I’m very sad to say that after a month hiatus in my blog, I don’t have any artwork to show. There are a handful of reasons. The lamest is that I’ve been insanely lazy and reluctant to scan things. I hate my wand scanner and I have to annoying plug in my flatbed scanner, but most of the work I’ve done in the last month were too big for the flatbed anyway. So, I have done a handful of drawings and paintings but…processing them is too tedious for my attention span and routine lately.The other less lame reason is that I’ve been taking my first actual Art Therapy class at my grad program. It’s been 6 weeks of amazingness. But it’s also been full of cathartic art experiences, so coming home from them leaves me with a lot less energy to do my own work. This last weekend, I was reading in one of my textbooks about how Art Therapy students struggled with regret over “giving up” their own art while they’re practicing as therapists, and the author urged such students to prioritize their own art health and lives through continuing their own creating. Feeling guilty and determined, I decided I’ll start now to maintain my own art while I’m a student and later a practitioner.
However, these weeknights since class haven’t been so much an absence of my own art but just of drive in general. I’m feeling sluggish and unmotivated to do much of anything. Rest assured, I’ve been doing everything I normally do anyway, but with more grimacing and reluctance than normal. I’m not sure where that has come from. I’m actually, emotionally, really happy right now.
Maybe I ought to blame the fact that I’m hardcore sucked into the book I’m reading right now – A Thousand Nights – to where we were in bed by 8:30 last night and I was reading till 10. That was all I wanted to do, and I’m not sorry. It was pretty blissful to be completely absorbed and in love with the world I was reading about. I love that the heroine doesn’t have a name (except Lady-bless), I love that the desert is a living, breathing part of the book, I love that I want the book to end the way I think it will (as opposed to rolling my eyes when it does). I love the colors, and the tension. So, it’s a happy distraction from doing what I also want to be doing.
Hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll return with an art update, at least with what has been made. I think my biggest concern I haven’t had time to process is that I haven’t done digital art in several months…and I don’t miss it too much. I don’t know if it’s a general disinterest in being on my computer; my general busy-ness; or just a lack of interest or passion in digital painting. I DON’T KNOW! I think I’m generally just too busy. Class, and work, and engagement (! I’m engaged!), and making ends meet, and Christmas shopping, and socializing. Ugh. Adulthood is so full!
UGH I AM SO AMPED UP GUYS I’m sure my blogs in here even have been suggestive of a rather crappy period of time in my life. Basically August, September, October, November and December all include blog posts with some allusion to a loss of direction, hope, or independence. I’ve said about as much about it as I can without straight up hating myself for it.
Point is, this can definitely be the third member of the Emotia painting series. Whoever said these ever needed to be drawn consecutively and in a small period of time? Honestly, let’s be real, the three of these pictures represent the beginning, middle, and completion of the transition I was forcing myself through. That being said, I am now going to line up the three of them in a row and talk about them.
