Fickle Pickle.

First - sorry I have not posted.  I requested a new project at work and got it.  When I am enjoying my work, I am as obsessive about it as I am about anything else, so I have been busy!  And now, back to our previously scheduled pondering....

SO!  3 weeks or so ago I was cleaning out my studio.  I was running out of room and had a bunch of stuff I probably will never get around to using, so I had to thin the herd so-to-speak.  I came across my wool tub.  It is a 40 gallon plastic box full of roving for needle felting.  What makes it more impressive is that I have vacuum sealed each color into thin bags - that is A LOT of wool.  I looked at it and thought "I should probably get rid of most of this.  I doubt I will ever pick it up again."  I even remember wondering what I found interesting about doing it....

Fast forward a mere 7 days and VOILA!  It is all I can think about.  The bears in my head must have panicked, as they all started shoving their way to the front.  Since then I have made 4.  Plus one none bear is in the works... 

How does this happen?  Anyone??

Don't get me wrong - I am really enjoying it.  I just find it odd. 

I am itching...

Itching to do stuff!  I am sitting here, where I have to be for the next 4 hours, and just below the surface, my body is crawling with the need to get up and go!  Ever have that happen?  There are days I feel like I am 5.  That perfect age where the world is still this amazing, vast place.  Where the smoky wisps of adventure curl like vines around me and tap on my shoulder, only to disappear behind the nearest tree when I turn around.  Creativity hangs in this place, fills the air and my head with ideas, with people (human and not) that are waiting  until I am capable of channeling their likeness into some sort of media.

 I have had that feeling since I was a child, like things are eagerly babbling amongst themselves inside my head, though I am just starting to realize that.  They watch for the day when I am 'good enough' to give them a life outside of my mind.  Sometimes they are pushier - like now - and I physically feel them jostling inside me, jockeying to see where we are, where we are going, what we are doing.  (Why I am not honing...Like I said - pushy.)

The above was somewhat difficult, yet freeing, to put out into the world.  I put faces on emotions, opinions and mischievous thoughts that turn them into something I can recognize and observe and maybe even hope to understand.  And I am willing to bet that some would call that crazy, but I am also willing to bet that I am not alone.  I like that this world is opening to me more and more as I embrace and nurture it.

The urge to explain keeps burbling to the surface.  Say here that I am not crazy and this is just my artistic voicing of the processes in my head.  I would say I do not care what people think, but that is not entirely accurate.  Truthfully, it thrills me when people say I am weird.  What a wonderful, wonderful compliment!  I am not what one of my dearest friends would call 'sheeple'.  My definitions fall outside of the grayier gray of normal.  I see things differently. 
Does that sound like a bad thing?

And exploring art has sort of given me this.  What beautiful, wonderful therapy!

Have a really great day and get out there and explore your world!

Back to work!

Well, I would appear the extended weekend is over.  It seems like there is always so much to do!  I bought a new computer and my photo editing software no longer works (I now have Windows 7.)  This makes taking semi-decent pictures difficult, must find an affordable solution to that problem! 

Projects long deserted on my work table are being completed.  I am starting to think I have a problem with purple.  Of the 10 unfinished projects, 3 are dark purple...  Or were.  I completed one yesterday!  I don't generally like unfinished projects, but am trying new methods in order to keep my muse more constant by making sure he is entertained...

My faerie folk are still in the same condition - no further progress so far!  Not to worry.  Just talking about them gave me an idea about how to proceed.  I love those light bulb moments! Wish they were a LOT more frequent!

Lightbulb moments...

I has them!  Last night I was sculpting hands - really I have been doing that for a couple of days - but I was getting frustrated.  My hands didn't look like (insert any number of artist's names here)'s.  Duh.  Not that they didn't look like hands or even look like decent hands.  Because they did, and they were - until all the moonies showed up in the bake! 

Then it dawns on me:  Isn't that the point?  My own style??  Shouldn't that be more what I am striving for than anything else?? 

Yep! 

It should be. 

It is! 

So!  I think the rest of the week will be hands.  I do enjoy making the fingers and the exercise is designed to work on the presentation and anatomy of hands in general...  Whee!  More spooky disembodies hands....

Mondays

usually find me exhausted and unfocused.  Well, maybe that is not entirely true.  They find me divided.  The back-to-work-writing-computer-code-when-my-head-is-still-working-through-sculpts keeps my left and right brains dueling.

This weekend was my mother's birthday so I spent most of my time shopping, cleaning or cooking.  I did manage a trip to Michaels to acquire some acrylics while I had a '40% off Artist Paints' coupon, only sitting down in my studio at 6:45 on Sunday evening.  Not a lot of sculpting time, but some goals were accomplished.

1)  My current heads will be finished as busts.  I know one I will attach to a candlestick I have.  My thought at this point is that it will be the female....

