The Artsy Resolution

My resolutions for the new year are not about diet, exercise, losing weight or any variation of those things (a never ending battle all year long).  I have resolved to 1) spend more social time with friends and family less time in solitude and 2) to get my artsy self back. 

Having fun with art is something I don't do well these days.  I read about so many successful artists (and I mean success in the sense of making a living) that are self-taught, learning from books, DVD's or taking single classes of instruction here and there.  I found a year-long online course with artists Carla Sonheim and Lynn Whipple (I am SO excited) and signed up, something I would have been afraid to do in the past.  The first lesson involves line drawing.  I completed the first lesson, and found myself muttering, "I stink at this."  The lesson reads all over the place that this is about having fun, relax, just go with it, it's not supposed to be perfect...but I still caught my inner critic speaking out loud.  When I was to pick a single subject and make multiple attempts at it, I caught myself scrolling up on the screen to see what the instructor's drawings looked like.  ACK!  Mine don't look like hers at all!  I must be doing it wrong.  Then I stopped myself and zoomed down the page so that I couldn't see her drawings any longer.  Really?  I still can't just relax?  This is going to take more practice than I thought it would, but I'm up for it.  I just need to tape the mouth of the inner critic shut.

I have decided that I'm going to give myself permission to try my hand at something another artist does that inspires me, not to sell it or claim the idea as my own, but to get back in the habit of making stuff.  Last week we had another of those crazy wind storms that absolutely trashed my back yard, leaving eucalyptus leaves and branches littered everywhere among the pine cone bombs that came flying down.  I remembered seeing pictures of painted individual eucalyptus leaves at bicocacolors.blogspot.com and figured I could have some fun experimenting.  I spent a good two hours painting, something I can't remember doing for ages.  Now my leaves look nothing like the artist's leaves, but I had focused fun, music blaring, and was happy doing it.

Tomorrow's exercise is to continue without self-criticism.

Falling for Studio Time

The last couple of months have been busy with things like travel and injuries (later...), and I realized it had been too long since I did any art work.  My usual mantra - my brain is blank.  Where do I start?  I never have any idea where to begin.  Sheesh, you'd think I'd have this figured out by now.  After my usual wasting time on Pinterest, I slammed the laptop shut and figured I needed to put something, anything, in my hands to get started.

A couple of months ago, a distant cousin gave me the most wonderful gift of a photograph of one of my great grandfathers, a man whose photo I have never before seen.  As an added bonus, I found that he had been a railroad conductor in Illinois and one of the photographs was of him in his uniform.  Given my son's obsession with trains as a young boy, this made it extra fun for me.  I thought it would be fun to create a personalized piece of art for the house using this photograph as a reference.  I accepted my painting skill limitations decades ago, so I figure this is a test of creativity, not necessarily painting skills.  I'm going to confess right off that I used Photoshop and bright light behind the canvas to help with the image.  If I'd drawn it freehand, Grandfather Carter would look more like a troll than a train conductor.

Are there steps that are supposed to be taken in a particular order when painting?  I have no idea.  Last month, I smooshed around what I thought to be pleasing colours for the first go 'round.  Today I painted the silhouette.  I'm thinking about adhering faint images of the railroad maps onto the background, but then I saw the lines cast by the setting sun on the canvas and liked that image.  Sigh.  I figure it's just a mess-around project at worst.  I'm getting my hands dirty and, hopefully, some artistic brain cells will slowly begin to stir and I'll move along to the next projects.   

The original photograph of Great Grandfather Grant Ulysses Carter

My poorly lit painting with Phase 1 started

While on vacation in Orlando two weeks ago, I took a terrible fall on what locals later told me they call "winter acorns."  That's code for deadly tree marbles.  I had tried dressing up like a big girl for a dinner date with my husband in an upscale restaurant, so I was wearing a dress and platforms (not huge and not wedges, so in my mind, not particularly dangerous).  We'd made it most of the way back to our hotel when I stepped on one of those stupid beasts and did quite the crash and burn.  My left knee made direct contact (and skid, ouch) with the pavement and I twisted my right ankle something fierce.  My husband helped me take off my shoes and hobble back to the room.  Mind you, this was after buying a 2-day pass to Universal Studios and our first visit ever to Orlando.  After a full day of begging for help from the hotel for first aid, help finding a wheelchair to get medical attention (my foot and ankle looked like a black and blue loaf of bread), I was a wreck.  After a doctor visit and x-rays there, then another round when we got back to CA, I was finally correctly diagnosed with not only a nasty sprain, but two hairline fractures in my right ankle.  Ouch, ouch, ouch.  I've never broken a bone or had to be on crutches.  This stinks.  But with the swelling down a lot, I figured I'm so limited in what I can do, I no longer have an excuse to avoid the studio.  Between rounds of elevating my food, I'll play in here and see if something wildly creative comes out of this.  At least I'm no longer Shrek-coloured from the knees down!  Now I'm a puffy, pale shade of Bart Simpson.  It could have been worse.

Another Day, No Blood This Time

Well, that last round of soldering hurt.  I managed to stab myself good with a twisted and sharp point of the copper tape I tried pulling off of the glass, thinking I might be able to re-use it.  No such luck.  The front was cracked in half, the adhesive clearly melted solidly onto the glass.  What a mess.