…
After I point out my selfie, inspired by my recent infatuation with all things Dunn Brothers. There’s one less than a mile from my work and I don’t even go there out of desperation anymore; I go there because I like the walk, and I don’t get fancy coffees anymore so I can justify a brewed coffee in a reusable mug, and something healthy to eat midway through my workday. So, I made a selfie wearing my giant scarf I was into for a few days, and some coffee, and a nod to Dunn Bros. 😀
(Emotia)
(Exhume) When I realized. When I hated who I’d become. When I was ready to walk away from the feelings I never wanted to feel. When I owned up to them, and refused to accept them as part of who I’d become. (It Will Work Out, I Hope) When I was making sacrifices. When I was holding my breath. When I was letting the tide wash over me. I was fiercely protective of who I used to be but I’d taken those boots off trying to find satisfaction in a life I didn’t really want. I was looking ahead, because there wasn’t much around me to revel within. (Rise Again, Fighting) Everything fell apart. I made a giant mistake which financially cost me and shattered any trust I had in myself and my decision-making abilities. I had fallen closer to rock bottom than I ever had, and it killed me knowing it was a series of impulsive life choices I made that landed me right where I was. (As a side note, I didn’t do anything illegal; I didn’t get fired from any jobs; I didn’t cause anybody bodily harm, including myself) I didn’t feel like myself anymore but the line of decisions and experiences between me and who I wished I still was was getting longer and longer. It took me forever to come to rational solutions for my situation. But I did. Finally. This included taking on art classes through a community art program for the first time. Right now I’m halfway through a Saturday class talking to three teenagers about comics and drawing. It legitimizes my skill in it and gives me a chance to talk to some kids who are where I used to be. It included deciding to put the possibility of graduate school back on the table. (Appropriately, my chosen grad program is ART THERAPY…wish me luck) It included smoothing out the wild wrinkles in my living situation, and suddenly cleaving to circumstances I’d jilted before but come to realize were exactly what I currently needed. I also got back all of my financial losses, after honestly accepting the possibility that the loss had ended but may have never been replaced. All these things lined up again in the matter of weeks since the beginning of the new year. This new year has been metaphorical and temporal. I realized this morning, amusing as it may sound, that I haven’t cried in January. I can’t tell you how cool that is, considering the months I was climbing out of.
Visually, OH MY GOD, like I just realized that the COLOR PALETTES are appropriate! LOOK how dull and drained Exhume’s colors were. It Will Work Out, I Hope shows a subdued but warm color palette, followed by Rise Again, Fighting’s EXPLOSIVELY HOT COLORS. The movement of the three paintings goes from extremely static to fiercely dynamic, too. Exhume is frozen, CLENCHED even. It Will Work Out has her footing back – she’s just done something, but she’s not doing anything more, yet. And finally, Rise Again bursts forth, taking “matter” into her own hands, hair streaming, eyes lit up, hand outstretched.
Yes, the three paintings depict different girls. Some braids, some curls, some dark and light hues of hair. However, the hair tones get gradually darker too. Shamelessly, Rise Again, Fighting’s girl has hair pretty similar to my own (‘cept I STILL CAN’T GET A BRAID TO STICK IN MY HAIR, FFFF), but it only makes sense that at the end of this transition I can see myself more in my art than before.
In a way, I’m proud of myself back in those dark months that I still sat down and deliberately spoke to myself through art. I guess I didn’t realize how important that would feel now, basically on the other side. (Am I convinced that everything is in the clear, and I’m off to be super successful? No. I still only work 2 days next week. So.) It just feels like I was still in there, struggling underneath the muck of a very messy trek into true post-graduate adulthood.
And besides, the point of Rise Again, Fighting isn’t that it’s a done deal. It’s that it’s NOW. I’m fighting again, with fire inside me. Not embers. I’m ignited again with a belief in what my own life can become. I hate the job market – it’s incredibly deflating – but I will fight its oppressive hold on my life till I get from it something that I want.
Rise Again, Fighting was a really long painting, too. I started it – what, Monday night. I gave it a solid three hours of work while my boyfriend watched wrestling. Which was great ’cause then my productivity made him literally leap off the couch to go get me a Reese’s egg when I asked for one (true love, folks). The painting was originally a girl with white lines on a red background in a foofy skirt, and then I gave her hands, and then I was going to do a long paint smear between her hands, and then the paint smear became some sort of water bending — yellow water bending — which then I turned into fire when I nonchalantly asked my boyfriend if it looked like water and he went “……” and I said “…or something liquid” and he finally said “…I thought it was fire.” And I said, “Oh, it’s fine, I was kind of going for a phoenix idea a bit ago anyway. Fire it is.” and then I redid a third of what I’d had done before I finally proceeded in the direction of the finished project. The fire took A LONG TIME to develop. And the longer I worked on it the less excuse I had to be lazy with developing the fire. And the skin shading. I EVEN LOOKED AT A TUTORIAL (relax, it was only one). And the hair. I TOOK BREAKS AND SHIT. I added the dark edges to the bottom of the background when I thought about the idea of the phoenix, and the idea of coming out of a dark few months. That’s also what the line of silver is for – out of the ashes, and the darkness, I emerge renewed and newly empowered. Also, whether it is viewable on all platforms is irrelevant but I did add some text, I just blended it in so that it is not extremely important to view it or not – but it’s my message to you. Back off motherfuckers, Mary’s owning her life and making it beautiful.
