Tag: creativity

Got a light?

PiaChit Chat

eclipse

What do you use for studio/work light, when daylight isn’t enough?

It’s not that it matters greatly, if I put my mind in “flexible” I can knit, spin, read, doodle, play work play on the computer and one day, when perhaps the outside gets more comfortable, work in the garden or ride horses. But still, I find myself some days wishing I could paint when I had planned to do so.

I’m really finicky with lighting temperatures. Not too cold and blue and definitely not your typical cosy yellow everyday lamps. It’s especially bad now with the new energy saving bulbs, which are of course a good thing, just not for colourwork.

Over the window of my office I have a “biolux” fluorescent tube which emulates daylight, I use it in winter to make days longer and brighter, and it’s not directly made for artwork, but it’s not bad. 36W/6500 K (I think it’s this one). The thing is, my office is not big enough for painting, especially since my cats are determined to share the table. Also when it rains, best place to shake your muddy paws, drop by for a bit of love and perhaps a dry lap for transferring moisture before they head back out. And any obstacles are to be climbed on, basically.  Right behind me on the floor 1 large dog for tripping over (used to be 2). I have no door…. See where that’s going?

So, obviously a 120 cm tube like that with a standard, open fixture isn’t very pretty in the middle of a living room ceiling, although it might help a bit. So, do I care? Does anyone have better suggestions? Or do you just work in the dark/good weather?

Creativity and dreams

PiaChit Chat

dreams1

I’ve been dreaming like crazy lately, well, I always did, but sometimes it gets really active in there at night. Last night I was also dreaming about images, not just the usual surreal “movies” where I’m not even Pia and the places I visit don’t exist IRL. I’ve often complained that if I had half the imagination when I’m awake I’d have 20 books worth of material as well as a dozen movies.

Unfortunately I can’t remember the images, but it was definitely about art/painting. Lots of white with little bright splashes of colour. I’ve dreamt about art before, but not all that often, once I did an exhibition of paintings that MOVED – and no, not computer screens. So, usually it’s stuff I would not be able to recreate when I’m awake.

But…. when you think of it – it’s still MY imagination that is creating these dreams, both the stories and the images. So not all of it is rational, but the degree of creativity surely exists in there in my subconscious. If only I could open the door wider.

Maybe it’s just a matter of my excessive brain chatter getting in the way. Maybe something else is holding me back, I haven’t been able to figure this out yet. I really, really would like to. Just give me access to the raw data and I’ll know how to shape and organize it into coherent form I’m sure! Wow, then I’d be on a roll….

Meditation hasn’t yielded anything yet. Nor dream journaling, it’s too hard to explain in ordinary language. As I said, surreal. I know how it feels to be “in the flow”, but I can’t seem to call it forth, I have to wait for it to happen, which is very frustrating. And once you’re frustrated, nothing is dead sure to be happening!

And before you say anything, yes, I did try to capture those fading colour impressions from the dream on paper. But – meh. I think too much. Thinking is great if you have your motif all planned out. With abstracts? Not so much. Even tried lefthanded. Maybe I should start drinking – I wonder what my abstracts would look like after a bottle of bubbles? 😉 (Most likely I’ll fall asleep. I’m such a partygirl. Not.)

Sometimes dreams do have answers though, or so it seems. The night after I wrote last Tuesday’s post I dreamt the solution to some of my questions – however, as soon as I became aware enough to get up and write, it was gone, I only remembered that is was a two step process. That is another problem with too detailed and long dreams, important stuff happens in the middle of them but only the last one is clear (if you’re lucky) when you wake up. I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to take up horse archery… (it would be fun, but needs, wants, number of holes in my head etc.)

It appears I have to develop a habit of waking up faster. 😉 Ack, old age calling…

So, do any of you use dreams in painting or writing, or is it all just nonsense? All the absurd stuff clearly belongs in the shadows I think, but surely the richness of imagination belongs on the other side too?

book2
I had a version of this with a woman in it – but can’t seem to find it in my archives.

