Little Bunny Foo Foo

A Few More Animations

My mentor gave me a list last week:


Jons and the Spider by  Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits and Soyoung Hyun. A good example of depth using layers of glass at a distance from each other.



Astigmatismo by Nicolai Troshinsky. Another very extreme example of focus layers.



"I" by Isabella Santos. Really nice, simple and effective idea. Done by a young student animator.



A trailer for "Gloria Victoria" by Theodore Ushev. Something a little more experimental and surreal.



Virtuos Virtuell, a film based on a musical composition by Louis Spohr. Interesting mix of techniques.

Official Videos for Antony and the Johnsons

Since I'm doing a music video for Antony and the Johnsons (which I may not be able to show for copyright reasons) it seemed logical that I should look at the official music videos for the band already in existence.  The official video for "Cut the World" (link) is definitely shocking. It's got a pretty interesting cast. Marina Abromovic, no less. She's been showing up in some interesting places. What the hell did I just watch?

His video for "Hope There's Someone" (link) was a bit more subtle. Subtle to the point that I stopped watching it and scanned ahead to see if anything happened. I was much more interested in the song than in the video.

"Crazy In Love" (link) was also subtle. The songs are the important part of both of these videos.

"Swanlights" is footage from a film, so it feels a little more like a trailer. It's gorgeous but completely mysterious. I have no idea what the story is but it's incredibly compelling.

"Swanlights" (link) directed and produced by Sara Hegarty. 

Footage from her upcoming film "The Last Hymn"

Featuring Sierra Paris. 

"Epilepsy is Dancing" (link) is an interesting portrayal of a seizure. As Antony said himself about the video: "Epilepsy is dancing is kind of like a waltz: a narrative that describes someone sort of losing control of their body and have a kind of transcendental experience then coming back to their body. It’s sort of like, how something can feel so out of control, in the moment, but when you look back it almost had a sort of choreography to it or you could make some sense of it or there's just some things you don’t understand why they happen."

It's a gorgeous video. It reminds me of a sexually charged modern dance version of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. It's fairly direct in it's reflection of the song, but completely effective and not at all obvious or expected. 

"The Spirit was Gone" (link) directed by Peter Sempel is interesting. It's a memorial to Kazuo Ohno (link) a Japanese Butoh dancer. I never thought about the Butoh dancers in connection with queer or transgender issues. It's always seemed like a feminist issue, where women were not allowed to be on stage so female characters were played by men.

The video for Future Feminism (link) isn't a music video, but it's a beautiful little lecture by Antony. It's very philosophical/political. "Unless we move into feminine systems of governments, we don't have a chance on this planet." 

It's interesting that the video I'm making has nothing to do with transgender issues, though the song might. It's Antony himself saying "I am bird girl." I'm not sure I need to change it but it is important to keep it in mind. The nice thing about painted animation is that the character could be anything. It's more about the feeling and I think that's universal. 

Survival Craft

Only about half my research time is spent looking at art or art related subjects. The other half is spent looking at everything else. I spend quite a bit of time on what I like to call "survival craft". This ranges from how to make viking turnshoes to the what, how and why of lacto-fermenting vegetables.  I spend quite a bit of time reading food, health and homesteading sites. I have a bug-out bag. I eat a Weston-Price diet when I can. I wear minimalist or "barefoot" shoes and have been doing so since before it was a "thing". It seems pertinent to have at least one post on these subjects, since everything in our psyche seeps into our art.

(14th century boots from http://www.medievaldesign.com/)

There are definitely going to be some eyes rolling by this point. I'm one of those paleo freaks. I'd probably do crossfit if I was more motivated. I wear those stupid looking toe shoes sometimes. 

But I should back up. This all has a history. 

When I was a kid, the best and most memorable time in my life was my 8th summer. Looking back on it, I think it's possible my family was technically homeless; I know things were financially difficult. But from my perspective it was 4 months of camping bliss. We had a homemade pit toilet, one of those solar heated black bag showers, a tiny trailer with a propane stove, tents, and a pickup truck. We spent most of the summer in the Jemez Falls campground in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. I think I might have worn shoes 10 times during the whole summer. I built up callouses that were 1/2 inch thick on the bottoms of my feet. Or that's how I remember it anyway.

So it's no wonder I hate supportive shoes. I feel like my feet are a symbol of who I am in some ways. They are big. They don't fit in to the common things that they are supposed to fit into. They want to be bare, free, themselves, not bound into some sense of false support that really weakens them. When they are wrapped up they overheat. Trying to restrain them causes actual physical pain. 

(Jemez Falls)

It goes back to being that kid alone in the woods, hiking for miles around, peering over the edges of the waterfall, putting yarrow on knee scrapes like my mother taught me, navigating by trail, tree, sun. It's no wonder, then as well that I feel a draw to homesteading and survival craft. It's not because I feel like the world is going to end, it's because I feel like I'm going to end. I feel thankful every day I wake up that I live in a nice house in Portland with a sweet boyfriend and our little dog, but I never feel at home and I don't think I ever will. 