(And…and I just said to my friend this painting is “flipping the bird” to the shit I waded through…get it…flipping the bird…the bird like a phoenix…like the phoenix that is a bird that I painted…yeah…yeah it’s bedtime.)
About a month and a half ago, I correctly identified the artist of a painting posted on the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Facebook page. I won myself a pair of free tickets to the MIA’s special exhibit, which was called Marks of Genius and showcased sketches and working pieces by master artists from all periods. I was interested in this exhibit anyway because I knew the exhibit would include the sort of loose gestural drawings that get me more excited than anything else. And plus, I’ve basically never won something like that for free so it was pretty exciting. But between moving and starting a new job, the closing of the exhibit REALLY snuck up on me. I had to go by myself (part of me wanted to go by myself the whole time…but when you get a pair of tickets and only want to use one, something feels wrong) because my boyfriend works every day of the week and I didn’t want to go with anyone else I wasn’t comfortable with, because I knew myself well enough to know that Marks of Genius would geek me the fuck out. When I realized, though, that this was the case, I felt pretty liberated. I was going to do something BY MYSELF again! FOR ME! On my OWN TIME! Aaaand then I woke up this morning feeling like CRAP. I work with (literally) snotty toddlers so I’m currently infected by at least a dozen strains of cold/cough. Morning and bedtime are definitely the worst times. And I’ve been taking Nyquil all week, which has meant super crazy vivid dreams that don’t quite leave me feeling incredibly restless. So this morning I woke up and didn’t think I had the will to get out of bed, even for the art museum. But I got myself more and more anxious thinking about NOT going and I knew I would permanently regret it if I let these free tickets and this exhibit slip through my fingers. So I was driven out of bed by anxiety and very faint determination. I got up and drove off to Minneapolis, appreciating my level of calm driving in Augsburg territory again. I nabbed myself a perfect parking place dead center to the front stairwell to the museum (which I didn’t even enter…something about going in those grandiose doors feels wrong).
In the exhibit, I shamelessly stopped for 5-10 minutes at a time to sketch works. It was everything I wanted to be: full of gestural drawings and intense, busy, wild ink drawings. I got ridiculously close to the paper (Asian paper is a category of paper…who knew) and stared at knuckles or spots of light in an eye for a very very long time. Other exhibit browsers were mostly college students or elderly people, which meant they were mindful and respectful about sharing viewing space. The exhibit was wide open and so quiet, like a sanctuary,
I compiled a gigantic ribbon of pages from my sketchbook because some of them were cool the way they translated from chalk/charcoal/graphite into my own sketchy style. It justifies the shit out of loving my own sketching because I loved the shit out of these sketches.
Going out to the museum today by myself was something like communion with myself to a depth I haven’t reached in a while. My connection to art, the way it opens me up, has been a rare constant in the makeup of who I am. I may have had fewer technical terms for it during high school, and too many technical terms for it in college, and too many that I’ve forgotten now, but I don’t need anything but what I’ve always had to fall in love with the sweep of a line or the contours of a face. I’ve become a different person in the year and a half since college – adulthood requires me to be different, and changes my feelings towards things. But wandering the MIA by myself always makes me know myself again. I’ve been trying to pour art back into my life since my new job and apartment, but the MIA fills me up till all the wonder of art spills out of me again.
