Weeks 23-25: The End

This post has been sitting in my "posts" list for weeks now, and I just keep putting off posting it - I think I'm in denial!  But I'm going to do it....NOW!

It's over, my friends!  How sad is that??  I can't believe that it's already been SIX MONTHS!!!  Weird.  The last few weeks of my residency were incredibly busy with moving my studio home, teaching, working, being sick, going out of town, etc.  It's been a little stressful, to be honest!  I wanted to go out with a bang, but things didn't go exactly the way I planned.  

I started working from home a few weeks before the end of my residency, since my studio-mate got really booked up with photo shoots.  It ended up working fairly well, actually! I was able to get quite a bit done and see that it would work.  I knew I'd need more storage, though, and I was able to work on that the last couple of weeks.  I'll write more about that in another post.

I was thinking a lot about the end of the residency, reflecting back on what went well and what didn't.  It got me thinking about job interviews, where you're often asked the question, "What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?" I think most people are usually wondering how honest they should be about the second part.  I think we're often very aware of our weaknesses, but do we want to tell them to someone who could potentially offer us a job??  I think we all want to say, "I care too much," or, "I work so hard I forget to stop and take breaks."  I mean, come on, no one's gonna believe that...  

Margie, the director at Two Twelve and amazing woman who gave me this awesome opportunity, told me that she likes how open I am on my blog, so I thought I'd share with you my honest answers to the above two questions.  It's a chance for me to do some self-reflection as well as to own up to my weaknesses in the hope that I can work on making them strengths (2 Corinthians 12:10).

What are my greatest strengths?

Hmmm....this is tougher than I thought...

OK, so I'm generally a very organized person.  I think this could possibly go in the "weaknesses" category, too, because I have a hard time getting going on a project if I'm not organized.  But, when I am organized, I can really get a lot of work done!  Also, I am great at researching and love a good brainstorming session.  I can crank out ideas like crazy when my thinking cap isn't pinching.  I can also take an idea and create something real from it, whether it's a work of art or a shelving unit for craft supplies (the latter will be featured in a future post). 

I keep thinking of strengths I have that are unrelated to my residency, like, "I make really good soups," and, "I procrastinate like a BOSS."  Well, that last one is a good segue into the weaknesses part actually...

What are my greatest weaknesses?

The biggest one?  I put things off.  Yes, I know that's basically the same as procrastination, which I listed as a strength, but I feel like there's a slight difference.  With procrastination, I picture someone doing other things in order to avoid doing The Thing They Should Be Doing.  With "putting things off," it's more just not doing The Thing.  OK, maybe they're the same.  My point is, I'm very good at just not doing something.  (I'm also very good at not doing anything, but that's a subject for a different post.)  Doesn't matter what it is, whether it's working on art, responding to an email, going to bed, writing a blog post - I'm just really good at putting those things off.  98% of the time, the things I put off aren't critically important to others - it's just my own stuff, and let's face it, I'm just being lazy.  

Good news, though.  I at least acknowledge the problem, and that's the first step to recovery, right?  Well, I'm working on it!  I'm writing this post, aren't I?

(Side note - I can hear the marching band practicing "Gloria" a few blocks away as I write this - I love autumn!) (P.S. that side note was not me putting off finishing this post, for the record. P.P.S Altering the Batman pic so it said "putting it off" may have been...)  :)  

I could list other weaknesses, such as being easily distracted (like Dug the Dog, if my sister Elizabeth has anything to say about it), or not trusting my talents enough, but I think my self-reflection energy is waning.  (And if I go much longer, I'll put off posting this again...!)

I feel like I learned a lot about myself over the course of this residency, which is helping me as I work to decide what direction to take my life next.  (Ending up in France for any period of time would certainly be nice...!)  And most importantly, I also got such an amazing start to the children's book!!  I could never have achieved so much without all of that concentrated time and space in which to do it!  I feel like I can finish it now and I won't falter the way I have in the past.  

I'll keep blogging here, as well as on my other blog, and will keep you up-to-date on all of my artistic doings!  Look for a post on my mad woodworking skillz coming soon!

