On No

I'm reading The Creative Call by Janice Elshiemer and this paragraph has been rolling around in my head and heart for a couple days.

"Saying no is not alway a negative. Say no can be proactive and positive. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gift from the Sea, writes, 'There are so few empty pages in my engagement pad or empty hours in the day or empty rooms in my life in which to stand alone and find myself...Too many worthy activities, valuable things, and interesting people. For it is not merely the trivial which clutters our lives but the important as well. We can have a surfeit of treasures - an excess of shells, where one or two would be significant.' We, too, can have a surfeit of good things in our lives. The people we care about are important to us, and we want to spend time nurturing those relationships. But some of us base our sense of self-worth on how well respond to the needs of others."

Ouch. That hurts pretty good.

A Post about posting and mostly rambling

"Gabby, you are supposed to post every day! Where have you been?"

I know, I know.

I set myself up for failure, shooting for a post every day. I should have known that life with two under three, a job that never has an off button and the usual but not so usual external influences would keep that from happening.

So - Regroup!

Honestly, I was going to write! I had my laptop out and everything, BUT then the internet went out. And I had emailed the pictures to myself and suddenly, I was unable to achieve what I set out to achieve. Combine this with some hard parenting days (read: a surge of defiance) and little sleep and you now know why I haven't been posting.

Excuses, excuses, you say.

I know.

It's much more realistic to expect a post at least once every two weeks.

So, explanation aside, I really have been doing things. Just not writing about them.

I've been skimming a watercolor book, collecting some reference photos for works I'd like to create, reading The Creative Call, sketching as I can, and continuing lessons in Learning to Draw. 

All of this is on top of parenting two, wifing one, keeping house and loving people. That takes energy too!

So, that's more or less it.

I'm around, art is happening...just not online. :)

Imitation

One of the lessons in the Keys to Drawing book I am following highlighted the "handwriting" of various famed artists. The author, Bert Dodson, suggests emulating a work by an artist first to learn their handwriting, and then imitating artists as you sketch to grow oneself as an artist. It's very freeing. When in doubt, I can ask myself, "What would Van Gogh do? How would Matisse finish this?"

It reminded me of this verse:

"Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma." Ephesians 5:1-2

So, here's my imitation of Degas.

More on Prayer

I've heard people say that prayer is difficult, and certainly, it is...if you think you have to kneel and stay confined in a quiet room for hours on end.

That's one way to do it, but I can't do that. Though sometimes I wish that I could be more introverted and enjoy time to myself in silence, it's not really possible in this season of life with two children under three. And, to be honest, if I were to have the rare occassion to have a quiet, uninterrupted space for an unlimited amount of time, I would definitely not sit still for more than ten minutes maximum...at least, not without reaching for my phone, or a book, or a journal.

It wasn't until recently, when someone asked me what prayer and conversation with God looks like in my life that I realized what has been going on for years.

I don't pray with words.

I pray with feelings.

I pray with color.

The best way that I think I can describe it is this: I have a feeling. It has a color. When I am in a particularly foul place spiritually, it is a murky color. Aware of the murkiness in my soul and heart, I ask God to speak and bring His feelings and colors. Often, His are bright, beautiful, wonderful colors. And then my color changes to something less murky. And He responds with another color. Before I know it, in moments, we've had a conversation consisting entirely of color and and feelings.

Conventional? No. Strange? Maybe. Personal? Incredibly.

I think that's exactly why He has been asking me to pursue creative venues in response to Him. He wants me to record what is going on because it is important to Him and healing for me. This isn't about being marketable. This isn't a space to brag. This is a space to share and embrace His intimate awareness of me and my intimate awareness of Him.
 

In light of this realization, while reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, I was particularly struck by this statement:

"The potential force of the creative, imaginative human brain is almost limitless. Drawing may help you come to know this power and make it know to others. Through drawing, you are made visible."

Edwards then goes on to quote the German artist Albrecht Durer who said:

"From this, the treasure secretly gathered in your heart will become evident through your creative work."

This is exactly what I believe happens when I choose to respond to God in prayer through drawing, painting, dancing, singing, whatever! It's not about the product. The art produced is only the means, and not the end. The true end is this - knowing Him.

The art just makes me better able to "see" Him and work He is doing in me.

On that note, here is a "prayer" piece. 

"Sink Prayer" Inkpen 4x4

   

Prayer

I'm exploring art as prayer and response to the things that God is teaching me. Here's what I turned out yesterday:

I Am Not Afraid Oil Pastels on Canvas Paper 8x10

I'll ride the waves of this life on Your terms, God. I don't strive. I trust You. I am not afraid.

First Guest Post

Hi, Friends! I'm excited to have my dear friend and fellow artist Marge Criswell post here today. Margie is an accomplished artist who has lived in a myriad of places and excelled in a myriad of arts!  You can check out more of her work on her facebook page, Art by Marguerite. Here she is sharing a painting today.