I used to think about that camping trip every time I saw the cover of a Celestial Seasonings Roastaroma box. There's something nostalgic and evocative about this simple image, especially when combined with the smell and taste of the tea itself. 

Sadly, the image has been changed to something a little more dramatic. It's a good image for a tea box, but the nostalgia is gone. 

Neil Gaiman's Commencement Speech and Art Metatheory

There's a lot of bullshit in the art world. Anyone who has read Heidegger knows it. He had some really good points. He was saying some really beautiful poetic things. But I can't help look at what he writes with a sidelong look. I'm skeptical about theory.

I have a metatheory that there is a ton of good, useful art theory, and there is a lot of bullshit. There is a lot of art writing and thinking that is more akin to armchair psychology and sociology. An artist read a book by Jung and had some therapy and thus writes prolifically about the subconscious. I do that. It's OK to do that. Good, even. The subconscious is a popular subject in writing about art.

However, as artists in an academic institution we are expected to wear a bunch of different hats, interlope into worlds where people get PhD's to back up our theories. This is OK, but at the same time it doesn't make sense.

I found myself trying to use my layman's armchair knowledge of psychology, science, sociology, etc. to prop up the importance of my work and the concepts that I'm interested in working in. I found myself insecurely attempting to justify something that didn't need justification. Art isn't a science. It doesn't need to be one, nor do we need to prove to the world that it is "up there" with science and try to make it seem like the same thing, the same level of importance. It IS as important but in very different ways, and attempting to write the same way for art as we would for sociology is not going to prove anything.

My main theory of art: You are not a unique snowflake. If you like something, someone else will as well. You really are the expert on what good art is. If you can step away from yourself, you will know whether something is good or not. The thing is, when you DO step away from it, and if you are honest, you will see more flaws than anyone else. Just keep pushing until you make something that you are really really happy with. Something that you would buy if you had the money. Something that you absolutely love. My second theory: No matter how good it is, no matter how popular, no matter how successful you are, there will be people who hate it with a vehement passion, who are offended that you even had the gall to show it to anyone, much less make money or become successful from it. That's also ok. If you still love it, it's still good.
Some theory IS technical. Film theory, for instance, covers issues like narrative structure, timing, and aesthetics. Those are crucial to understanding why something works as a film and why it doesn't. We may understand on an intuitive level that a film sucks, but we won't really know what to do about it without that foundation. Some people figure this stuff out on their own, and make fantastic creative work without ever cracking a book. They learn by looking, by paying attention, by trying things and by really analyzing what it is in their own work that is working and not working.

Below is a commencement speech by Neil Gaiman for the class of 2012 at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. This is foundational art theory. The core of how and why to create in the first place.

In the future, as this term progresses, I'm going to revisit some things that I've read, watched and listened to that have to do with creative theory. To name a few:

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
The Poetry of Self Compassion by David Whyte
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

I'll be looking for quotes by creatives themselves, writing on creating, theory by those who know because they did the art and they were successful at it.

There is a philosophy is bandied about by many different creatives. Recently one of my favorite musicians Damien Jurado said it in his way. It is, to paraphrase, that we are merely vessels and that the creative work we do is just something we tap into as artists. Not only are we not the work, but we aren't even the creators of the work, merely the conduits for the Universe to speak. This is a completely "woo woo" concept, and has no place in an academic setting. Yet, I completely agree with it. Well, sometimes anyway.

Yes, I did just imply that artist's can hear the voice of god, and I'm not taking it back. Is this absurd? Yes, possibly. Is it any more absurd than the philosophy of Martin Heidegger? I don't think so. There's a perfectly good secular way of describing this that has to do with the subconscious mind processing information better than our analytical thinking mind.

Conceptual Contextualization, Tumblr/Blogger Sync,

(One of my goals this year, my last year of grad school, is to streamline my internet presence. I have been assigned to write 2 Tumblr posts a week for my practicum, so I'm going to start making a copy of the blogs I do on Tumblr and copy them into Blogger. That way I'll have everything in one place at some point. I prefer Blogger's format, ability to save posts and ability to embed video in blog posts anyway. It is a little complicated to make copies, but I think in the long run it will be worth it, if I ever get followers. Because of the vast amount of information I process every day, I need to start strategizing how I research, how I talk about it, how I organize it and how it relates to the work that I do. The practicum is organized into 4 parts: Tools, techniques and materials; precedents; art, craft and design theory; and related disciplines. )

I do a lot of research, in a loose sense of the word. To an artist everything is research. Looking out the window at the way the clouds move behind the trees is research. Looking at another person's art is research. I am also innately curious and almost obsessed with earth sciences and astronomy from a layperson's perspective. On top of that, I'm very interested in diet, exercise, the human body, health, natural medicine and "primal" eating and lifestyle.

(An example of how I aspire to eat. I nicknamed it the "Privileged American diet", because it's expensive and based on a society of plenty. But I'm a privileged American and my doctor told me to eat this way to get my blood sugar down. It's not my fault sugar and grain are the cheapest sources of calories.)