In the mean time, I'm back to substitute teaching (joy?), teaching at Two Twelve (joy!!) and the Saline Senior Center (also joy!!), and continuing my creative efforts!  Be sure to check out my Etsy shop for some of my fall fun and creative craftiness! (I clearly need to add awesome alliteration to my list of strengths!)

Week 20: Vacation!

Last week I went with some of my family on our annual trip "Up North" in Michigan to my favorite place, Ludington.  Ludington is on the west coast of Michigan, right on Lake Michigan, and is a really fun and beautiful town.  My family has been vacationing there since I was around seven years old, and it's a tradition that we love to keep!

My maternal grandfather spent his teen years in Ludington while his father worked for the CCCs helping to build the beautiful beach house at Ludington State Park.  As a result, when he was grown with kids of his own, my grandpa took my mom and her siblings to Ludington for a few visits, and my mom and her sister took up the tradition as adults as well.  We rent a cabin north of Ludington on Hamlin Lake, which is connected to Lake Michigan by the Au Sable River.  It's heaven on earth there, my friends!

I spent the week sleeping, sitting on the front porch reading, laying on the beach reading, laying in the hammock reading, hiking (too hard to read and hike), swimming in the pool with my nieces and nephew (also a difficult place to read), eating ice cream, playing games (charades, Yahtzee!, Cabby, Golf - the card game), kayaking, sitting by a campfire, eating s'mores, playing shuffleboard, walking out to the Ludington Lighthouse, watching sunsets...  Heaven.  Here are some photos from the week:

Kayaking with my nieces & nephew & sis

My favorite flavor ice cream at House of
Flavors (best ice cream place) - Eskimo Kisses 

On a sunset beat ride with my Aunt, Uncle, and Fam
(pictured with my nieces)

My lone peanut - on my last leg playing Cabby!

Big waves!! (...Come at a cost...high winds...) 

My nephew hiding from the wind with me on the beach

Changing of the flags from yellow to red....
A bit of a crazy day at the beach!

Skyline Trail at Ludington State Park

More ice cream...

"What?" :D

Carved on a tree on one of the State Park trails

Our favorite tree on the trails -
perfect sitting spot for a rest!

View on the State Park trails - gorgeous!!

S'mores + campfire + ghost stories = magical!
(My uncle's friend tells the best ghost stories!!!)

Hanging in my sister's hammock and
comfortable with my favorite view!

The view from the front porch
of our cabin

My uncle and cousin got some lanterns
that we released one night - it was pretty!

Swimmin' in the pool
(doesn't it look so refreshing?!) 

Sunset on Lake Michigan near the lighthouse

Can you tell why this is my favorite week of the year??  It relaxes me and brings me great peace.  It renews me!  I feel ready for what comes next after spending time there.  Sigh.  I miss it already!

Now it's back to work!!  Six more weeks...

Week 16: Nightmares

In all my years of painting, I don't recall ever having a nightmare about a painting I was working on.  I've certainly lost sleep over them, worrying about how they were going to turn out or how I could fix a problem or how I could get over the Yips.  But my art has generally stayed out of my dreams.  

Technically, my art has continued to stay out of my dreams - it's someone else's painting that has entered my nightmares of late.

I need to back up a little, though.

A few weeks ago, I got a call from a lady who had some questions about a painting she'd ordered on Etsy.  Very long story short, she brought it to my studio, told me she didn't like the way it had turned out for various reasons, and despite my protestations, convinced me to "fix it" for her.  

Next time I need to be more vehement with my "No."  

The problem, according to the owner of the painting, is that it doesn't match the rug in the room where she had hung the painting.  Also, it's too pink, it wasn't painted to the edges, and she spent a fortune getting it framed and still doesn't like it.

In the end, she emailed me photos of the rug (which is very abstract-ish), and asked me to eliminate much of the Pepto Bismol Pink (my description), paint it to the edges, get rid of the drip marks, and make it match her rug.

Let the nightmares begin.

It's been featured in my nightmares twice now, and while I don't remember much about the content, I know the painting was there, taunting me.

The problem for me is threefold:
First, I feel really weird "fixing," or painting over, someone else's painting.  The owner insisted it was ok, it belonged to her now, so I could do with it what I wanted.  Still.  Weird.
Second, the abstract floral style of the original artist is very dissimilar to anything I would do, so "fixing" it has proven tricky.  
Third, trying to make the painting match the fancy rug has meant adding colors that weren't part of the original theme, so it's become overwhelming and without a theme to tie it together.  