"When the Spirit is Present, Things Happen"

3x5, watercolor on gesso-covered board

Excited to see what kinds of things the Spirit would have us do. At Pentacost, thousands spoke in tongues and thousands more were converted. Let's pray for the Spirit to fall on us and our churches, so that there will be thousands of people being drawn to Himself and they are being saved!

Creating Space

I've learned in the past year or two that things do not happen unless I schedule it: workouts, coffee dates, even play time with my kids. While playing with my kids, I've learned that creative play happens most in creative space. 

Two or three months ago I gave the kids two creative shelves in the kitchen. It has their markers, crayons, coloring books, construction paper, old magazines, and a tub full of strange things that kids put on their creations --- googly eyes, Popsicle sticks, stickers. 

Why shouldn't that carry over to artistic endeavors?

Tomorrow I am going to visit a friend and fellow artist and she has a HUGE studio full of every kind of artsy play thing imaginable. I don't, but I have spent today decluttering and setting up creative spaces around the house. So, without further ado, check out my "studios"!

Exhibit A: My Spot

 A wonderful, dear and close to my heart  friend gave me this box full of presents for my birthday. I have since whittled away at the gifts, and refilled the box with pastels, pastel paper, watercolor pencils, graphite, charcoal, and various drawing pads. Every time I open it, I see the note that she wrote for me along the top, and it reminds me that I am loved and known. It also diffuses any self doubt I have about art as I reach for some paper. 

More often than not, I find myself sitting in this spot with a cup of coffee nearby, reading to the kids or talking on the phone. This is also the perfect perch to do some gesture sketching while the kids play. 

Exhibit B: The Thinking Place

Honestly, I do not get to spend a lot of time here, mostly because it is often much, much, much more cluttered than it looks right now. I'm hoping this blog will help change that. I often sit here to write posts, or liststorm, or reseach and watch tutorials for all kinds of things.

Exhibit C: On-The-Run

You'll have to forgive me - I can't quite get this picture to rotate, but, here it is. I'm always changing purses, so I enjoy things that are easily transferable from one bag to another. It's not always feasible, but if I find myself in a waiting room, a long road trip, or in a car with two sleeping babies, I'm very thankful to have at least a pencil on hand. I try to keep a pen around too, and at least this set of regular colored pencils. 

What about you? How do you create space or time for your hobbies?
 






 




 

Rough draft

There's a pattern that I've noticed. When record the dreams I have, I get more dreams. The more clutter I throw out, the more vigilant I become to pitch any incoming clutter before it hits the counter. When I play the piano, more pieces that I would like to master come to mind.

That's starting to happen with drawing.

Last night at InterVarsity, we did a lectio divina group study on John 17. It's kind of a mindbending chapter...and I got an idea for a painting that I'd like to do right there in the middle of it. I started doodling it right on the scripture paper we had. Later, I came home and quickly threw it down on my sketch book.

This is definitely not a finished piece. I would like to get another copy of the scripture to do a more refined version of this initial image. However, in the meantime, here's what I've got.

Becoming the Hare when You're the Tortoise

I read this the other day and I have not been able to stop thinking about it:

"You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you're Real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." -the Skin Horse from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

That's what I'm doing with my "creative puddles" as I call them. I'm not going to be a published author overnight. My sketches and paintings won't adorn galleries or make hundreds tomorrow. I won't cook caviar for kings and I certainly don't have the budget for that.

But gosh darn it, I am going to do the best I can, with the pebbles I have, to make the biggest splashes I can in these creative puddles. Who knows? I might splash someone who NEEDS to make paintings to hang in galleries and make millions, write plays that bring crowds to their feet, sing songs that make people like me weep.

And maybe, when I'm 78, and have sketched my brains out and can barely see, I'll paint one painting that will make one person cry.

That will make it all worth it.

In the meantime, here's a gesture drawing/sketch I did last night at a meeting that went too long. If it makes you cry for good reasons, let me know. Or for bad reasons, well, that's okay too. You can still let me know.

Backlog

Here's a watercolor pencil piece that I did on Sunday. It started as a simple pen sketch while listening to a sermon in the morning and evolved into this in the evening.

I call it, Crossroads.

Gesture Drawing

Today is going to be a busy day for our little family, leaving little time for extensive creativity. Knowing this, I decided to try my hand at a little bit of gesture drawing while the kids finished up breakfast.  Gesture drawing is just trying to catch the expression of what is happening, not the fine details. Here's what I caught:

Definitely not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's something for the first day of the rest of my life. 

Were you able to do anything today?

On Being a Jack of all Crafts

God keeps reminding me of the various gifts and bents He's given me - writing and poetry, drawing, dancing, singing, acting, cooking, and gardening. Am I a master at any of these things right now? Oh, no. I'm not even close. I'm one of those 'Jack of all Trades' people. However, I can look back on my little life of nearly thirty years and identify seasons when I excelled more in one art than another.  In junior high, it was writing and drawing. In high school, it was acting and piano. In college, it was dancing and more dancing. Currently? I'm a pretty decent cook and gardener.