I think I’d particularly be interested in the writing aspect myself, because visually I respond more to other things. I’m playing with another “right-brain” technique at the moment, which I read about a while ago, but more on that later. The answer it gave me to this particular question was, however, just as surreal as my actual dreams (literally: “you can try fetch milk daydream on every summer”) So maybe it is so – dreams are dreams and awake is awake, and perhaps they meet at dawn, but only to catch a glimpse of each other.

At least I rarely suffer from sleep paralysis these days, because THAT is just seriously annoying! All the articles say it lasts a few seconds or minutes, but what it feels like is sometimes hours. And yes, I can remember everything, and no, it’s not interesting to write about. Just plain spooky and repetitive.

And I know many of my posts at the moment are about thinking, not doing. I am in fact also doing, I just don’t have anything I’d like to show just yet. Will I ever? No promises… I enjoy the actual process of writing and I want more of that, whether anybody ends up reading it is actually secondary. But it still has to be interesting enough to keep at least my own attention. 😉 (let’s see how many are with me this far)

It seems nature also has a hard time waking up this year, cold, brown, shabby, miserable. No real signs that juices are rising or buds ready to explode, everything  on hold. Hares not playing, no birdies singing to each other, just chirping their heads off for food whenever somebody opens a door or window. It might be wise to just go with it, stay dormant and slow while it lasts, not push ahead and get burnt by the late frost as a result….

wait
Just sit and wait

No more excuses

PiaChit Chat

I have:

Put up a whole bunch of nails around the house to keep my umpteen unfinished masterpieces away from cat claws.

Assembled a pile of canvasses all ready to go in various sizes. Having the frames sitting around in the hayloft for years was obviously one of those times when hoarding is quite ok! And enough canvas for about 30 pictures.

stretcher

Ready, steady, go!

Well, apart from the annoying realization that I can no longer use the staple gun. My hands are too sore and weak to press it all the way in, leaving the tacks to fall out completely or sticking out of the board halfway. I had to call in an assistant after doing just one, and a very poor job of it. 🙁 I don’t know if it’s just because I clipped the hind hoofs of my Arabian the day before, also very hard on the hands when you’re an amateur (and have really small hands to a very large tool). Or if I need to switch to pre-framed $$$ canvas or paper or boards in the future. Didn’t make it any easier that I’d decided to try gallery mounting with the tacks at the back, rather than along the edges like I used to do. Tricky!

I also found some photos of some of my first paintings, acrylic on very large watercolour paper 50×75 cm. Not a complete collection unfortunately, and I suppose I should scan these. You might say I ought to use that until I improve my skills, but I do like canvas. And well, I have the canvas but no paper…. Also you can keep painting over canvasses more times! 😉

k
we actually had this in the dining room for years. When we had one… 100×150 cm or something painted on an old bedsheet.

Funny thing is: I definitely think my taste has improved as well as my skill in the years not painting – INSIDE MY HEAD. This means I have a lot more pressure now, because obviously my muscle skill hasn’t improved one bit in the meantime, but I know I won’t be happy with what I did then. Some of the subject matter yes – but not the execution. There’s maybe I few that I still like and some I’d just as soon paint right over.

It’s not that I have a lack of projects at the moment, I do have a list of things I want to work on, so I don’t technically need a stream of new ideas coming in right now, that are not related to those projects (but if they come, they will be registered of course, can’t stop the flow).

But I still have trouble with the intuitive, playful aspect, just “closing down logic and see what my hand wants to do with a brush”. And I think that is possibly what it preventing me from aquiring the “skill” I feel I need or the ability to be happy with what I produce here and now. My brain really, really wants to know where we’re going before we even take the first step. (and keeps asking “are we there yet?”)

