a fabulous site on Flicker: http://www.flickr.com/groups/pixtricks/
Went to the Grad Art Exhibition opening at Emily Carr Art School where I found some folded canvas pieces intriguing as well as another artist who worked with layers of torn/cut paper. Didn’t take any photos of their but they reminded me of some of my old sketches that need developing.
May 8th
Alright, this method of documenting day by day isn’t working. Perhaps if I had thousands of fans following my every move. But I don’t. In fact I don’t even have one fan. So each blog needs to be self-contained and cannot refer back to a previous unlinked blog. I am now reworking all these blogs. Each will contain a blog about a project and be updated as the project continues. This will hopefully show the process of how I got to the final art piece, and also any offshoots of that process. What you now see is the result of that re-organization.
May 9th – shell game
May 10th – studies of rocks
May 11th – black-winged dragonfly captured in Laos silver
I actually did this about two weeks ago, I admit it, I am cheating here. But some ‘germs’ of ideas exist only in my head, and I would like some time to explore them. Not to mention the fact that the unfinished projects are piling up faster than I can deal with them, and then there’s the rest of my life. So please excuse me, I’m off to water my dying plants…
May 12th – a sketch of a tiger lily painting that would also be a stringed instrument
May 13th – expanding on my studies of rocks
May 14th
Got up at six to yet another gray soggy day, blogged a bit, went back to bed at 9:30, got up at 12:00, blogged some more, napped some more, went out in the evening to the Alibi Room and partied.
Lately I seem to be posting only my older work and jewelry. I was so good, and then I look at what I have attempted to do lately; the folded palm and the textured rock thing, both pathetic. The jewelry part hasn’t been too difficult to get into but then it’s only been a year. The painting part is quite scary, intimidating. I haven’t done it in so long I’m afraid that I may have lost it…
May 15th – creating an artwork inspired by fossil-hunting
May 16th – trying to make crystals in origami
May 17 to 21 – are spent gathering inspiration & on two photo projects (and here’s one about taking photos in the rain)
I haven’t stopped my one-a-day project, I’ve just stopped blogging about it. Blogging was redefining my project; I was spending way too much time searching, writing, scanning, photographing, editing and re-editing, and almost no time on the projects themselves. I ended up putting up a lot of old stuff as my new stuff was unfinished and horrible.
And if my purpose was to get myself off the computer then I failed miserably! On the other hand, I learned a lot about blogging, gathered a ton of inspiration for my multimedia class, and managed to go through most of my art supplies. I WILL post about these days later, but only when I have time.
May 22 – switching to a one-a-week project
The project has collapsed under its own weight. Unfinished projects are scattered all over the house. Al is complaining that he can’t walk anywhere without stepping on a project. The washing machine, dryer and ironing board are piled with projects and I’m running out of clothes to wear…