It taunts me.  

Also, this keeps popping into my head:

I took a break from it for a week and a half, and my goal for this coming week is to be miraculously inspired, finish the painting in a blaze of glory, and be rid of my nightmares forever.

And then never ever ever to agree to "fix" someone else's painting ever again.  Ever.  

Week 15: Young Architects Camp

Last week I spent very little time in the studio, but a lot of time in the classroom.  For the past four or five summers I have taught a camp called Young Architects, where we spend a week designing houses and buildings, and then choose a design to build at the end of the week.  On the first day, I teach them basic architecture vocabulary, and we go on a walk around town and see what we can find from our list.  This year I had a few repeat students, so I changed up an old project and we made crazy house facades after our walk:

A lot of the week was spent on our house designs - I have them do a few different ones: One for the facade they made, one for their own dream house, one for a fictional character, and one for a character I make up. The made-up character is to give them a little bit of practice at designing for the needs of an unknown client, such as:
Name: Skip Roper

Profession: Professional Jump Roper

House needs:

-Big indoor gym for jump rope practice (including trampoline room for increasing bounciness)

-Extra rooms for friends who come for Double Dutch competitions

-Storage closets for jump ropes

-Trophy room

  
We also spend some time on a website called architectstudio3d.org, where you can design a house and take a virtual tour.  It's a lot of fun!  It also shows them the steps of house design and experience designing for a client.

Someone asked me if I have a background in architecture, and I had to confess that this camp approaches architecture from the point of view of an artist, not an architect.  (The camp is geared towards 8-12 year-olds, anyway, so we're not doing anything too advanced.)  I don't make them do a scale (though I had one student who did anyway!) or be too precise.  It's just an intro to the idea of designing your own home and then building a maquette (small model) to see what it would look like.  

I also worked on a design for my dream house while my students worked.  I didn't have time to work on building it, but will share it with you when I do!  It was immensely satisfying to take ideas I like and combine them into an awesome house design!!  I highly recommend it.  It felt therapeutic.  Just grab some paper (graph paper if you have it), a ruler, a pencil, and your Pinterest boards (well, if you're like me...), and start laying things out!!  Kinda feels like being a kid again.  

Anyway, here are some photos from the week:

 

It got a little messy! Also, their faces aren't
really tan circles...

One student's house design for Lionel Messi: 

Another student's house - the top floor is a parking garage:

He has a glass elevator on the side

Another house - we use cereal/cracker box cardboard because it's easy for small hands to cut, and if you keep the brown part on the outside it looks fairly uniform.  I used to have students paint their houses, but the cardboard doesn't always fare well...

Week 14: Progress

This week was a week of progress!  I finally got the three main characters of the children's book to a point where I am happy with how they look!  (That rhymed!  Nailed it.)  Once I reached that point, I was able to move forward with storyboarding.  It's fun to bring the book to life in this way.  With my time as Artist in Residence quickly slipping away, I'm trying to kick it into gear and get things done!

I spent one day working on the book while having a cartoon movie marathon (thanks to the library!).  I watched "An American Tail" first - I haven't seen that movie in years!!  Fievel is so adorable, and the song "Somewhere Out There" brought back so many memories of my younger years!  We sang that song all the time.  I had forgotten how tender the ending is, too!  I got all sorts of misty-eyed!  

Next on the agenda was "Kiki's Delivery Service," one of Miyazaki's films I hadn't yet seen.  There were two DVDs in the box, one with the movie, and one with the movie done in storyboards only.  The disc with the movie wasn't working, so I ended up watching the storyboard version!  It seemed appropriate.  It did make me really want to see the colors of the movie, though, so I'll have to borrow it from my sister sometime.  

Finally, I watched "Sleeping Beauty."  My brother is not a very big fan of that movie, since my sisters and I watched it incessantly when we were kids!!  It's just such a fun movie, with great songs.  The prince's singing voice is like delicious melted milk chocolate...why doesn't he sing more?!