But I’ll keep leaning into it. Today however I have a visitor. Who is probably going to ask: “Why can’t you paint one picture at a time?”

donkeyboy
I have absolutely no idea what I had in mind when I did this decades ago. But Birdie wanted to know how I intended to use my watercolour paper.

danish

Ikke flere undskyldninger

SÃ¥ er der banket søm i alle ledige vægge for at beskytte mine halvfærdige skilderier fra kattene. Jeg har samlet en masse lærreder, nogen gange er det en fordel IKKE at have oprydningsmani, for der lÃ¥ jo lige en hel stak rammer pÃ¥ høloftet og bare ventede pÃ¥ jeg gik i gang igen! Der er jo for en formue i materialer… Ellers kunne man jo male pÃ¥ kraftigt papir, men sÃ¥dan noget har jeg faktisk ikke pÃ¥ lager i stor størrelse.

Desværre var mine hænder for ømme og svage til at bruge clipsemaskinen. Håber det kun er fordi jeg klippede hove på den ene hest i går, for jeg var nødt til at bede om hjælp efter bare 1 lærred, som i øvrigt ligner noget der er løgn på bagsiden.

Jeg fandt ogsÃ¥ en stak fotos af mine første malerier (under en oprydningsrunde 😉 ), desværre ikke alle. Jeg har helt klart ændret smag i mellemtiden og forventer nok ogsÃ¥ en noget bedre kvalitet i udførelsen, hvilket jo er tÃ¥beligt, for mine hænder har jo ikke udviklet deres kunnen undervejs.

Jeg har stadig lidt svært ved at give slip og bare lege billeder frem, og det er muligvis derfor jeg ikke er tilfreds med det jeg producerer. Min hjerne vil åh så gerne vide, hvad vi skal frem til på forhånd. Men jeg bliver ved med at skubbe lidt til muren og fjerne en sten hist og pist, på et eller andet tidspunkt braser den vel sammen.

Fiber Friday Epiphany

PiaChit Chat

Only managed to spin half of the 2nd Rambouillet braid, I think (didn’t check) it matches the first in type pretty well although consistency went out the window along the way. I have another Ravelry challenge this month, so I better get the last half done. Or maybe I won’t actually (keep reading)! Fiber for the challenge is Targhee.

rambouillet4 rambouillet6

As you know I’ve been thinking about how to simplify my hobby life without actually cutting some of them off completely. The other day (while hanging wet laundry of all things!) I also got to thinking about “The Purpose” vs. creativity, my knitting and all things yarny and if they fitted into all this in any way. Why I keep planning to plant dye now that I A. have learned how to do it and B. don’t really have an actual purpose/project for it. I’ve been feeling quite ambivalent about that.

And then it dawned on me, that I don’t really have to focus my yarn habits on knitting. At all. I’d already been contemplating not doing so many garments, but trying to work on smaller objects instead. I only knit sweaters when I learned, then I didn’t knit at all for about 20 years, so when I picked it up again, it was sweaters. And specifically, I like to design them myself, more fun that way than just producing a copy of somebody elses work. Then I learned how to spin, so the next logical step was: I won’t buy more yarn, I’ll spin and dye all that I knit with.

The thing is, I’m not terribly good at sweaters.

  1. I can think up cool stuff, but it’s no way as cool as what many, many other designers can think up. Ergo, I don’t see a “carreer” as a knitwear designer in my cards, really.
  2. I always get something about the fit not exactly right and completely pleasing. I know this can be learned, but is seems I’d have to work very hard and dedicated on it in that case. And it appears more logical to focus on the areas that you already seem to be at ease with than try to develop the ones where you struggle, right?
  3. I often take very, very long to finish sweaters, starting multiple and then leave them all with one sleeve missing. I get bored. It’s not the clickety part of knitting that fascinates me the most, in fact if I could just have the ideas and then get someone else to do the actual work, I’d be totally cool with that…. Or get a machine.
  4. There’s a limit to how many accessories and bags that I use (virtually none), and it’s a lot of effort for just potholders and washcloths. (admittedly, it would reduce both spinning and knitting time considerably if I only did it when I needed new potholders)

What I really want to do is design the yarn. Play with colours and textures in all sorts of ways. And the yarns I think up are just NOT suited for my wardrobe, no little inner gypsy waiting to come out, I really like it plain, classical and casual. And inconspicuous on the street. 😉 Crazy clothes on other people I dig, but it’s not me.