2) I took pictures of the before and after paint heads.  They are from my iPhone, but I did take them.

The fae before paint:

 

and after:

The imp sculpt before paint:

and after:

 Sorry for the rotten quality.  Will get better ones when not so crunched for time!

3) Fear didn't hold me back.  Time commitments did...

4)  I didn't even get started with the armature wire, but did sculpt some hands trying out Wendy Froud's Sculpting a Fairy video method. I will stick to individual fingers like in her second for now though when it is time to sculpt some more delicate fingers I could see this working out!  

So, 50% success in the goal realm. Enough to set some new (and much needed) ones.

This week I have to gt my photo area set up more permanently.  That requires some extension cords, but is entirely within reach.  That is my goal for this evening.... That way when it is time to take pictures, I don't have to offend our eyes with these blurry quickies!I also have a couple of doodles without heads and some heads without bodies that should be finished up to get them out of my sculpting space....

No sage advice or insight today other than to say try taking one thing from your list each day and do it, try it, whatever.  It is not so much about doing something as it is about keeping that promise to yourself.  There is a sense of victory in keeping your word to yourself each day and a distinct lack of self-admonishment. Admonishment lends itself to a sense of failure and to more unkept promises.  And that cycle is a hamster wheel best avoided!

With Good Intentions....

I sit and write this post.  Intention that I intend to act upon, despite the universe's best attempts to usurp me.  Here are my goals for this weekend:

Acquire items to build a decent armature  (this is already a bit of a cheat as I think I have most...)

Determine how to finish busts of fae creature heads I have already created (there are 2).

Complete at least one of the two aforementioned busts.

Take pictures as they are now and of the finished products.

Refuse to let fear (of what I am not exactly sure) stop me from any of the above...


I will report on all my successes Monday, which is to say, if I do not blog, then I had none!  Hahaha.....  Er, ahem.  Let's talk about something else....

COUPON DEALS!
If you are not signed up to receive Michaels ads/coupons in your email I suggest you do it.  This week there is a coupon for 40% all Artist Paints, Pencils and Markers beginning Sunday.   Liquitex and I are becoming friends and Michaels has begun carrying Golden Acrylics.  I will surely be spending money I do not have....  Did I mention that through Saturday, clay is on sale for $1.25/2 oz brick at my store?  Time to stock up on translucents and whites  and  maybe a fleshy or two! So they have me on both Saturday and Sunday.  That is seriously evil....

And on a serious and somewhat exploratory note:

I am overcoming my fear/dislike for  painting.  It is not cured by any means, but I am no longer fleeing my studio at the thought of  it.  And I am not holding stubbornly to the idea that my hands were only given the ability to 'paint' with chalks.  Seriously - I have held fast to that for a long time... So much so, in fact, that  I have colorized entire sculpts with it.  Archipelago (below) was sculpted from Prosculpt and colorized entirely with chalk.  I like doing it, but it is seriously difficult to find an extensive color palette....  So I will learn....

My next photo will be of something I have worked acrylics on....  HEY LOOK!  ANOTHER GOAL! 

Okay!  I hope something here has you thinking about taking on something a little outside your comfort range, because I am starting to think that maybe, just maybe, that is something I am meant to do.  It somehow feels right to say.  Have a creative and productive weekend and hopefully I will have successes to share on Monday!

Productivity At Last!

Last week I spent most of my energy pulling out old landscape and putting in some new, more interesting stuff, so I was pleased last night to get up to my studio.  Okay - it is almost unbearable messy, but I can live with that for just a few days more! 

To prove that I am not just a philosophizing whiner, I created a goblin (I think) head.  He has all sorts of faults - the main one being that I blew the facial plane when I didn't make it even across the front, setting one eye farther back in his head than the other - but I did do it!  I will probably bake him, take pics and use him to practice painting.  I will also use him to gage the progress of my skill.

I have become more interested in the idea of costuming and building body armatures.  Which shows progress in my artistic curiosity since as little as a month ago I would have cringed and said "blech!" at the tediousness of that entire process.  In fact, I detest armatures.  I believe they are necessary, but they change the way I do things and I find that irritating.  I shall get over it.  And as far as costuming goes, it seems as though I should not be so scared of sewing, etc., as my mother and grandmother both are good seamstresses. Who knows!  Maybe I have a natural ability I have left untapped.  Not likely, but for now I can draw on that hope.

I told my daughter the other day that often the most successful people are not necessarily the best ones at what they do, but they consistently work harder to grow, learn, and expand their abilities.  Sort of makes it sound like it boils down to attrition, but really it is persistence and determination, eh?

I will post pics when I take them with something other than my iPhone...  Which addresses my other lack of talent - photography.  All successful artists stage their goods, the photography really setting the stage and completing the story.  So I will have to become better at taking pictures of things other than my thumb... :)