Almost-Half-Dozen Paintings

As promised, here are the best of the paintings from my Dozen Artworks Challenge... 

Strangely enough, I thought I'd end up relying on more collage than I did in these pieces. Of course there are plenty of collaged elements represented here in these multi-media works. They each have something glued in them, some are just hidden a lot better than others...

These, my 5 favorites, to me seem to have so much energy - be so lively. Maybe you agree, maybe not? Tell me, what do you think of these pieces? Do they come across as strong or as trying-too-hard? Energetic or overworked? Do you prefer images that have a lot going on, or ones that are calmer and more focused?

What a month and a holiday weekend can do...

The long holiday weekend here in the US is really over, regular life is settling back in along with the rush-hour traffic. Did you have a good weekend? - I hope you did! Mine was a mixture of some good and some bad (but hey, that is life as always, right?)

The Good: Extra time off from work. The day job had a company event on Thursday, so no real working that day, then Friday we only had to work for half the day. Off on Monday for Memorial Day. Always good to have some time off from the j-o-b... Made for what seemed a nice chunk of time away from the work stress :)

The Bad: Allergy season from Hell is still in effect, we're having a bad one here in the Bay Area this year. Eyes are so itchy and sometimes feel like I'm breathing through mud. Like maybe walking through mud too, because it's damn tiring, battling these allergens!

The Good: 5 new paintings now completed that I'm really happy with. Yay! These were part of my Dozen Painting Self-Challenge, and I think that 5 strong pieces out of 12 is a really good ratio (especially considering that 3 are still unfinished, and just might stay that way).

So. I committed to a making a dozen small paintings in a month. How did that turn out?

Well, I spent a little more than a month working on them actually, and as I mentioned before I didn't exaclty finish. But, I did learn a lot, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

The interesting thing about this little challenge / experiment is that it somehow allowed me to try lots of things that I ordinarily wouldn't have, for fear that it wouldn't work out and I'd ruin what I was working on. Counterintuitive perhaps, because you would think - wouldn't you? - that needing a certain number of painting completed would make you try even harder not to mess any up? But, I found that having multiple (and I do mean multiple) pieces in progress at the same time somehow freed me to be more experimental than normal. Because hey, if this one doesn't work out, there are still 4 or 7 others that I'm working on too, so it'll all be ok.

Another thing I discovered is the style that my work is evolving into. For example, I like to have a lot going on in a piece, throughout the canvas, and not have everything in the background fade away to highlight one solitary focal point. I like to give the viewer something to see wherever their eyes may wander across the canvas. I mean, I knew I really wasn't a minimalist at heart, much as I can appreciate that aesthetic, but I was surprised at just how busy I like my compositions to be.

I wanted to share some pictures with you, but the ones I took the other day were blurry. Photography skills definitely need some improvement here! But you can see two of my favorites in my last post. I'll be back in a couple of days with more lessons learned during this last month of painting, and more pictures of these colorful creations!

A Dozen Artworks Mini-Challenge

I’ve been a little quiet lately – steadying, shoring up my reserves – getting ready to launch myself into the next stage of my artistic endeavors. A couple of weeks ago I issued myself a challenge: to create a dozen paintings in a month. Yes, I fully admit this is not a new concept, several artists have done it and better than I. And this was not about updating the world daily with my progress, this was an internal process of something I needed to do for myself. It was about propelling myself forward, dedicating my time to the practice of painting, creating a body of work and refining my aesthetic.

So this is what I’ve been doing with my time. I started the third week of April - why wait until May 1st, when I can start now?, I thought - so I've got just a short time left to finish. I'm not entirely sure I'll make my own self-imposed deadline, but it's been exciting to try. And I wanted to share with you a few of these small works in progress! These represent my baby-steps to becoming a real, practicing, sometime-in-the-future-selling, artist. Please view them kindly, I’d be honored to know what you think – constructive criticism is welcomed.

3 Views Through a Window: April Showers

Yes it's time for some more views through windows, it's hard to believe another month has gone by already isn't it? This time I've decided to go with a theme ~ you know what they say about April showers bringing May flowers, right? Well just between you and me, I'd be happy if the rain stopped and we just got right to summer. But I'm glad for the mild weather here in the Bay Area, I don't know how people in harsher climates can deal with the cold!

Rain (Early Evening) :

photo by me

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So since it doesn't really rain that often here, at least not compared to other places, I don't have much to show in the way of rainy-day pictures. But I saw a couple on Flickr that I thought fit the theme quite well. Isn't the view below quite dramatic?

Raining Out by Americanvirus:

photo by Americanvirus

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And I'm happy to include this beauty, I don't know what it is about photos that capture car mirrors, but they always capture my attention. Especially when they look as good as this. Quick - do you think we can out-drive the rain?

Window to the Rain 

photo by Leonrw

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For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, let's hope that we'll see the last of the rain soon - onward to sunnier days ahead! And lots of flowers to make that rain worth it :-)

Computer-Free Weekend Follow-up

It's probably far too late for a follow up on what was supposed to be a weekend experiment two weeks ago, but I'll do so now, finally.... As far as that weekend went, I was quite successful at keeping my wasted time on the internet to a minimum (that's what I was really trying to cut out - not being on the computer itself, but the unfocused, not knowing what to do with myself next, being sidetracked from what I really want to do, kind of time-wasting.) So as to rediscover some kind of balance. Which I think I did, as evidenced by how long it took me to come back to my own little corner of the internet. Not that I want to quit blogging in any way, just that I needed to work out the best ways to spend my time, at this particular time in my life. Which of course, is a continuous work in progress for all of us, right?