So I ran into this book at the library, and I know I’ve mentioned it previously as a frivolous idea of adding yet another activity. But now I’m thinking – I think in pictures, I want to paint, I’ve been taking photographs for decades – tapestries are really much closer related than clothes. It doesn’t look harder to learn than new knit and crochet stitches.

tapestry

The advantages are plenty:

  1. I can keep using the cheap yarn for plant dyeing instead of worrying about the cost of getting a good, soft type to work with that I can tolerate next to my skin.
  2. Amounts per colour also isn’t that much of an issue, nor with spinning. No need to chug through 800 g of brown Shetland fiber.
  3. I wouldn’t feel too guilty about having a large stash of different yarns just sitting there waiting for the right project, because weaving takes A LOT of yarn. Also removes the time pressure of having xx sweater amounts waiting. As long as I make sure I don’t feel obligated to weave a certain amount per month or year…
  4. A small tapestry loom for starters really is dead easy to construct, so no huge investments.
  5. Thinking in image creation only, I can hopefully arrange them as serial projects more often rather than parallel, better focus through singletasking. Get more done in fewer hours per day leaves more time and energy for chores, horses etc. and no scatterbrain.
  6. And if I do feel like knitting sweaters I can relax and do some of other people’s really cool designs that would make me feel better about wearing them and even pretend to be more fashion conscious. And even buy those yarns perhaps, at least in part.

Less stress on a lot of levels I think (hope). It feels good. Maybe the weaving turns into felting images instead, which removes the time it takes to spin…. It would make my hobbies more unified somehow, the fiber being just another painting medium. What do y’all think?

The effect won’t kick in immediately – I do want to finish my current knitting WIPs (6). But spinning will be different, my approach will be different and I won’t be actually getting ready to weave or even think about tapestry projects. Unless they happen on their own. It’s just there as an option for when I want to work with yarn, not paint or Photoshop.

Synchronicity of the day: 2 hours after I pressed Schedule on this post I see a news flash from World of Wool announcing a workshop with a tapestry weaver. I can’t go since it’s in the UK, but they usually write about felting….

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Rambouillet igen og en åbenbaring

Det lykkedes mig kun at få spundet halvdelen af ugens fletning, men jeg synes den matcher de foregående rimeligt i type og tykkelse som planlagt. Dvs. det tror jeg den gør, for jeg har faktisk ikke hevet dem frem og sammenlignet!

Og så har jeg ellers haft mit strikke- og fiberliv oppe til revision, for jeg har alt for mange aktiviteter jeg gerne vil, ikke når og så får dårlig samvittighed eller stress over. For ikke at snakke om de huslige ting, som jeg så ikke gider fordi jeg mangler energi. På den anden side synes jeg det er svært at vælge noget fra, når det nu interesserer mig! Jeg har ikke lyst til at gå rundt med skyklapper.

Jeg har også spekuleret over, hvorfor jeg bliver ved med at samle farveplanter, jeg har jo sådan set lært hvordan man plantefarver nu, men jeg har ikke nogen egentlige projekter planlagt med det.

Og nu har jeg så besluttet, at det er strikningen som kommer på vågeblus. Jeg havde allerede besluttet at jeg ville begynde at tænke i små strikkeprojekter fremfor trøjer, som er min standard, for det er det jeg bruger mest i den genre. Jeg er nemlig laaaang tid om at strikke en trøje, jeg begynder at kede mig halvvejs og finder på en ny osv.

Det er faktisk ikke selve strikningen der interesserer mig men det at finde pÃ¥. Jeg er bare ikke verdens bedste strikdesigner mÃ¥ jeg nok erkende, og ja, hvis man øver sig bliver man bedre, men nÃ¥r man nu vil 1000 ting er det mÃ¥ske mere logisk at satse pÃ¥ dem man har lettest ved, fremfor dem der skal knokles med og sÃ¥ alligevel kun bliver middelmÃ¥dige? Huer, sjaler, sokker og tilbehør er ikke rigtig noget jeg bruger…

Det jeg egentlig har mest lyst til er at bare designe garnet. Lege med farver og skøre ting som ikke kan bruges i min garderobe alligevel, jeg er mest til det enkle og neutrale på det område.