Out of necessity, I began to research the "barefoot running" fad after I discovered my feet don't hurt as much when I am barefoot, and I started making my own shoes because the fad is new enough that the shoes are all expensive and I can't find what I need. I am interested in homesteading skills like food preservation, gardening, survival skills and general DIY. I'm incredibly fascinated by dystopian fiction and the science, sociology, and cultural consciousness that inspire it. I think about ancient mythology and how it relates to our lives, how we as humans use archetypes, the kinds of stories that are told throughout human history and the similarities in the way the stories are told. My background, personality, personal history, and the environment I live in are all intrinsically tied to what I do and how. I probably spend about 10 hours a week absorbing information that I can definitively call research and cite. This ranges from watching science documentaries while I go to sleep (they help me sleep, that's probably worth it's own blog post) to listening to audiobooks while I work in the studio.

(Viking turnshoes and one of many tutorials on how to make them. ) 

I have several avenues of research that I'm looking at. First, the changes in the world around me on a global scale that inspire numerous fictional stories, debates, emotional responses, documentaries and scientific inquiries. Climate change, resource management, war, ecological destruction and cultural shifts all work together in a web of cause and effect. Second, storytelling itself as a powerful medium of looking at what is happening in the world and translating it into something relatable, using archetypes, myth-telling, folklore, etc. Third, the way I tell these stories using my artistic abilities: All kinds of storytelling will be explored in my research, but they will likely converge as some kind of hands on, physical medium like paint or puppets that are animated in some way. Fourth, I'm interested in music videos and similar kinds of abstracted filmic storytelling connected to the poetic medium of music. I'm interested in how to translate a song into a short film and the precedents of doing so. My final project will either be an animated short film, an animated webcomic, an installation including animation, or an animated music video. I'm open to performative methods of storytelling as well. All my animations will be created using at least mostly physical, handmade techniques such as stop motion puppet animation, paint or paper. If I find a band, my theme will depend entirely on the song and the desires of the band.

(earth 2100, a sensationalist ABC documentary about a worst case scenario of what could happen to our world if we don't make some changes as a species. Includes badly flash animated but aesthetically pleasing fictional story to illustrate the points they make. I found it incredibly compelling even though it was clearly sensational and over the top.) 

Most of the research I do, I would do whether I was in school or not, but I'm approaching it differently now. I'll be analyzing what I look at in a cultural as well as personal context, I'll be organizing my research into categories, and of course I'll be keeping a bibliography and keeping track of who, what, when, where, why and how of what I research. My categories will include general animation; storytelling and artistic techniques; music video; film theory; mythology; dystopian, apocalyptic, utopian and futuristic fiction and nonfiction; and personal context. I will also be looking at the psychology, philosophy and sociology behind these things, if possible.

(After the End: Representations of Post Apocalypse by James Berger. I haven't started reading it yet.) 

As an artist in an academic institution, I have to do this kind of research,. However it is really important to keep in mind that I'm not a sociologist, a scientist, a psychologist, a philosopher or an anthropologist, even though I will be doing research in all of these fields. People get PhD's in each those fields. It would be impossible to uphold the standards of each one of them. It's not my responsibility to keep track of the peer reviewed proof behind them, do statistical analyses, do my own real scientific research, etc. I'm merely translating what I experience into something poetic and learning how to talk about it. I'm learning what makes me tick and what makes my audience tick. I'm learning who my audience is and what it is I want to share with them.

Throughout my blog, I embed links within the text for context (they look like this). It is the reader's responsibility to click on them, because I use them in lieu of a description. I'm already writing twice as many words as I'm required to, if not more. I will also try to cite the most important sources in formal bibliographic form at the bottom of my posts from now on.

Mostly, I need to remember the reason behind the impetus to study art and design in the first place. To take such a risk as to go deeply in debt to study a subject that has no economic security in an economic downturn, I have to have a really strong reason. These reasons are not rational at all, and though I will attempt to make my research rational, the work I do will not be based on logic or rationality. As many artists, I have an intense drive to create. So intense, I'm willing to risk my own financial security despite knowing what financial insecurity looks like. I grew up with nothing. I've been hungry and homeless, I've struggled through low wage jobs, family dysfunction and illness all at the same time. I've been through hell, and I know that my current life is not guaranteed. I'm risking the possibility of falling back into that desperate world, of working low wage office jobs to get by just so I can get better at my art. It's a huge risk, and I've known it all my life. But the impetus to do this is so intense, I feel that I have no choice. It is what gives my life meaning, without which there is no point.

Therefore, what I do as an artist HAS to be authentic, otherwise I'm doing this all for nothing. Why go through all of this only to do something that I don't believe in? Why risk everything only to lose sight of why I'm doing this in the first place? I'm doing art so that I can make use of these things I'm compelled to do on an intuitive level. I was raised to trust my instincts, and when I don't, I've always regretted it. So the inspiration for all my artwork, whether I'm working for a client or not, will be guided by this instinct. It's not conceptual thought that I work from, it's gut feeling, because gut feeling is what I'm trying to process and portray. I can ask myself why I have an instinct, use it as a point of inquiry, follow it until it no longer serves it's purpose and find another path, but I have to follow the original intuition to get there.