I decided to give it another whirl and it turned out much better.  Clearly, I need to continue to practice, but at least it's not so bad.  I think I can wear it if I continue to move so that it's a bit of a blur and the wobbly line of rhinestones won't be so obviously wobbly.

It could use another go 'round...

Why does the back look better than the front?  More flux, that's why!

When I feel in a bind in terms of just NOT knowing what I'm doing, I find myself wandering the internet for help.  I actually did find a couple of YouTube videos that offered good advice.  One person noted that if you find yourself getting a lot of lumps and spikes in the solder, use more flux to get it flowing.  Great advice!  That's one thing I did much more with this version.  The other video offered suggestions about adhering the paper artwork to the glass first which I don't think I'll do.  I worry about how that glue will affect the paper.  In the soldering class that I took, the instructor had us use a modicum of glue adhering paper to glass.  I found that the heat of soldering caused a bit of condensation to appear under the glass.  Maybe I need to experiment.  The other tip was using a small amount of super glue on the back side of one of the glass & paper assemblies so that the two layers were truly joined together before soldering began.  I can see how this would keep it together tightly so the layers don't shift while wrapping with the copper tape, but still worry about 1) condensation from the glue if not 100% dry and 2) how the glue might affect the paper in terms of staining or eventually showing through.  Guess there's only one way to find out.

Just to see what was out there, I visited a number of Etsy shops that offered soldered jewelry.  I don't like to bash other artist's work, but there was some stuff out that that was just not what I expected to see for sale.  Was that polite enough?  Then there was another artist whose work was just about flawless and quite inspiring.  Clearly, it can be done!  Now to figure out how.  After I work at that for a while, I'm going to go back to fabric which doesn't make me bleed or sob in frustration.

Practice does NOT make perfect

Practice needs to take place more often than once in a blue moon.  When was the last time that I tried soldering?  It's been a while.  I'm not sure how many thousands of dollars I can afford on practicing.  To make the jewelry I want to make, I need images or something interesting to sandwich between the two pieces of glass I'm soldering together.  After working on a few tiny pieces of watercolored papers, I realized it was a lot of time spent on something that was likely to end up crap (at least until I had more practice).  There had to be something I could use that, if I pulled off a miracle and whipped up something respectable in terms of soldering, would be worth keeping and wearing.  A few months ago, I joined Teesha Moore's "The Artstronauts Club," and found that she frequently offers free printables of her artwork.  There are beautiful and perfectly sized bits to print (and touch up with sparkly paint or colored pencil for fun) and use in my practice bits.  It takes a lot less time to cut out a tiny rectangle than to paint or draw the work.

Today I was so happy to finish housework early (and skip the trip to the dry cleaners with hubby's shirts until tomorrow) and get into the studio.  My recently purchased burnishing tool performed much better than the old pen cap that I used for getting the copper tape to lay flat and tight.  Silly me thought that this would make a big difference in the finished project.

I just can't get it right.  I KNOW I'm going over areas too many times, but if there's a lumpy spot, there's only one way to smooth the surface.  I worried that I would melt the copper tape backing and it would stop adhering, but it looked like it was still sticking really well.  But as I made a final slide of the iron, I dropped the glass piece onto my studio desk.  If it were wood or metal, no problem.  But it's a cheap, crappy desk from Ikea, the surface of which is coated with plastic.  Ugh.  The hot solder picked up a bit of the plastic all around the surface.  In a panic, I thought maybe the high heat of the soldering iron would burn it off.  I know, dumb.  But I tried anyway.  Then I figured I could build another coat of solder over the first and hide it.  I should have quit while I was ahead. 

It was a wreck.  Done.  No more "fixing" would fix it.  I unplugged the soldering iron and let the piece cool off in a clamp.  After it was quite cool, I started trying to tear off the old solder and tape.  After getting three sides unwrapped, I just opened it like a book and wrestled the paper images out.  They are slightly marred on the edges from the uber-melting of the copper tape adhesive.  The glass was a total loss.  I can still use the images because the tape will cover it, but sheesh!  It's so much time invested to still suck this much!

The front after I over-soldered by quite a few runs

The back wasn't nearly as bad as the front

Time to try something new.  I need to practice every day, even just for a little while before I move on to something else.  I don't want to think that I, and only I, just can't do a better job at soldering with practice.  I've tossed the blechy glass and am ready to give it another go. 

Reunions are like mirrors...

I've been traveling so much recently, that I've had absolutely no time in the studio.  Just returning home from a reunion weekend, I opted not to accompany H on his trip to Santa Barbara.  I've had enough of trying to keep myself busy, by myself, away from home.  Ugh.