SÃ¥ faldt jeg over en bog om billedvævning og tænkte, at mÃ¥ske jeg bare skulle satse pÃ¥ det istedet. SÃ¥ er mine hobbies mere ensartede, male, foto – det hele er bare billeder med forskellige medier. SÃ¥ fÃ¥r jeg samlet mit fokus en lille smule?

Jeg vil også kunne have en samling blandet garn i mindre mængder, behøver ikke bruge krudt på at spinde 800 g hver gang. Jeg behøver heller ikke købe dyrt, blødt strikkegarn til plantefarvningen, jeg kan bare blive ved med at lege og eksperimentere med det billige.

Det er ikke svært eller dyrt at bygge en lille væv selv til en start, og det ser ikke sværere ud at lære end nye strikketeknikker.

Hvis jeg så vil strikke, kan jeg slappe af og prøve nogen af de virkelig lækre designs som andre har udtænkt i stedet for at ville lave alting selv fra bunden. Men jeg har endelig erkendt, at det er garnet som sådan der tænder mig, mit hjerte er ikke rigtig i strikningen som process selvom jeg er glad for de færdige resultater.

Bare en ide – som jeg har tænkt mig at afprøve. MÃ¥ske fÃ¥r jeg ligefrem overskud til ridningen igen!?

On laziness and procrastination

PiaChit Chat

gibbon

As some of us discussed in a previous post, I have a tendency to act against my better knowledge because I’m impatient or too lazy to take that extra step of preparation before I can move forward. And I’ve often wondered how I can train myself to not only pay attention to my inner voice but also stop in my tracks and do what it says, because it really is quite clever sometimes and doesn’t deserve to be told off.

Is it about slowing down in general, in thought and actual physical movement? A question of planning and making a structure before you push ahead? (I know people who keep doing that to perfection and thus never getting started – argh! But alas – I guess this is why I don’t play chess) Being more mindful in general, less goal oriented? Just a matter of habit?

Then Birdie suggested there could also be an element of self-sabotage in there. But who would want to do such a thing?! Which in turn made me think of having subconscious fears of succes. After all, once you really make it, there is even more pressure, because now you have to top everything you’ve done previously. And keep doing it! I still don’t quite get how this applies to ordinary daily activities, unless you take your life way too seriously for anybody’s good. But it’s a theory.

I would for instance LOVE to just sit at home in my snuggly little corner and get paid to write books. Never risk having to do another slave job in my life. They’d be great books of course and I’d like to make a truckload of money. Well, a fair amount anyway, enough to make a good life for myself and some extra to share the love around. What I don’t want is to appear in magazines and tv-interviews, even a book signing tour sounds pretty horrible. * Now, that’s really sending a mixed signal to the universe, right? I want the succes, but only the nice bits! Disregarding my chances of producing a best seller or not, could this and other similar disharmonies of intention be causing some of those weird reactions? “I want to paint but I have a million excuses before I can get started.” Later is not as real as now, so it’s also safer in terms of showing what you’ve got.

This is definitely something I need to be working on and thinking about.

-~*~-

* I don’t mind putting in the long hours of research, writing, editing etc. But is seems that today, if you want to sell, you don’t have to just output great stuff, you also have to be a travelling circus. In fact I have a feeling that publishers only bother marketing the authors that look good in pictures. (ok, I’m a lost case already….)

-~*~-

I’m also trying to teach myself, not to stop procrastinating, because I don’t think I can at this point in time, but to do it differently. Trick myself into not wasting time; and by that I don’t mean well deserved naps, but the times when you hang out in front of the computer, checking the weather page (again), looking up new tags on WordPress, read Facebook (I’m a stalker – never post, only comment my friends’ posts). All because you want to avoid spending 3 minutes walking to the (chilly) back room to start a load of laundry. Or stack firewood, trim horse hooves etc.

