A New Work Space

It's time to get back to blogging and making art.  And what better way to do this than to create a new work space?

Previously, I had carved out a corner in a spare bed room.  Then my kids decided they needed their own rooms again so I got evicted. I think I was ready to move out anyway because that space felt too far away from all the other responsibilities I have, like my kids and my husband and cooking.  I realize I need to be in the middle of my family space, even as I create and make art.  I thought hermitage was the way to my creative heart, but now I know creativity is where ever I am.  When the family is in the house, I want to be near them.  When they are out of the house, I love the quiet and I can be very productive then, but when they are home, I need to see them and be seen by them.

Now I have a corner in the living room in front of my sliding glass door.  I love all the light flooding in.  I love having plants on my desk and the light makes that possible.  I love that my desk is wood and not plastic!

I hope that by bringing my work space into the family living space I can integrate my art into the rest of my life and by doing that I hope to be more productive.  I know I have to squeeze it into the spaces between taking care of my family which is my greatest creative en devour.  By integrating them, perhaps I will not neglect either so much by having to choose.

Thanks for visiting my blog.  It has been ages since I wrote here.  I hope to be writing more, tracking my creative journey more intricately.  I'd love to know if you have a work space just for your creative projects.  I so, please tell me what it is like and how it helps.  I am always looking for ideas to improve!  Thanks!

Tangled Art, Tangled Life

"If you get tangled up, just tango on!" - Al Pacino from "Scent of a Woman"

I look at this and it is just doodles, right?  Okay, now having said that, to actually get myself to sit down and do the doodle, was a challenge.  I mean, looking at other people's "Zen tangles", (What a clever name.  Great marketing!)  I start to feel a little nauseous because I think, "I can never do something that PRETTY!"  But thankfully, I don't have to necessarily follow a rule, I just have to make patterns.  Easy.  Really, it is.  So, I make the tangles (That's what I hear they have been called.) and if I get tangled up, I just tangle on.  Not as romantic as the Tango, but that's okay.  Apparently this form of doodling causes your mind to calm down into a meditative state which helps with stress among other things. 

One more reason I love cruising the web.  There are literally millions of artists with just as many sites and they are all out there sharing their work.  And we get to browse through and feed our inner creative.  Of course then it is up to us to do something about it, like paint a picture, draw a doodle, sing a song, write a poem, make a special dish, plant flowers, imagine dragons and fairies in the clouds, what ever your imagination leads you to do.  I just know being creative causes you to become more creative!  I love that. 

And I kind of feel like life is a little like a Zen tangle.  Over here you have something going on and then in another place you have some other complicated thing happening, all of it seems crazy making and a little confusing, overwhelming really. But you just keep plugging away, hoping the patterns will begin to form and clarity will eventually happen and then when it does and you step back and look, your life is this amazing beautiful patchwork with depth and richness of detail.  We think we want it simple and we complain, "Why can't things be easy?!?!"  But it is the twists and turns, the dark places and the light places, the curves and sharp angles that make our lives these amazing masterpieces, when all we thought they might be were doodles.  Go figure.  No wait, go doodle!

Thank you so much for reading my blog today.  You are so very welcome to leave a comment, be it brief or long.  Either way, I'd love to know what you think, so leave a comment dear reader!

In Hiding

Okay, I will admit it... I've been hiding.   Posting here on my blog has become less and less of a priority.  Not that I think that is a good thing, but in the time I have taken too be away, I have been more productive and actually doing ART rather than just talking about it. 

As important as it is to share what I do, it is even more important that I do the very thing I am pursuing which is to create.  It is far too easy to spend my free time writing or thinking about writing for my blog or looking at Face Book!  People watching is fun, but unproductive and not creative, unless it inspires the artist to actually make time to create.  In my case, I'd say only about 20% of my time on social media is inspiring the rest of the time I am just drained and bored.

I also admit that I am still on Face Book everyday, and I am on it way too much, but I have still had time in spite of that to make stuff!  I just decided to not stress over my blog.  It is still here.  I haven't forgotten about it!  And I still love all of you who come to visit!  It always makes my day to see that someone has stopped by and even better when you leave a comment!

So please, feel free to leave a comment.  Have you taken time off of social media?  Did it help or hurt your creativity?  I'd love to hear from you!  Blessings to you.... now stop reading this and go make something!! :)

Prayer for Creativity

I've have discovered a new place inside myself.  It is a place where I am completely helpless, like being stranded in the middle of a wilderness with no resources except the spongy organ between my ears.  It is an uncomfortable place, scary actually and I am not often happy there.  Mostly I am overwhelmed  and scared.  What is this place?  It is my creativity. 

Unpredictable and shifting as the weather in Kansas in April, I am finding creativity is hard to manage.  It is vibrant and powerful one day and the next it is wilted and barely alive.  And frustration only makes it worse.

In this place I have also discovered an oasis - a place refreshing and restful.  It is a place called Prayer.  I am a Christian and I believe God loves us and when we trust in his son, Jesus, our prayers suddenly become powerful.  Not to say that I don't have days when I feel like they are bouncing off of the ceiling, but my feelings are deceitful and the truth is that God hears me and he desires to give me peace.

I wrote recently about peace and I know it is what we all long for.  It is the underlying motivation behind all that we do whether it is to make money so we have security, to find a mate who will make us feel loved, to pursue a dream that will fill us with satisfaction.  It also motivates us to evil, like trying to control other people or circumstances, or even for one group of people to do violence to another group because there is the wrong headed belief that other group it the cause of a lack of peace.

