Introspection = Procrastination

Today was another free day for making anything I wanted to make.  Instead, I read blogs, looked at Pinterest, cleaned out all of my sons baseball caps and empty soda cups from my car, cut down old cardboard boxes with which I filled the recycling bin (and found the legs to a new chest that were accidentally thrown out as part of the packing material - whew!) and glanced through my sketchbooks.  I've come to a few conclusions.

First, while I have made myself nuts wanting to get into art journaling and looking at a million books and web sites for help getting started, I realized that all of my sketch books are actually art journals.  OK, they're a bit drab and could use some colour, but I've been doodling down thoughts and ideas for art projects for years, making notes of some of my fabric paints, and making laughable attempts at drawing objects.  I even found five pages to which my now 18 year old son contributed. The theme is consistent: 

He graduates from high school three weeks from today.  I miss the days of creating such simple art together.

While wasting art time, I did stumble across some advice from Alisa Burke's blog.  She wrote a post about how to improve blogging skills.  One of her tips was more about art than blogging and I can appreciate the message.  She noted that there is just so much copying and "idea-borrowing" as a result of all of the images available on Pinterest, blogs and the internet in general.  She searches to see if an idea she's got has been done already and if it has, she moves on to something else or finds a way to make her idea more unique.  Too often I am looking to outside sources for ideas and it's time to stop.  Thank you, Alisa Burke.

Today I am commiting to working on art for a while before I give myself permission to scan the internet, Pinterest or my zillions of art and inspiration books.

Right now, I am obsessed with tiny drawings and paintings.  Mind you, I know that I stink at it but I don't care.  It's a great day when I can move ahead with doing something I like to do even when I know it's not good.  My new mantra is going to be that it's about rediscovering the joy of making something, anything.  For now, it's my silly little paintings about the size of a postage stamp.  One of these days I'll like what I do enough to encapsulate it between glass and make some jewelry with original artwork in it like this one, inspired by a tiny photo my mother-in-law's cousin took in college in the 1930's of their music teacher.

It's just me and the cats today.  Time to go make a mess.

P.S.  It's a couple of hours later and I had a great time painting and working on making a pendant with one of those Tim Burton-inspired water colors, just to experiment.  That stupid glass is really thin!  I had barely started playing with my brand new and just-out-of-the-package soldering iron, proud that I had neither burned or cut myself, when I turned the piece with my little pliers and heard a tiny crunch.  Sigh.  Time to try again.

Notice the crack that is on both the front and back bit of glass.  Good grief.