Which of the 5 …

Which of the 5 thieves keep you from being ineffective?
Timidity? Insecurity? Procrastination? Lack of belief? or Fear?
Face your enemy and overcome with God’s help.

My high school art teacher posted this on facebook the other day, and it completely floored me. Honestly I immediately thought about my art. I think all of the “thieves” are contributors, but the biggest one for me is lack of belief. Eeeesh.
Lack of belief in my art, in my ability to change my life, or to actually do something I love. I felt very convicted. It was one of those facing the man in the mirror moments.
So what will it take? I suppose the will to face this “thief”, and to ask for God’s help, as my teachers post said. And asking for discipline, willingness to dive in. To really work for the things I want, the life I want.

 

oh yeah…

i do know how to draw!

i love this feeling. this is the feeling that i get after i’ve been on art hiatus
aka decided to spend time with people instead of creating,
which has always been an issue/ not so successful balancing act.
actually there is no balance, who am i kidding. i love people.
and people almost always win.
and i feel it’s time well spent, but my little artist gets hungry.
the cool thing that i can celebrate currently, is that the creative urge
is actually there.
tonight after my love went home, i busted out my sketch pad
and a pack of sketching pencils i bought in santa barbara, but never used.
derwent knows how to make a pencil, oh <3.
i remember my first ever art class, my teacher complimented my sketches
and then very graciously and politely pointed out that i was pretty much
indenting the paper with my hb pencil trying to get the shading dark enough.
i went out and bought some drawing pencils at her suggestion
and immediately fell in love.

anyways…feeling good about just plain ol' sketching. ahhhhh. deep breath. *sigh*
it's like a long drink of water after a five mile run.
i must be an artist or something.

 

so pretty!

love this blue filigree necklace at proteales etsy.

love the color– it’s the perfect shade of blue.

not to mention the fact that i’m a sucker for anything swirly.

 

pie heaven

i was browsing etsy today and saw this quote– it cracked me up!

“When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it’s not, mmmmmmmm, boy.” — Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

 

art-ing vicariously

so i just recently finished reading the book The Time Traveller’s Wife– which by the way was a fascinating read– and found that i really missed papermaking. the female protagonist is an artist, specifically a papermaker, and there were these really long detailed descriptions of the papermaking process that were so accurate, i remembered what it was like and could picture my own hands dipping a mold into a cold vat of paper slurry.

papermaking is such a whole-body, exhausting process, but i love the tangibility of it. and there’s something rewarding about getting an end product out of something that really required all of your strength, energy, and creativity to make. the artist in me sort of reveled in those descriptions like it was starving. at one point i realized i was kind of vicariously art-making through that character and that maybe that was a sign i need to feed my poor inner artist that’s pretty much been starved.  the artist in the book has this amazing studio, and man was i jealous reading about it. my friend michaela and i have joked about how we have these ideal visions of having our own studios one day. that’s the thing that’s hard for me– finding space. someone made a joke to me today about having not seen my paintings and how they would believe it when they saw it, and it made me kind of sad. the thing is i should be making work now, current stuff. when i was living in santa barbara and had a whole separate area for my easel and all my art stuff, i spent alot of time making art. i think part of the reason why it’s been so long since i’ve painted is because i just don’t have space. and i’m really not sure what to do about it.

 

No more complaining!

Do you ever get in ruts? I do. And I feel like I’m in a big one. I was reading some health stuff online today and realized probably much of this rut is owed to negative thinking and lack of sleep. And sort of unintentionally forsaking the things I love and that make me happy and energize me. Singing, playing guitar, dancing, painting, random adventures that don’t necessarily involve spending alot of money. Maybe I need to do those things more often, and that’ll sort of be like the jumper cables to this whole finding a new job thing. I’m tired of feeling like this awful retail job is holding me back. And I really want the day to come when my boyfriend and I don’t have to say goodbye at the airport. There are definitely many positive things in my life right now that I am very thankful and grateful for, my amazingly awesome boyfriend included. But I also feel that I’ve sort of lost some joy and I don’t know…zest for life (???) in this whole post-graduation employment nightmare. It’s silly, really. And you know what, I want it back. I’ll admit I can be a bit of a complainer at times. Ok, a huge complainer. Bleccch. I’m so tired of letting my job and all the negative people I have to deal with every day get me down. I want to declare I’m done with it, and mean it and have that be the end of it.

I’m done with it! NO MAS! BASTA! You are a paycheck and you do not define me!

There I said it. If I start complaining again, please smack me.

Ok, smack me metaphorically, because I’m really not into violence.

 

So this is the new year…

“i wish the world was flat like the old days

and i could travel just by folding a map

no more airplanes or speedtrains or freeways

there’d be no distance that could hold us back…”

Said goodbye to my love who lives in Berkeley at 5:30 am this morning.

Standing in the rain, watching him drive away in the yellow cab, crying like the girl that I am, I realized again how much this man means to me. Went back to sleep for several hours, woke up, and resolved once more to get myself a darn job in the bay area. Not only is commission retail sales stressful and soul killing, it zaps all my energy so that in a good week I apply to only six job listings. That’s not enough. I know this. I fired off several applications and resumes for hours until I could no longer even comprehend the job postings and the words all ran together. Took a break, ate some food, watched the first episode of 24. Started thinking about him again, and had a burst of energy, enough to get me to break out my sketchbook (!) It’s been muuuuuuuuch too long since the last time I sketched anything. I’m really out of practice and my hand’s a little rusty, but hey that’s how it always is in the beginning when you’re trying to get your drawing hand back. You really can’t judge beginnings, just work through them. For me, sketching is where it all starts. That’s when serious business starts, and when the ideas start to come. Getting there, working up the motivation is the hard part. But all that happened was that I was thinking about my wonderful boyfriend, and suddenly I just felt like drawing. And I realized again how much this love has awakened me.

 

Sweaters make me feel arty.

Maybe my brain and body remember all those cold nights I spent awake in the studio working on paintings or making paper. There’s something about fall and winter that make me want to create. I was in Anthropologie today while I was on my lunch, and I fell in love with this sweater.

Of course, it may as well have cost a million dollars, since my retail paycheck doesn’t afford me a whole lot. I had a birthday discount card though that’s been burning a hole in my wallet, so I settled for a candle instead. I once bought a coconut milk mango candle made of soy wax there that was the most amazing thing I’ve ever smelled in my entire life. I loved it so much I burned the whole thing in less than a year. I kept trying to find it again for years, and today I found it! Now my room smells like…heaven. Yes, heaven. This must be what heaven smells like.

 

 

 

Supposedly,

I am an artist. But sometimes life gets in the way. I’ve determined to start creating more, even if for my eyes only. I was inspired by visiting my friend Michaela’s blog where she posts things that inspire her art. I like this idea, and I’ve been feeling the creative urge lately, so remembering a creative director’s recommendation of word press, I decided to give it a shot myself. I hope to post some of my own work eventually, but in the meantime I’ll just let this be the place all things that inspire me creatively flow to.

The header image above is a detail of an ink and watercolor painting I did on cotton and hemp paper I made by hand.