I didn't mean for this to become movie review time...but it's fun to watch cartoons!  Made me feel like a kid again, which is maybe also why I was able to be so creative!

Speaking of creativity, I was finally able to work on a violin project I'd been meaning to do.  A woman stopped by my studio a couple of months ago and asked me if I'd take an old, beat-up violin and turn it into art to be auctioned off for a fundraiser for the local Fiddlers Philharmonic group.  I like the way it turned out!  I still might add something to it, but like it as it is, too.  I used my metal letter stamps to stamp part of the poem "The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes onto it - they are echoing through his head...!  

Speaking of progress and music, I've noticed lately that my ukulele playing has improved greatly as well.  It might have something to do with the fact that I'm actually practicing every day...  We've had my grandfather's uke hanging around the house all of my life, and it's nice to finally be carrying on the tradition! I brought it in to Two Twelve on Wednesday to accompany us singing "Happy Birthday" to Margie, our fearless leader! We also had these cupcakes that look like her adorable dog, Molly. 

In other news, I finally got my sign up in the studio window!  Yay!  Just in time for all of the traffic heading down Michigan Avenue for the race on Sunday at Michigan International Speedway.  This weekend is always a bit of a pain for us locals - all of the traffic heading west now, then back east to the expressway starting on Monday.  They change the timing on the traffic lights so the traffic on Michigan Ave can get through easier, which is a pain for getting from one side to the other!  There was a couple sitting at the light when I finished putting up my sign, and they shouted that it looked good.  Ha! 

Week 11: Hodge Podge

This week has been very diverse, creatively speaking. It's also felt strangely backwards. Earlier in the week it felt like Thursday or Friday, and yet today doesn't feel like Friday at all for some reason. Plus the whole week has felt like two! I'm so confused... 

Lots of good things have happened this week, though. Monday I went back to Mill Pond Park, this time to do some plein air drawing. It was too gorgeous a day to spend in the studio! My dream is to one day have a studio that has a nice porch or balcony or easily accessible outdoor space for lots of plein air art! I love working outside. Tough when it's windy, but otherwise so nice. I'm not really a landscape painter, I just like being outdoors!! (Though right now I'm in the studio listening to the pitter patter of ...a leak from one of the apartments upstairs. Lovely.) 

Tuesday one of my private students and I were working on drawing portraits (we've graduating from drawing Skully), and I have a bunch of photos from magazines, so we drooled over...er, drew...Benedict Cumberbatch. It made me realize how out of practice I am with portrait drawing! I'll need to get back into the sketch book!! I'll share what I drew, even though it's very flawed. At least it looks something like him!? 

Tuesday evening Skully and I took a drive up to Lansing (the Capitol of the great state of Michigan!) to meet up with some friends of mine who live on the west side of the state. It was great to see them and spend an evening talking and catching up! Skully stayed in the car, naturally, but we snapped a photo in front after. Some of my friends on Instagram are worried about me, I think. I assured them Skully was plastic, but that didn't seem to help. Philistines. ;)

Wednesday morning I took a Steampunk jewelry class at 212, and it was SO FUN!! Kelsey, the teacher, has the coolest stuff, and knows how to make anything work. Here's my creation - the clock hands, propellor, and gear all move!! I love it so much. You should all come take her next class! 

The last two days I've been in the studio drawing the main character of our book, Tom, over and over and over. I'm having fun playing around with facial expressions... 

I have a really hard time with the idea of drawing the same thing over and over. It's not in my nature! But I'm learning to adapt to it and make it a part of what I do. It's excellent practice. I want to be comfortable with these characters before I dive into the nitty gritty. Better to change something now than when I'm halfway through the illustrations!! 

Ok, back to work. Hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend! I'm very excited for some bagpipes, men in kilts, and beach time!! 

Also, a BIG thank you to our women and men in uniform. I am so grateful for the freedoms we have here in the US, and for those who have fought so we can keep them, including my grandfathers and other family members!! The photo below is of my Grandpa Downie & Grandpa Johnson. My Scottish Grandpa Downie, who served with the Queen's Cameron Highlanders in WWI, is in his dress uniform, which included a kilt! My Grandpa Johnson was a Marine and fought in WWII. He also had a sweet ride. ;)