Temporalis: Time Passes. Paint on Glass and Animation Installation

Many years ago, I was introduced to William Kentridge and his gorgeous animated drawings. I began to wonder what would happen if paint was used instead of charcoal. It took me almost a decade to try it and find out for myself. I did some research and had some recommendations by teachers. Among others, I discovered Alexander Petrov, Caroline Leaf and my personal favorite, Carine Khalife.

Although not exclusively, paint on glass is commonly done on a light box, which means that the colors act differently than usual painting. The light shines through the paint from behind, so the value is controlled by opacity and thickness rather than adding white. I began by using oil paint, since that is where my experience lies. Oil paint does dry comparatively quickly using this method, even though I mixed it with petroleum jelly to slow the drying process and thinned the paint with vegetable oil. The drawback is that I only have a day or two to work on something, and once it dries, I can't work on it anymore. However oil has certain properties that acrylic and watercolor do not. Also, once the image is dry I can frame and potentially sell the final frame of each scene as a physical painting. Here are a couple quick experiments:

During the summer, I took a class called "Boundary Crossings: Cyber Folklore", an animated arts installation class through PNCA. Oil paint was not an option, as I was using the expensive equipment in the animation lab, so I decided to try watercolor. Watercolor has a few benefits using this method. The dry parts can be drawn into with water and repainted. Also, if glycerin is mixed into the paint it hardly dries at all, though the glycerin greatly affects the texture of the paint and makes it harder to control.

I also used this project as a way to explore something I think a lot about: Disaster, war, climate change and societal collapse. I was thinking about how we take for granted the world that we experience and how things may change at any time. I was riding my bike to class every morning through the lovely idyllic Portland, Oregon on beautiful summer days, and I thought about how one day, all of what I was seeing and experiencing may be gone, and what replaces it may not be so idyllic. I used Google Street View to capture 3 iconic views of portland, and then painted them as though they had been bombed. I used only a few colors so that the series of 3 animations would relate to each other.

To make this animation, I hinged two pieces of glass and attached them to a light box which was taped and wedged down under the camera so that it wouldn't move. The dusty wind was created by brushing a layer of wet paint a keyframe at a time across the back of the top piece of glass. The sky was painted on the back of the bottom piece of glass, the scenery on the front of that, and the movement on the front of the top piece. This created depth and layering and allowed me to move parts of the image without touching other parts.

 I failed to keep it still on the first one I did, which is why the Burnside Bridge scene appears to wiggle. I decided it looked like a camera blowing in the wind, which inspired an idea I didn't follow through on which was to install video monitors and create a bunker for my installation, equipped with video monitors and the sound of radio, a running generator, wind and one lonely voice crackling in on a radio scanner. The idea was good, but so much of the beauty of the painting was lost on a monitor, so I opted for stripping down the concept to a minimal and poetic approach and back projected the animations on to strips of vellum hung with invisible thread, removed all the props, and put the sound on large auditorium speakers for a full range which were placed behind the viewer and echoed through the storage closet. I can't deny that there was a touch of black humor in the project, painting the iconic "Portland, Oregon" sign fallen among the rubble was as much tongue in cheek as it was serious.

I plan to continue this animation process, perhaps in conjunction with my continued learning process with stop motion and claymation. I also plan to continue the theme of societal collapse and disaster. This theme is a contemporary mythology that echoes cultures across the globe and through time. Everyone on the planet is descended from the 3000-10,000 individual humans that survived the Toba super volcano eruption that happened about 75,000 years ago. Perhaps the memory of that worldwide catastrophe has been imprinted on us. Apocalypse is in our genes.

Homage to the Ball-Point Pen

Ah, the ball point pen. So cheap, advertisers find the advertising worth more than the pen, so many of my drawings have been done with a freebie. How many drawings have I done with a white plastic bic, emblazoned with the blue text of a bank or hotel? Many. There are so many things I could say about the simple, humble ball point pen. I prefer it to an art pen, because I can control the value of the mark and because it is cheaper. I love the feel of a simple ball point writing on the most basic sketch or printer paper. I like the smell of the ink. Accidentally, I've even tasted ball point pen ink. So intensely have I looked at a ball point and it's ink, taken them apart, studied the blobs coming out of the little interior straw that holds the ink, I can tell you the black ink is actually a very dark red or occasionally a dark purple or blue. I prefer the ball point to pencil as well, because with pencil I know I can correct my mark, so I'm less free, I think too much, I get intense, I make too dark a mark. It's a leap of faith. Life is like drawing in ball point pen: You can control the value, but you can't erase.

I would like to spend an artist residency with nothing available to me but simple sketch paper and as box of black bic pens. The cheap, simple ones, not the darker, smoother ones that are more expensive.