So after giving up midway through “Waiting” (Is that ironic? That I got impatient trying to figure out a picture that was about my impatience? … Yes I think it actually is), I had just been dicking around with various watercolors and casually forgot about how I’d set out to make a series of digital paintings about complex emotions. Then my boyfriend made an observation about my desperation while working to have time off to do art and how I never really did much of it when I was desperately unemployed. Desperate unemployment creates quite a different tone than comfortable time off, it turns out, because I felt like I was going too stir-crazy to attempt anything creative. I basically ended up spending 10 days without a job trying as hard as I could to run away from being alone. I’d go for bike rides for 2 hours just so I wouldn’t be in the house. I’d force my boyfriend to hang out with me. I’d whine about my alone time on the internet. I’d apply for jobs. Lots and lots and lots of jobs. I feel like I don’t know how to be that closed-off but wildly prolific girl I used to be during high school/college. HOW did I write a 500-page novel about a girl with a glowing dragon? How did I create 46 pages of a beautiful colored graphic novel while I studied abroad? How did I justify choosing to spend my time on that stuff rather than, like, relationships, or work? And, now, more pertinent, how do I spend time on my creative life while still having relationships (a select few)?
I had the somewhat bittersweet realization a few weeks ago that I really only wanted to come up with a story idea for the sake of having written so many and wanting to keep that alive. I didn’t really wanna do it for the same driving sense of passion that used to motivate. I really really hope that changes on its own, but I don’t want to be a slave to solving writer’s block I don’t even know should be solved.
As for art, just now I caught myself ready to quit and come back to this piece later rather than problem-solving it now and being done with it. I think that’s gotten me stuck with a lot of work-in-progresses that I then forget about.
Anyway, I realized I put up my watercolor paintings in my gallery but not in here, so I’ll add those in and then talk about my newest emotia drawing.
I like this one in the sense that it’s like “aw cute” but it’s so shallow and childish compared to my usual work haha. If the entire thing were just her dress and the cat I think I’d be happier with it. As it were, it looks like it belongs in a child’s bedroom. At the same time I’m really happy with the skint one on her neck and the outline of her foot, and I didn’t have much practice with watercolor till this.
This was practice #2 with watercolor and what’s hilarious is her skirt started out as a mistake and turned into my favorite part of the painting. I love her hair and her eyes even though they’re both kind of freaky. I don’t like how I shaded her skin or that I stupidly messed up her tights.
Okay so this second completed member of Emotia is “Things Will Work Out (I Hope), but it ended up being a lot more narrative than conceptual – not that that takes anything away from it. Her pose, for once in my life, came quickly and naturally and this final draft of her pose actually came without any revising except in the initial phase. Not gonna lie though – I may only have given her those combat boots because I’m so excited that they’re back in style so I can wear my Doc Martens this fall! Okay but anyway, I don’t actually remember where the light bulbs idea came from. I think I knew I wanted that hopeful aspect in the piece so I knew she needed a physical light source. OH NO, I was watching Being Human (the UK version) and a vampire was touching an old yellow light bulb riiiight when I must have been starting this. You know, that just made me realize – maybe to get back into being productive I have to start turning on my creative eye when I’m out and about. Like when I’m watching TV or when I’m reading. I can’t remember the last time I did something “because I saw…” Anyway, the purpose of this girl is supposed to be that she is ready and determined and she has already been through shit (okay, mud), but she’s still planted and she’s not moving yet. She’s bright with hope so much sometimes that it makes her want to fly but it also weighs her down (I literally just made that part up now, but yes). She looks like she belongs in a whole world of light bulb fairies though; I wish I could do something with that but we’ll see. Also her hair was SO great to do!
While reserving the right to repeatedly modify and re-upload this image tomorrow, I must say that I’m pretty damn proud of myself for this digital piece. I won’t jump in and say that it’s the fantastic piece I’m proud of so much that I DID IT and I FOLLOWED THROUGH on a piece that was digital from start to finish. I followed a concept, I sketched it out six million times rather than committing myself to a pose I don’t like but can’t get right because digital art is finnicky like that.