True peace is only found in Jesus Christ and trusting him to reconcile us to our Creator and to keep us with him, even unto death.  And in him I also find peace from the things which attempt to torment me, like frustration, bitterness, anger, distrust and deferred dreams.  Little by little I am turning over to him all parts of my life, especially my creativity.  Through him God created the universe.  I know that my creativity is important to him as well, for he has put that light in me. 

So I surrender my creative dreams to him and I will be praying more.  Praying for peace and also that I would be a bringer of blessings to those who will see my art and read my writing.  I will be praying that he will make the work of my hands glorifying to him.

I invite you to pray and call on Jesus.  He loves you so much.  He desires you more than you can imagine for he made you.  The Bible says that those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.  Call on him today and he will rush to you for he has promised to be with us always.  And let today be the beginning of a relationship with him.  Never stop praying.  When I have, it is as if I stopped breathing deeply.  So pray.  I am praying too.... and praying for you.

Capture Peace

Making art really is a struggle sometimes.  Not a struggle I understand because I want creativity to be an act that is natural.  And I would say I want it to be like breathing, but even breathing is a labor sometimes.  Maybe I am just looking for easy this days.  I want something in my life to not be difficult.  So many things feel heavy, from the everyday routine chores to the complexities of relationships to the puzzlement over making decisions.  And in the midst of all these things, my creativity, my desire to create and express myself gets shoved into a dark corner.  In the past I had gotten used to this.  I learned to live with out my art.  Now I feel like I am neglecting some fragile thing that is going to die if I leave it for too long.

I am restless and uneasy.  I want to be peaceful, but my mind won't let me rest.  It is as if I am looking for things to worry over, because I don't know what to do with quietness.  I know peace is within arms reach.  I only have to stretch out to receive it.  But can I lift my arms from their rigidity?
Can I let new ideas come into my mind or must I be like a rat on a wheel, going over the same nonsense over and over?

I want peace to come rest on me, but all this internal tossing and turning is swatting it away.  My emotions are unruly and I am not disciplined enough to make them mind.  But I have to do it.  Somehow I have to quiet my mind, pray more, worry less, make my hands do something productive and beautiful.  I have to will my mind to stillness and will my hands to move.  Somehow.  And I hope writing this here will help me encourage myself to do just that.  If I am my own worst enemy, I must become my own greatest ally. 

Feeling worried and unhappy is something most of us struggle with.  How do you cope with it?  I would love to get some good advice.  Please leave a comment and share what you do to make your creativity flow.  Thanks for stopping by!

Wasting Time

This is hard.  I sit down to write and to create an illustration and the effort feels so big and the end goal seems so far away that I take a moment to wonder, "Am I wasting my time?"

That question is a creativity killer.  It never fails to freeze me up and drain me of every good idea I was having 10 minutes ago. 

So what am I worried about? Well, I wonder if this venture will pay off. I am taking the time every day to make sketches and take notes and jot down ideas.  I read books to help me get inspired and stay inspired and more books to learn about business and illustration as well as books on writing of different sorts.  All of this is making a choice how I spend my time.  So will all this effort bring a profit in the end? Will a publisher ever want to hire me? Will a company ever want to commission my art? Will I ever be able to deposit a check into a business account?

Then I feel guilty because I am melting all my golden dreams down into coins. Is it really all about money? Is that critical adult voice from my childhood right by asking, "Art major? Why would you let her major in art" My other favorite was, "Are you going to be a starving artist?" I will let the above quotes remain anonymous. Those careless comments by well meaning adults buried themselves deep in my psyche, like cancerous lesions, waiting for the right opportunity to grow tumors.

I hate thinking about money.  I hate thinking my dreams are only worthwhile if they turn a buck.  Some people actually enjoy pursuing their passions without giving that a second thought.  Maybe that actually makes their efforts more valuable. 

My efforts are actually teaching me to be committed to something.  I have had several false starts.  Hind sights tells me this had so much to do with immaturity.  Some of us are late bloomers.  I know motherhood needed to happen to me. I have learned more about determination by raising two children than anything I ever learned in school. 

Speaking of motherhood, that will never make me a dime... and it has been worth every minute.

Yea, taking the time to pursue this dream is worth it, even if I never make a dime.  I am taking time to nurture my creative self.  She has been seriously neglected over the years.  It was past time to take care of her.

When I measure how I spend my time, writing this post and drawing the picture I made to go with it was time better spent than an hour with the television.  Now I just wonder if I would ever have the willpower to never watch that time waster again.

Thanks for stopping by to read my post.  Feel free to share it and to leave a comment.  Time wasters are all around us.  What are some timewasters you struggle to avoid?

I hope this post has encouraged you to never look at following your dream as a time waster, no matter where that journey leads you.

Art as Meditation

I drew this little ball in a moment of need.  I was needing some peace.  And as I drew out the shape and then applied the hatching in indigo blue, I began to feel the stress I was feeling leave my body, melting onto the page.  The quietness of the shape with its smooth roundness and the calmness of the color, helped me to shift my focus away from the issues which had been pestering me to the process of taking what I saw and translating it to the blank paper.

It is easy to forget the healing power of creativity.  Music uplifts us, colors change our moods, making something with our hands gives our minds rest.  It is a crime against ourselves to think that art is frivolous when it offers peace to us.

Thank you for stopping to check out this post.  I hope you are inspired to let creativity sweep your heart clean and offer you a place to rest in this hectic world.  Please leave a comment and share how you use creativity to decompress.