If I were to go back over the entire arc of my art career, even back to my childhood, I would find drawings in pen or pencil of characters. I've been doing character sketches since I was 12, maybe earlier, but only lately decided to recognize that they were character sketches. The following is scarcely 5 of the most recent character sketches selected from my sketchbook. I added them to my website and will continue to add them as I find some of the old ones and create new ones.

Recently I decided to start filling my sketchbook using the medium I love to make the drawings I love. It's so fast and relaxing that I hardly consider it a distraction from the rest of my work. It can be a relaxing and productive replacement for decompressing on a video game or Facebook. At best, the drawings may be preliminary sketches for future puppets and animations. Or become comics or animations themselves. I'd like to do an entire graphic novel in ball point some day. No pencil pre-drawing. Just a leap of faith.

Here are the best of the last week of drawings. As I find dig out more or draw more I'll add them. Hope you like them!

Little test animation

Ok so this video is pretty jumpy. It's a test sketch of a new puppet I manufactured over the last couple weeks for school. It's also a little faded looking due to the experiment with a makeshift fabric "filter" I put over the camera, which I think may have an application for the other stuff I want to do.

I'm intending to animate the puppet coming out of a chrysalis. Kind of a predictable video perhaps, but I'm new at this and it's an easy set. the best thing I can do is make something simple the best I can, so I understand the nuance. Later I can do something more complicated.

The set was too small so I zoomed in too close to see the wings in all their glory, and the puppet is honestly too big, so the process of animating her takes some awkward support systems (I bought a microphone boom just for that purpose, and you can actually see the little thread on her left wing.)

All in all it was a great and informative test but as a video itself it's not much of a product... more part of the process!

I loved working with "breathing cycles" which I don't see much in 3 dimensional stop motion, but it's pretty much standard in 2-d analog animating.

2 New Animation Tests

So, I've been sick recently. Probably the flu. The kind of sick where you stay in bed for a week, only dragging yourself up for the barest necessities. Unfortunately, I was sick when I had final projects to work on. I missed a couple really important classes, fell short on a project I all but abandoned, and didn't get into the studio at all. What I did do, however, was make a short 2 dimensional animation using a graphic tablet and GIMP. It's very short. I use iMovie to add sound to my animations, and I've found that it lowers the quality of the images, so I need something else to use. But this is a test, so I'm ok with it.

I did it from my bed on my laptop in short spurts of energy before I got delerious and went back to sleep.

Today, I did another little animation, now that I'm feeling better. It's my first time lapse video and the first animation I did with my new Canon Rebel connected to an intervalometer. It's not impressive but it's kinda cool. I decided to let myself be in the picture, because the outdoor long term project I want to do, I will be in the picture. Kind of like a puppeteer, only in an animation. I hope that while the puppet will move smoothly, I will pop in and out and jerk around. Maybe I'll be in black so I'm more of a shadow. That would be kind of cool. Anyway here it is. Enjoy!

5 Day Animation Challenge

I'm posting this a week later than I expected. I did it. I did a whole... or most of... an animation in 5 days. It was suggested that I do a couple more 5 day animation challenges. The sound was much longer than the animation, and I had to loop sections to make it fit the music and it was pretty much a failure. Oh well.

Here is the short, soundless version. It's a sketch, and an experiment. I don't expect to win any film awards for this. But I think it's got some cool stuff going on.

Next, I'm going to play with some armatures that are not wire, make something bigger, possibly with natural materials, and use a found setting instead of building a set. I have some interesting ideas to play with. I'll post them when they are done! It was suggested by my mentor that I do a couple more 5 day animation challenges, and I agree that it would be more productive than going back and finishing this one

Animation Adventure Begins!

This is my first attempt ever at animation. The paper figures took about 10 minutes each to make. It's just a test, to work out how this animation thing works!

I decided to make another very fast, thrown together animation of about a minute or less. I gave myself a deadline of about a week. I know that deadline is insane for animating, and I like that it's insane, but the above 3 second animation took me about an hour to make and half of that was learning the software, so I think I can do it. It's like the animation version of gesture sketching. When you have a very short amount of time to finish something, you really hone in on what is important. Here is a sneak preview of the storyboard and sound:

This little animation is the first part of a longer story. The story has elements from mythology, like the ferryman that takes the dead across the river styx. The girl will have archetypal elements of Persephone and Orpheus, and the story will be somewhat inspired by the ancient myth of Ishtar's descent into the underworld. This scene might not make the cut, as it's a little unoriginal.  

P.S.: sounddogs.com is awesome, and where I found all the sound and music for this piece. Next time I'd like to use at least some of my own sound. 

Figures In The Dark

Puppets, or dolls, soft sculpture, call them what you like, posed and photographed in the dark at night in a slightly eerie and possibly somewhat dangerous part of town. I haven't settled on how to make the puppets yet. Long exposure and the simulation in digital form of 1600 speed film lend a raw, grainy, mysterious texture. I'm not afraid to use photoshop for effects.