This is the first in the first attempt at a “series” I want to try based on complex feelings. This one is called Exhume.
It represents “Feeling What You Don’t Want” as in those moments when you’re gripped with jealousy or rage or disappointment and you desperately want to dispel every scrap of it from your body but it just won’t get out. And you hate yourself for it and you want to break yourself to get rid of it but your heart’s still whole and as long as it’s there then the feeling won’t leave you till it chooses. You’re not about to cry and you’re not about to scream you’re just so concentrated, fruitlessly, on crushing that feeling.
I’m so excited about the concept behind it that I was willing to post this possibly prematurely. This took two really, really long sessions to figure out. I started it Saturday over like three hours, but basically all I had then was her figure and the mirror breaking. I had no idea how to color her (surprise!), and at that point I was still trying to dress her. But anything I tried to dress her in seemed to undermine the strength of her and so I used the “ink drip” idea I had but realized it could be skin-tone, and thus solved that problem. I also really like how the nude-colored and the red breaking lines go up into the background because suddenly it is a background and I didn’t need to fill it with pointless blurred shading or something. This thing is almost entirely cohesive (tying it up a little bit better I think is the only thing I’d do to it and repost for) and that’s just never happened digitally. I kinda wanna fix some of the colors but I didn’t want to sort through my 30-some layers tonight just to fix those couple spots that are way too lavender.
It reminds me a lot of this piece, which however old it was and however much it was based on Chevelle lyrics stands out as one of the most BAM concepts I’ve ever done in terms of emotionality and raw, visible feeling.
…Oddly I completely forgot that he’s held up on strings, but that makes this more related to my new piece because they’ve both got the really strong cut lines, and a bleeding heart haha.
Well I will say with some level of pride that playing Skyrim has been a distraction for me for the last few weeks. In general though, the lack of blog posts hasn’t corresponded with a bundle of sketches that just weren’t posted like it normally did. Transitioning out of Reading Corps into my summer school work didn’t amount to much more free time or spare energy than I had during the school year. I switched from not having time to work, to needing to work on creative stuff — for a class.
I got the awesome opportunity to teach two graphic novel classes at the same summer school where I’ve been an assistant for 4 summers. To teach my graphic novel class I needed to assemble 35 hours of curriculum. Hand-made curriculum. From the girl who looked down on elementary ed during college, and consequently had never written a lesson plan in her life. And, let’s also point out, hadn’t completed a graphic novel in five years. Safe to say I had a daunting task before me. But I was surrounded by educators who believed I’d be able to create an awesome class, and I had a lot of material to pull from from my own writing experiences and also from my college art courses. I had two sets of students, one each week, and it’s kinda interesting how different they both were. But the resounding feeling they both left me with is inspiration.
I chose the age group (6-9 grade) that I did because that was when I was starting Nikkei, between 7th and 8th grade. But what I didn’t realize about making the choice the way that I did was how much I would connect with where these kids were at…and how much it would revitalize my passion for what I used to do. It kind of just struck me, oh, you know, yesterday that I could be sketching while they work. Doing so opened up that door for me again that I’d kind of closed in favor of trying to push my art forward by not trying boring things I liked but didn’t challenge me. One of my students referred to art schools as creating a sense of elitism, which I could agree with insofar that becoming an art student changes your standard of “art” so that maybe the silly character sketches you used to love making wouldn’t make the cut anymore.
I can’t say I can undo all that mentality because I’ve spent a long time trying to do so and part of it has always clung to me.
But for the first time pretty much since last summer, I’ve had snaps of inspiration, the old kind that made me go OH MY GOD, I AM SO DESPERATE TO DO THAT! and one of them could actually present itself as a nice union of what I feel I should consider “sophisticated art” and what I really crave to do. SO IMMA TRY IT soon
I also figured that even though I have no real idea how to revamp the root of my website, I still should do it anyway. I’ve been meaning to use Dreamweaver for my own fun but I haven’t had time up until now. So here’s to making sure this month (or so) off from work proves to be productive, and also doesn’t fly by so fast that I can’t take advantage of any of this creative buzzing I’m feeling.