This reunion has given me a lot to think about.  An "old" friend laughingly pointed out that I can really TALK.  Yes, I talk too much.  I think that people who are out a lot, have a lot of friends and/or have a job that allows them to interact with people frequently have no idea how miserable it can be to suffer the silence of solitude after years of daily interaction with a lot of people.  The friends that I left behind when we moved in 2013 don't have much in the way of free time for getting together socially.  This new town has been rough, with everyone driving their snooty cars into their snooty garages, the doors close and we don't see them again until the garage door raises the next morning and they zip away again.  We have received the message loud and clear in this neighborhood.  Neighbors don't speak to each other.  Ever.  So yes, when I get around fun people, I tend to make up for lost time.  My mid-year resolution - listen more, talk less. 

The other thing I reflected on this weekend was how apologetic I am about the results of my creative efforts.  Spending time with my now real-and-in-person friend and fabulous artist Debbie was eye-opening.  We talked at length about how to move ahead, the fears and trepidation all artists experience, the rejection, and the need to keep moving forward and let our stories come out in our art.  I've struggled with a particular piece for so long and Debbie has urged me to just finish it and move it out, completing that circle that is creating art and moving it along and then starting anew.  So I have a plan for this piece that's been haunting me and will work on it this week.  Photos to follow!

I have a lot to think about now that I'm home.  I want to be healthier for the next reunion.  I want to make progress in my artwork and not feel the need to apologize or explain sheepishly what I was thinking when I made it.  I want to feel confident again.  I want to learn how to make friends here and get the social back in my life.  I'd like to see something different in the mirror the next time I look.

Still No Art?

I continue to just sit here and mess with my art supplies for a few minutes before I turn back to the computer and photos for "inspiration."  It's not inspiration if I don't do anything.

Today I grabbed the paper clay head I've been fiddling with for months.  Everyone wrinkled their nose when they saw the peak on his head, asking if he was an alien or if it was a horn.  Looking at it, I felt nothing.  It doesn't speak to me at all.  I keep trying to listen, and there's no thinking noise in my head.  So my response to the silence was to dip that puppy in some warm water and start whacking off the peak/horn/freaky hat.  Who knows how this one will end up, but I figure if I go over the top away from what I normally do, maybe my internal creative spark will get a little brighter.

Picture to follow.

Soldering Mistakes & Flops

It's been a few weeks since I sat down in my studio space and started working on anything.  We spent a week in Washington D.C. where I experienced my first real snow.  I've played in the snow a couple of times at Mammoth Lakes, just south of Yosemite, but the snow had fallen long before we arrived and the sunny skies were melting it quickly.  In this case I went to bed at the end of a sunny day and woke up to about a foot of snow.  It was beautiful!  We tromped all over the city and were stunned to find nearly everything closed because of the snow.  The streets, sidewalks and parking lots were clear.  If this Southern California girl can stomp a few miles in snow, I'd think the locals could drive to their jobs and open things like the Library of Congress :-(  In any event, I did get to nail my husband with many, many snowballs.  After a while, he got a bit annoyed and suggested perhaps he'd had enough.  I suggested he move along a little faster.  Bahaha!

Got him!  And look at all of that ammo coming up on the left ;-)

There were a number of people sledding on the little hills of snow alongside the Capitol building

 
So I'm back in the studio and decided that in order to get better at soldering, I've got to practice.  Usually, I'm one of those people that are OK realizing that it takes a while to get good at something, practice makes perfect, and all that rot.  There are some things about which I wonder if any amount of practice will ever result in my getting good, forget perfect.  Those things are cooking and soldering.  I can cook OK, but I think it's just OK.  No one has died yet and I was going to say no one has ever spit anything out, but there was that veal scampi I made a couple of years ago with what turned out to be nuclear-like pucker power.  My daughter spit it right out on her plate and has refused to eat that dish ever again.  It really was tart, I'll admit, and I've learned that lesson and have made the dish a few times since with significantly better results.  Did I mention that she was a college grad at this point?

Before

Before (the other side)

The soldering is another story.  I took pieces that I made a while ago and tried to fix them.  I use the term "fix" loosely.  If I were to go back and re-read the books or articles I've explored in the past, I'd probably find that I did everything described as a "common mistake by those new to soldering."  The sides are lumpy and, no matter how hard I try to make them smooth, all sides are inconsistent in terms of thickness.  If I try adding solder to a side that has what looks to me like too little solder, it drips down the sides or flows over the back (too much at once?) or liquifies and thins out further (too much heat on one spot or moving too slow?).  This is going to be an expensive learning curve if I keep plowing through the solder at this rate of speed, but there is no other way to get better.  I will NOT repeat the same class I've taken twice.  If at first you don't succeed, don't keep doing that thing that didn't work over and over again.  It looks so darned easy when I watch those darned YouTube videos. 

The "after, but not finished" versions

 This is when I want to sew.  When I sew, I know what I'm doing.  Sometimes I make a mistake, but I know what I did wrong, know how to fix it, and enjoy the almost meditative state of mind that comes with cutting, sewing, cutting, sewing. 

Tomorrow I'll give it another try.  The inexpensive glass I bought when I picked up those cheap picture frames at a discount store will help reduce the cost of learning.  There's no point in using less expensive solder - poor quality supplies will result in a poor quality finished product.  I have learned, however, that cheap magazine pictures or scraps of wrapping paper make a perfectly suitable insert.  There's no need to waste an original little painting.

Since I did not at first succeed, I will try again.  Sigh.