In person the figures are somewhat barbie and ken doll like, which has prompted me to continue to explore the possibilities of how to make them. Questions that haven't been answered yet are: Keep to 12" or go up to twice that, or even make them tiny? Realistic or not? Wire armatures or marionette style with strings and a scaffolding? Face or faceless? Should I worry about how they are in person? Should I make sets or props or only use what's in the world? What would happen if they were life sized? (That sounds like a huge job, but it's not as hard as you think. Sometimes smaller things are harder to make because the details get too small to work with.) And since when was I ever afraid of things taking a long time?

Oh, and I'm a few months into my graduate school experience. It's a pretty awesome and unique program. http://acd.pnca.edu

Hello again!

It just occurred to me that maybe 3 or 4 people are actually going to read this. Still, one never knows, so I write as if it is a public blog, because hey, someone might stumble on it or something, or the blogs I follow might do so back.

Anyway enough of that. I have started another many drawings in a month project. I feel like I'm the world's least motivated person right now, but obviously I'm not. So to kick myself into gear I gave myself an assignment: 200 creative things in a month. I've already started and I think I'm up to 35 or something, and as predicted, the project is inspiring new ideas and either fleshing out or dumping old ideas. I might write a comic based on some of the drawings, which I've yet to do. (Let's see if my ADD can handle a comic.)

This time it's not just drawings that I'm doing, as I have a business making stuffed animals and dolls I'm working on. I have some cats to make for my grandmother, and I need to get the packaging together for the stuffed version of my "make your own superhero" dolls.

Perhaps I will give up on making stuffed animals for a living though. It's a big thing to say but I am not good at keeping up with the boring part of the production, and would rather make patterns. Patterns that can sell. Patterns that can sell as a PDF that I email to me, that take up no space and little material and will continue to sell even if I'm not working. It's maybe a bit sad as I bought tags for my stuffed animals, and I do plan to try one more push with selling the actual plush. But after this Christmas, if I don't get some good sales, I'm done. I'm gonna change over to patterns, coloring pages, and paper dolls. Things that are printed or printable. Perhaps an ebook or even, who knows, a real book.

On another subject, I've lived without a painting studio for about 4 months, and I just cleared out a bit of the garage. All I have to do is haul up my supplies from the basement and get rid of the boxes that don't belong in the garage, and I have somewhere to paint again.

When I was a kid I wondered about my lack of motivation, the difficulty I have finishing things, my "laziness" (I put in quotes because my therapist tells me not to call myself names, and lazy is one of the worst.) I thought that I would overcome it when I grew up. I thought somehow it was just a kid thing, later maybe just a teen thing, as a young adult there were a few brilliant moments when I was in school and working full time when I got my homework done and went to work and also had to take care of my mom. I don't really miss those 80 hour weeks, but I never felt this horrible sinking feeling that I'm wasting my short time on this earth away.

But I wasn't cured. I've been diagnosed with ADD, and all the books I read show the same kind of behavior, so though I hesitate to use it as an excuse, at least it gives me a model to work with, and shows me that it's not all my fault.

I think this blog post is sadly lacking in images, so I'm going to post a pic of the printed sew in tags I got for my plushies

Art Subject Brainstorm.

I haven't painted for over a year, save a few minor sit-downs in front of a portrait that i have owed someone for 2 years. (It's terrible, really, I need to get that finished. I feel really bad about it.)

The following is a brainstorm: A list of possible subject matter or inspirations for painting. Anyway here is the list:

Booby trapped painting: Like nuts and bolts, it looks like a nice painting until you get close then oooh, what is that...wait... WTF?! Why is she wearing that? Wait is that blood? Is that a FLY in the blood? Ew! That kind of booby trap.

Beauty in common or ugly things (Garbage paintings)

Astronomy, astrophysics

Time: The passage of time, geologic or astronomic time, the experience of time to a person, the clash between human time and geologic time, time passes, things change, get better, get worse, this too shall pass, we all are born, live, die. Evolution, both actual and symbolic.

Color and emotional meaning, mental response, social symbology, etc. Interactions of color visually, the science of color, prismatic color, rainbows, subtractive vs additive color mixing. The subconsious effect of color and form. The mushroom trip and the colors involved with each feeling and part of the experience.

Earth, geology, connected to time, also just beautiful in general, landscapes and what is going on underneath them, human interaction with geology, catastrophe, volcanoes, weather, earthquakes, etc., the motion of plates, mountains, change, age of rocks, eons, fossils, trilobytes, dinosaurs, what earth will look like in 25 million years, in 1 billion years

Stuffed Animals, toys, and the meaning to children and self as a child.

Children, what they are, philosophy, understanding, autonomy, the innate intelligence and wisdom of a young mind. Children's dreams, the child in everyone, memory of childhood, childhood mythology, children's dreams,

Dreams: meaning, representation, subconscious, symbolism, surreal interpretations, illogic, dissonance, flying, other worlds/places only seen in dreams, dream architecture, maps, fears and hopes, mental processing, spiritual meaning, tapping into the collective consciousness, meditation, understanding of the world through dreams, psychic, intuition, past life or memory of things not lived, mythology, gods and goddesses.