So what I’m practising is: Say that I plan to spend the day painting because it’s sunny but cold, so I have enough light but want to be inside, I’ve been having some ideas, perfect, yes? And yet I find myself pottering about not really doing much of anything, getting more coffee (which I honestly don’t even like much), clipping my nails, or getting overwhelmed with exhaustion, feeling the flutter of moths (not pretty butterflies) beating hard inside me; instead of flopping down for something completely brainless, I now do useful displacement activities. So I may not have beaten my performance anxiety, but at least the floor is clean, the laundry all done, my desk is shiny (very useful) and I feel a small victory in not having spent 4 hours reloading silly webpages. (not counting those of you wonderful, inspiring people whose pages I read regularly of course 😉 )

This has also (I hope, since this is a fairly new practice) solved another old problem of mine: having too many hobbies. This used to stress me out completely, because I felt I had/wanted to do all of them all the time, with equal skill, attention and results. Painting and knitting ended up on a shelf for many, many years, the horses were gone for over a decade too, but then all of them insisted on coming back as well as the photography, the computer graphics, new ones entered such as gardening, spinning and dyeing. And, well, you still have to cook and clean and mow the grass, fix the fences, and if you had the money it would be nice to fix up the house too. I’d love to start writing again. I want to learn to felt, and how about using all that plant dyed yarn to make tapetries? Calligraphy is cool. Collages. I love to read – for days. Etc. etc. So no matter which activity I chose for the day, I felt guilty about the others. And sometimes (often) not doing any of them just from the stress of juggling them in my head (clicking webpages again while I worked on my decision). And some of you may have noticed, I didn’t even talk about jobs…

Now I’ve decided that

  1. I don’t need to be doing any of it all the time. I can totally justify having a spinning wheel and only using it once a month, even if I’ve got 40 pounds of wool sitting around the house and also rearranged half the living room into a painting studio.
  2. I can use those many hobbies, which are in some ways related since they’re mostly about visual creativity, to outsmart my anxiety. So you’re too scared to paint today? Ok, well, while you’re picking up your guts I’ll go write a blog post. Don’t have anything to say? Right, let’s dye some yarn. And while I wait for the water to boil I’ll just prime a few pieces of paper or frame some canvas, just so it’s ready to go in case you do feel like picking up a brush. That way, I’m still being creative, or getting everything organized and easy for being creative instead of just running away for a nap and then feeling like a complete failure for doing so. The focus is on keeping a certain flow, not which actual activity is helping me do so. If all else fails, I’ll sit down with my coffee and read a book about being creative….

One benefit is, that some tasks are so boring (such as housework) that I have to procastinate my way through those by doodling a bit, slather some random paint on a canvas for a background etc. in between tasks – or actually during if I break up laundry into sorting, washing, hanging, folding. So the method works both ways. I get more things done without rushing or stressing about a todo list, I pretty much choose my current activity in the moment. Being a world champion of list making, this is incredibly liberating! I mean, I have the making of to-do lists as a whole hobby/activity in itself. I still need them to declutter my head, but I don’t actually look at them very much – and I still get as much done if not more. Cool huh?

But all this sounds really complicated. Am I in reality just fighting windmills a lazy nature? I know my body doesn’t seem to want to move about much of its own accord, as in sports, dancing etc. Maybe I should just lay down arms and embrace who I am; but I’m worried that is someone who sits on the sofa with a book, eating cake all day, house falling apart around me…. I have this inner drive – but I’m nearly always tired.

-~*~-

Synchronicity again: I finish the post, then read this:

We are generally torn between two opposite sets of instructions programmed into the brain: the least-effort imperative [entropy] on one side, and the claims of creativity [discovery] on the other.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

If you made it this far, you deserve a reward. 😉 I’m sorry I didn’t find more pictures to distract you.