 All of those seasons of life, as different as they were, share one thing in common - consistency. Now that I cook on a daily basis, I can whip up a basic curry in under half an hour and bake a decent pie from scratch. The past three years, my husband and I have experimented with and successfully kept a vegetable patch.  I placed in a writing tournament at districts because I wrote in my journal almost every day and dutifully attended all of the writing team practices. Because there were plenty of opportunities to dance and sing between show choir, musicals, plays, swing clubs, contra dances, and concerts in high school and college, I became a decent singer and even better dancer. 

This little revelation is both fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. Certainly, consistency is key. Unfortunately, the consistency that brought fruit in each area was imposed on me by outer influences and obligations. I had to go to concert choir rehearsal if I wanted an A, and consequently, I learned how to harmonize. Any attempt at consistency that I put on myself more or less drove itself into the ground and died in a heap. Most likely, I got bored, or sick or busy or sad that I didn't produce something "awesome"(read:marketable)

Ironically, I made this discovery in the middle of some consistency. In a strange moment of  cautious ambition, I decided that I was going to develop my drawing skills and do one sketch a day. Now, you must know that with two children under the age of three, such a feat would be manageable on a good day, and courageous on a day when nap time takes a turn for the worst. So, by day four, sketches weren't happening..at least, not on my terms. I wasn't able to sit and do a perfect still life, but I drew a rough sketch of my very willing to model but not so willing to sit still toddler. On day five, he liked it so much, he asked that I draw him again. On day six, however, he wished to dance, and dance we did. At the end of that day, I was a little frustrated that I didn't get to sketch, but I realized that we did do something creative together - we choreographed a dance number...and I learned a little about patience and wrote a blog about it. So, I didn't get to sketch, but I got to do two creative things, and to be honest, I was starting to get a little bit bored and frustrated with sketching anyway.

So, in light of this little discovery, I've made a decision. To hone these gifts, everyday, I am going to do one thing, big or small, in one of my creative bents. I can do the same thing for a several days in a row if I choose (such as working on one painting) or I can do something completely different or something really small. As long as I make an effort, it counts. It doesn't have to be awesome, it doesn't have to be awful, it just has to be done, and I have to record it here. Yesterday, I made a small watercolor painting. Today, I'm writing a long blog post. Tomorrow, who knows? It will probably be something small, like a quick gesture sketch or just breaking up some ground in the garden. 

If you're interested, I wouldn't mind company on this little journey of pace-ience and consistency. You can join me in any capacity you like. Do you have a talent or gift that you would like to develop? I'd love to hear about it. Leave a comment. :) 

Happy Creating,
Gabby

 


 
 

Pace-tience

I want to do ten million things, excellently, to completion, five minutes ago.

(Okay, who doesn't?)

But really, I have this terrible habit of being pulled by the whims of my fleeting ambition, making impossible to do lists, and then succumbing to paralyzing condemnation (for quite possibly a week to a month) when I cannot complete a single item from those lists. Sound like torture? It totally is. Except for the chocolate --- I usually will comfort myself with chocolate.

Chocolate aside, I am learning that the restlessness that propels this vicious cycle is in fact, the absence of something - patience.

It takes patience to lose weight.
It takes patience to garden.
It takes patience to develop a craft.
It takes patience to cultivate healthy, life giving relationships.
It takes patience to write a decent blog post. (ha!)

Recently, I met with a dear friend and artist that I admire. We were planning for an event in the spring, and after the meeting was over, she shared with me a new thing she is doing to develop her art - painting one piece a day.  Although I admired her fortitude, I was also quite jealous. Surely, I could do the same thing. Why, I SHOULD do the same thing. I should do it right NOW. I WILL. AND I WILL HAVE A GALLERY AND AN ART SHOW AND EVERYONE WILL LOVE ME FOR HOW CREATIVE AND AWESOME I AM. (Cue the trumpets and the wind blowing my hair dramatically while I am surrounded by epic original works of art by yours truly)

No joke, I started doodling something as soon as she was finished sharing some of her new pieces with me. It was only kind of good. And the other pieces that I have sketched this week are probably mediocre at best. This a far cry from the instant day dream that I had last Friday.

This is a cycle that has repeated itself over and over again in different areas of my life...and it is hardly ever life giving. Condemnation sneaks in and then depression and then I need Jesus and my friends to scrape me off the floor and breathe hope back into my soul.

Anyway, this week, I found myself thinking, "Why can I never complete things on my own terms?" Almost immediately I felt the Lord ask me, "Do you believe that my 'terms' for completion are better?"

So, God is teaching me what I like to call 'pace-tience'. Taking it slow doesn't mean not moving.

Writing a draft first and publishing after a day or two is okay.
Taking a week to carefully plan a party is okay.


 I can't run proverbial marathons at a sprint pace the whole way through. His way, a slower, more gentle way, is better.