Surrealism Symbolic, subconscious, mind-play, lack of real meaning or means something not understood by artist, contrasting, paradoxical, dissonant, ironic, controversial, clashing ideas. Surprising, sometimes amusing, sometimes dark relationships of subjects in the painting.

Politics: Feminism, mid east, personal effect, health care, economic concerns and the human effect, what life is actually like, emotional response to political reality, quality of life, actual personal needs, death from political realities, need for change, forming a future, what would be ideal, what will happen if we don't learn from history.

Apocalyptic stuff: Climate, war, politics, clean slate, change, humanity, overpopulation, nature, back to nature, hypnotized by modern technology, attachment to modern tech., the tension and personal

Emotional expression

Manipulation of viewer emotion

Philosophy: Life, depression, joy, the flow of the mind, philosophy of living, coping, changing, loss, gain, wishes, zen, magical thinking, energy, interactions of people, love, family, relationships, heartbreak, complexity, aging, time passage, humanity, zen, buddhism, tao, aging, attitude, gratitude, addiction, understanding. The definition of art and of philosophy are basically the same: Both are about the human condition. Art is philosophy, in visual form. Even if it is a simple expression of aesthetics.

Beauty, refreshment of the soul, simplicity, decoration, cheering the home, feng shui, controlling the environment. Home, or where you live, work etc. Creating a space, color, exterior as expression of interior. Beauty and technical finesse in art, understanding the basics of design and the aesthetic understanding of all the elements and principles of design and making a piece of work. All of this can be part of a work that is about something else. Or it can stand alone.

Breaking "rules" of art, design, etc, but knowing you are doing it and why. Working against the common principles of design, color theory etc.

Flow, interaction, cellular, atomic, microscopic, macroscopic cause, effect, physics, symbolic of human interaction, time, movement, change, relations of microscopic and macroscopic, the size of the universe, the size of an atom, the proportions of both, patterns of physics, nature, etc. Science, quantum physics, metaphysics.

Psychology, ADD, distraction, differences of mind, personality, people, humanity, processing, therapy, regression, childhood, family, memory, etc.

Well, that should get me started. I think I also need to be mindful of my reactions to visual things, and the choices I make in even the simplest actions, like what I wear, what color background I chose on my blog, the font that I use, etc. It is all connected. Anything I respond visually to, either positively or negatively, I should ask myself why, and perhaps start a little journal and start a few drawings.

I could draw something relating to each thing on this list and see what I end up with.

Coming Back Around

It's been awhile since I've posted a blog. Mostly because this blog has been about my painting, and, well, I haven't been painting. At all. Actually I feel quite guilty because the last thing I posted about really needed to be finished a long time ago. I got so caught up in the other things I was doing that the painting didn't get finished. It has been the longest painting block I have ever experienced and I think I need to end it. But not tonight because I'm not in my apartment where my painting stuff is. That's the problem with being halfway moved, I live in 2 different places and nothing gets done. That will change in a couple months.

What I have been doing is working on a business selling my soft sculpture, and I guess that took over. So what I would like to do is start adding that subject to this blog. After all, it is all my work, and this is my blog, and I don't see the point in having several blogs for one person. I want to streamline it, make it all one thing. I have only one life after all, I am one person with many talents, and I figure I don't need to confuse everyone by keeping it all separate. So what you will find here from now on will relate to all my creative endeavors. If you want to see things that are specific to my Etsy business, you can follow my Facebook page for Feral Children http://www.facebook.com/pages/Feral-Children/183165058390755

So from now on all my artistic and professional blogs will go here, whether it's a series of drawings or discussion of new fabric for a bunny. I know some marketing experts might feel that I am dispersing my audience too much, but this blog is about me and the things I do, personally, so it is all held together by that common element. I am not a product or a company, and I think people are burnt out by faceless products and companies and their slick advertising and impersonal schemes. I'm an artist, not a corporation. Though I might have a corporation in the next couple years, I'm not the corporation.

It's been a long winter and there have been a lot of changes internally and externally. I am moving in with Marcus in his lovely house, I am slowly building a business, and I'm changing into the person I want to be and the life I want to live one tiny step at a time.

Right now I have some valentine bunnies to sew, a story to write, a painting to finish, and some cookies to make. If I spend too much time staring at the screen they won't get done! Peace.

Thank God, I thought I had forgotten how to paint!

Well, the Savannah's face is starting to look like her, maybe not perfect, but it's getting there! I had the underpainting in brown and white, and now I'm putting the color in. I guess i see in color so much better that it's easier now. But I like the way a painting looks when it started with monochromatic. Here's the rest of the painting, still monochromatic, still a little awkward, the couch is too big and the shoulder is at an uncomfortable looking angle, but all can be fixed. The couch will be a luxurious looking dark burgundy velvet. I think I will put some kind of subtle 1920's style wallpaper on the background, something that looks like it has textured images rather than colored images, I think. Her hair will also be a bit more strawberry than blond, which is a challenge because the girl used to have light red hair, but it's almost black now! I have to refer to wedding photos.