I was thinking back the other day to that first 2 or 3 years immediately following my high school graduation. About the way so many things seemed to happen in such a relatively short period of time. And the way it seems to take forever for anything to happen anymore. Or rather, not that things are slow, but time is flying by so fast that not as much has time to happen - does that make sense? I hope you understand what I mean. Sometimes I just want to put time on pause (ok, if I'm truly honest, I want to do that every morning from around, say, the time my alarm clock goes off until I get to work or wherever I'm going that day). What I want is for the time to catch up to what I want to do my life. Which takes considerable prioritizing but also  understanding my own natural rhythms, motivations, how long I can stay focused on a given task, etc. So I've been paying more attention to myself and my patterns lately.

For example I notice that I'm much happier doing a little bit here & a little bit there of one thing, with lots of breaks peppered in to work on other things too, than if I just stick my nose to the grind to bust something out as quickly as possible. Like when it took me an entire weekend instead of just 3 or 4 hours to spring-clean my apartment, but at the same time I started 2 new paintings, got a bunch more practice using photoshop, reorganized my kitchen cupboards, and finally backed up a year's worth of photos to my external drive. Before I would have kept pushing myself to keep going on only one task, past my natural stopping point of ok this is tiring, maybe I should take a quick break, push myself so that by time I was done I had nothing left in me to do anything else that day. And so all those other things I got done? Wouldn't have happened....

Another thing I realized is that I paint more quickly, and get more paint on the canvas in general, when I throw on a dvd while I'm working. But when I don't turn on the tv or radio or any other external stimuli "so that I can really focus", I actually slow down and become overly cautious. Which totally gets in the way of getting any creative work done. Something about the visuals, sounds, and stories being relayed fills up my "creative well" and keeps me going.

So, I'm working on: Not fighting my natural rhythms. Being ok with taking lots of breaks if that means I come back to my original task with more energy. Getting a good stretch of work in before I allow the distractions, but understanding the importance of the "distractions" in terms of re-energizing myself.

And, now that I've gotten a couple hours of computer time in this morning, I'm off to take a break with a workout. Because a break doesn't necessarily mean rest, as I've discovered, it means a change of pace from what you were just doing. And I'm starting to think that's a much healthier way than how I was handling time before.

The "I'm Too Busy" Syndrome & the Computer-Free Weekend

I read somewhere recently about this syndrome of being "too busy", of how people get themselves caught up in the motions of going through all the things they think they need to do, mindlessly (yes I do mean in the Buddhist sense), and automatically telling people "I'm so busy". That it becomes a sort of cult-like mental pattern wherein the "too busy" person actually believes they are just that, and loses the ability to prioritize. I'm completely going beyond paraphrasing here, because I can't remember exactly what I read or where I read it and, you know, I was too busy to save the link. Ha.ha.ha...

That whole prioritizing thing? Yeah, I'm not so great at it. If everything needs to be done, then how to decide what needs to be done first? When my imaginary deadlines are looming over it all? (Notice I said everything. I think that's a little telling, don't you?) Today I'm excited by the fact my office is letting us leave at noon today to get an early start on the holiday weekend. As I sit here reviewing my completely unrealistic mental to-do list for this weekend, and my excitement over all the tasks I can get a head-start on is starting to wane with the acknowledgement that I won't actually be able to accomplish it all. And not sure what to do about it other than declaring a computer-free weekend. No, make that an interwebs-free weekend. As in, no wasting hours on the internet even though all I have all those blogs to catch up on. And TV to watch online (my experiment of not-getting-cable is doing nothing to cut down my tv consumption, i swear).

But. I am going to try. Try to focus, try to get as much done as I can. Without distraction. I will try. As of right now, the computer-free weekend is begun.

3 Views Through a Window

Well hello there, I hope you've had a nice week so far!

I posted a few pictures several weeks ago, with the idea to make a recurring series with similar photos. Images framed by the windows through which they are viewed. I've taken a few photos last week that I'll share with you here - nothing too spectacular, I hope that as time goes on and I get better with handling my humble point-and-shoot camera I'll have more interesting ones to share later :-)

These are all taken from within my apartment, looking out of course, so here you can see the views I have from my bedroom in the evening, see the traffic going by below? (oops, you can also sort-of see my closet reflected too, see those hanging ghosts of clothes on the left side of image? haha!)

...and looking out to the weirdly-shaped balcony off my living room. The neighboring apartment buildings are not the prettiest backdrop, but at least there are trees. (See the treetop covered in white blossoms just over the railing? Those blossoms are all blowing off this week in the wind.)

...and a peek out from my kitchen/dining area - I kind of really like the grids and lines from this perspective!

{Just one thing I wanted to add... blogging insecurity moment... it feels very strange to be sharing these online, even though I'm not showing anything too terribly personal for gosh sakes! But I'm feeling a little exposed here, which is probably a good feeling to confront, right? No way of getting over those fear-based emotions if I'm hiding from them.}