Choose to Do What Works for You

Peace Statue at Nagasaki, Japan, drawn for Inktober 2017, Day 7

As I’m writing this post, the second week of Inktober (a challenge of doing 31 days of ink drawings) has begun and is well underway. There’s an official list of daily one word prompts as well as many, many variations on themed prompts. Look for #Inktober2020 on social media to see some examples. There are some really creative drawings to be found!

I love pen and ink work so I have participated at various times over the past several years. I love the idea of Inktober but I’ve never actually completed the full 31 days. Last year some of you may remember, I made an animals list from the book Life of Pi. I think I’m on Day 22 of those. Still not done. The year before that, I was drawing from my pictures from my time living in Japan. I only got to Day 7. It’s like failing on New Year’s Resolutions or trying to change habits.

I’m disappointed that I haven’t finished these Inktobers. How hard can it be to do a daily drawing? It turns out, for me, it’s a challenge.

I decided this year that I would adjust the parameters to work with the way I work.

I draw and draw a lot, but I don’t tend to finish drawings in one day. Experience has shown me that. I tend to draw fairly slowly and add a lot of detail. Working off of Inktober prompts means needing to complete a drawing a day. That has been my stumbling block. I decided instead to draw in ink everyday for 30 minutes and make daily progress on a project rather than completing daily drawings.

I love architecture and drawing details. I was in Amsterdam in 2019. I drew some while there, but I took a lot of pictures so I could draw from them later.

So for this year’s Inktober project, I am drawing everyday in ink for 30 minutes and I’m drawing Amsterdam from my photographs. I’m very pleased to have figured out a way to make meeting the challenge work for me. (You can see my progress on FaceBook and Instagram).

Is there some way you can tweak a challenge to work with your nature rather than fight it?

Planning to Have No Plans

I’ve been thinking about time recently: deep thinking time and creating time.

In our busy, busy productivity society, there seems to be a a bias towards getting things done and marking things off of check lists. It seems sometimes the only way we can prove that we have been productive, is by listing off all the things we’ve gotten done in that day, week, month or year.

There’s a lot to be said for to-do lists and getting things done. Things get done. I like that. That’s positive! But all the to-do’s can become a lot of chattering noise which is distracting and makes it hard to focus. I’m finding that having periods of time without a predetermined goal and without interruptions is what I am looking for and wanting. I want the calm and the peace to let my mind drift where it wants to and make the connections between ideas that it does. It’s in these periods when I have a-ha moments, figure out a next part of my life puzzle, or just enjoy the freedom from to-do’s.

I find that the busy-ness of to-do lists also inhibits creative play and exploration. Trying something new requires a certain amount of psychic energy. Things take longer because it’s new and I’m not sure what I’m doing. It’s hard to get fully engaged if there’s only a fifteen minute window or an hour before the next meeting. If I’m doing something I’m familiar with, I can squeeze it it. If it’s new, I won’t try it then.

Ironically, sometimes it’s important to plan to have no plan and put that down on my list or calendar to allow time for deeper thinking and creative play.

How do you create best?

The Process of Drawing a Picture

I’ve been making a lot of sourdough bread recently and learning a little bit each time which goes towards making the next loaf a little bit better too. One of my loaves came out of the oven last week and was so pretty that I had to draw it.

A recent loaf of sesame topped sourdough bread that I made.

I’ve been wanting to do some more pen and ink drawing work and the details in this loaf of bread were calling to me. I roughly sketched the placement of the bread on my sketchbook page and then started inking with a favorite fine tipped pen, a Platinum Carbon fountain pen.

It’s always interesting seeing paintings and drawings in process because there’s always a stage of not really being sure that the thing is going in the direction one was hoping for. Then steps are taken to work out the issues and usually it turns out well in the end. It’s a bit like life, isn’t it? 

Sourdough Bread Process

This is the end of the first session’s drawing of about an hour or so.

Sourdough Bread Process

Most of the loaf is now drawn and the paper it’s sitting on has been included.

Sourdough Bread Process

The bread is complete. I wanted to include the paper and only make darks and lights using my one pen. It started looking like a mistake.

Sourdough Bread Process

This is the finished drawing. I decided to use a watercolor pencil to color the paper the bread is sitting on. It looks good in the end.

Art as a Distraction

I spent too much time yesterday looking at the news which aside from the way it’s described to be to attract more attention and because of real events, was just generally and wholly dreadful and depressing.

What to do? I pulled out a pen and ink drawing I am working on. It’s an MRI of my left foot that was recently done. When I saw in the doctor’s office, I immediately thought what a great thing to try to draw! Yes, I like bits of medical illustration. I like learning the way the foot is put together. I’m curious too what the big black circle is on the picture too.

I’m not done with it, but I am enjoying getting caught up in the process. I also like the challenge of how to get darks and lights down using only a black pen. Lots of stippling.

I did my drawing. I was able to distract myself and get caught up in lines and marks to get myself out of the funk I had been in. No more news for a while.

MRI and ink drawing of my foot

100 Days of Being Creative

For the past 100 days, since February 9th, I have been part of The Creative's Workshop on Akimbo where all participates were challenged to show up daily with something they've worked on, created or thought about. There were days when I didn’t really want to do anything but I showed up so I wouldn’t break my streak.

The Creative’s Workshop has been a great course. Like many things, the more you put in, the more you’ll get out. Creating a creative practice is good, but doing this along side a community of hundreds of like minded people was really the highlight of the workshop for me. Showing up with what I did and then reading about what other people were doing was where it made a difference. People commented on my posts and asked questions to get me to dig deeper. I read about their thought process and what inspired them and what was holding them back. It has been an amazing experience and I highly recommend this workshop.

All that said, here's a record of my hundred days of my creative practice.

I finished 42 drawings and 2 sketchbooks, and made 30 videos during these 100 days. Wow!

Enjoy!

The music is Saturday Coffee by William Claeson

Let me know what workshops you have taken that you were really impressed by and that made a difference for you. I’m always on the look out to learn more.

Watercoloring a Seal from the Antarctic

Have you ever seen a photo and been inspired to try to draw or paint it? This is my effort after seeing one of my friend's pictures from a trip she took to the Antarctic. I loved one of the seal pictures she had and she kindly shared the photo with me so I could give it a try.

As you probably know, I work in sketchbooks and do something in one of them everyday. I'm a big believer in keeping and honoring having a creative habit. Working on finishing up this drawing of the seal was today’s effort. I also filmed my painting process and turned that into a video. I have other drawing and painting videos up on my YouTube channel as well.

The video condenses 40 minutes of drawing and painting time into about 6. The seal is done in ink and watercolor. I did the inking of the seal earlier in the week.

The sketchbook I used is a Stillman & Birn Alpha. The watercolors are from Daniel Smith.

The music in the background is At Midnight by Rupert Sachs and At Last Part II by Martin Landh.

https://youtu.be/8Sb6Ns_nBS4

Drawing my dish rack

There was a recent article in the New York Times (May 1st) about drawing and how helpful for one’s mental health it is. I agree 100%. The author, John Donohue, said he draws his dish rack as one of his strategies, so I thought I’d give it a try. Here’s my first attempt. I set up a stool in the middle of my kitchen and drew my dish rack the best I could within a time limit of 25 minutes.

Give it a try and share. 

1st attempt drawing my dish rack.

#sketching #dishrack  #creativity #creativepractice #mentalhealth#dailypractice #creativitycoaching