It's like an old fashioned version of photoshopping.... cut and paste and rearrange. The couch isn't something that either of us were ever near, and the dog was not allowed near the expensive velvet dress, so it's all assembled from different images.

Well, hopefully after this I can get some actual paid commissions... well, to be fair, I think a website is quite a lovely payment. Actually I got quite a deal. I think I came out ahead!

I'm really excited about where this is going!

Etsy is up, the Website is up!

Go to http://willowdarcy.com and check out the new layout. It's a bit simplified. I haven't sold anything on Etsy yet, but hopefully as I put more and more stuff on there and get a handle on it, I can get enough viewers that I will sell something! Just go to my website and click the "Etsy" button on the top. Click on the "Blog" button and it will bring you right back here! Thanks to Legacy Specialties for the design of my lovely site. Such a nice way to navigate. Google sites has limits, so sorry about the white spaces under the thumbnails, I really don't know how to get rid of them!

Savannah's Portrait

Finally worked in the studio today. I had forgotten that when I do a portrait, even if I have a photograph and use a projector, I still need to draw the face with pencil on paper. I won't yet show a photo of the painting itself, as I don't want to create a bias for the viewer, as I am still working on likeness, but I think I did a pretty good job with the pencil sketch of Savannah's face. I transferred the drawing on to the painting by putting a layer of oil pastel on the back of a copy of the drawing and drawing over it on top of the painting. Well, here it is. I am really glad I have a scanner and a printer, it makes these things so much easier. She looks a bit like the Mona Lisa, smile and everything. Wonder if I could get her to pose for me again and do a Mona Lisa update.

The insomnias guide to insomnia.

Ok this isn't actually a guide, but I liked that title. It is however a short article on something that creative people often complain about. I decided to do a little google research (i.e. not real research) on insomnia and particularly getting up in the morning when the previous night didn't go well. I found a lot of bad articles. Particularly, I could tell within the first few sentences whether or not the person was an insomniac.

For instance, one article written by a writer, one oddly who wasn't an insomniac himself, had all sorts of "advice". I looked around to see what kind of expertise he had. Was he a scientist? No. A nurse? No. What was he? He was a writer, and by the picture looked to be younger than I am. Hmmm. But I read it. What did it say? The opposite of what most insomniacs know. It said to stay in bed, keep your eyes closed, and keep the lights off. Don't get up, it said. Now I know his advice SOUNDS logical, but it isn't really. Because usually, and I will just speak for myself, it is my MIND that keeps me awake. Not books, not music, not doing things. Doing things gives me a calming satisfaction, reading distracts my mind from whatever it is thinking about. Just lying there? Well to be honest, that is what I do 99% of the time, and I can tell you definitively IT DOES NOT HELP!

On the other hand, the worst thing I can do is get on the computer... the light of the screen has been shown in studies to disrupt sleep patterns. So I should get on the computer when I'm trying to get up in the morning. See, I know there are insomniacs out there who just get up early, that's the symptom. Mine is the opposite, I can't go to sleep, when I do I wake about 4 hours later. Another article, one I actually liked, was called "10 Geeky Tricks for Getting Out of Bed in the Morning" and hell I'll go ahead and give you the link http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/02/10-tricks-to-ge/

I read another similar article that said something to the degree that if you don't go to sleep within 5 minutes of going to bed, then you aren't tired enough. What?!?! First of all, I feel bad for this guy's sex life. I mean, I don't have one myself right now, but if you wait until you are that tired and you have a significant other waiting for you, well, yeah.... we can see where that will go. Second of all, I don't think I have ever in my entire life gone to sleep that soon. Ever. Which means that, basically, if I wait for that moment, I won't sleep. Like at all. It takes me that long just to get sort of comfortable.

I have a theory about sleep and tiredness. I think that my insomnia really is in my mind, my habits of thought, and is connected to many things, as much as in my body. One of the mind traps is a kind of lack of faith. Not necessarily religious faith, but just a feeling of comfort and safety. I CAN'T go to sleep, I tell myself, what if something happens? What if I have things I needed to do? Only it isn't this coherent. I think that I can't sleep because I can't trust the universe to keep me safe while I sleep. I feel responsible for the house, for myself, for my pets, etc. I can't go to sleep, what if something happens? This is silly of course, but it also explains why I have trouble getting up in the morning. My mind has finally abandoned that train of thought, and besides, it is morning... I made it through the night. I was a sentinel. The sun has risen. All is well. I can rest now....

The worst part is that I do best doing my art in the morning before work. I have to start getting ready to go to work at 11 AM. Since I have been trying every single day to get up early, and failing almost every day, my art time is being whittled away, hour by hour, day by day. If I could just convince my sleepy headed morning mind that yes, it is important to get up, and not only is it important, but it is enjoyable. Believe it or not, I like mornings. I like being up, having coffee, the cold morning air... I just don't like getting up. Somehow I have to do this though, I have to get up... preferably by 7:30. I need that quiet time alone in my studio, while everyone else is asleep and nothing else is expected of me.... I need it. I wish I could do it.... Cross your fingers and wish me luck, because I'm going to try again tomorrow.