Anyway, teaching two classes full of little artists was totally fun and kind of a sweet way of following through with my life’s direction. I could see myself picking up more weekend classes to teach during the school year, something I practically had the opportunity to do this last year but failed to take advantage of.
I usually hate making art blog posts without pictures, but hopefully this is more of a STAY TUNED! sort of entry.
On that note, I was showing my kids some pages from Cadence this week, and I think it’s a lot stronger than Raquilidis was visually. And I even burst out today MAN I WANNA KEEP WORKING ON THIS and my kids were like oh yeah you know how that happens! So I pulled up my page in progress and I was like OKAY, IF I CAN REMEMBER THE DIALOGUE FOR THIS, FINISHING THE COLORING WOULD BE TOTALLY FUN, AND GO
Now I just have to decide what actual art supplies to bring to my boyfriend’s tomorrow – just my tablet, or do I want to dive into my traditional project idea?
… Or maybe my traditional project idea should be digital ….
or should I use … yes it should be digital..SINCE WHEN DO I HAVE A DIGITAL ART GOAL?! No I’m still thinking maybe digital lines and traditional color…how would I pull that off…..I CAN CUT 8X10 PAPER MYSELF BITCHES
eeee that sounds cool
but see I can also do some digital color and see if I can emulate my traditional style of coloring – somehow…Photoshop’s gotta be able to do what I have in my head. Hey it’s not that late, LET’S FIND OUT NOW
This is the first piece I’ve finished on my brand new laptop! I definitely went broke on this new beast of a computer at just the right time. Trying to pull my photos and documents off my old computer showed me how close it was to death. I mean maybe that’s all in my head…
Anyway I have a computer now that doesn’t make me scared of working in Photoshop. And also (shhh) I’ve upgraded to a “trial” (wink…wink) version of Photoshop CC, so everything is shinier and newer than the last version I was working in.
As for the actual piece, it started when I was nearly exploding with aimless frustration today and I needed to do something to channel my feelings. Since Ingrid is pretty much my muse (and I’m casually working on another rewrite of Terror of Night) I went with her immediately. Also because I love her hair. I was working on a page of “Stealing from Raquildis” when her pose popped into my head, so I gave up on that and worked on this instead. Shades of red are definitely my go-to colors, especially for digital work. I followed through a little more with shading and cleaning up the lineart, too.
So I suppose I was feeling self-indulgent today and I decided to do a portrait-style doodle of my wonderful boyfriend. What’s funny is that as soon as I started drawing him I had this huge insight into my man preferences. He looks pretty much like the kind of guy I would draw all the time except that I make a deliberate effort to avoid him – the geeky, tall, dark, bespectacled gentleman. I avoided him because I always felt “Well, of course that’s my type” so I, not surprisingly, tried to challenge myself by making my guy characters not my type. So, drawing him was pretty much super easy and it felt like fulfilling half a cliche – the nerdy girl drawing the geeky guy – and made me super happy and isn’t he adorable? THOSE HANDS THO
Before I colored him though, he did look a lot like Micah from “Farewell, Fairytale” (and Unface) so…that works!
Also, look at my cool traditional lineart from last week.
New coloring format, yeyyyyy. I don’t know why I suddenly wanted to do the colors this way – I was in the middle of trying to be productive on Stealing from Raquildis after sitting on the same panel for a week, and then I realized I just really wanted to do a standalone photo. And, as always during times of soul-searching, I only really wanted to draw Micah. With Fall Out Boy lyrics. Because this is my life. I was going to put the lyrics on the photo until I realized that it didn’t make it any stronger. Holy wow I love black lineart.
