Painting

I have been inundating you with my poetry, earlier this week was even kind of dark and sad.  Today we are going to talk painting.  When I paint I am not going for a specific look.  That just occurs.  I know how to start, I know when to finish; but in between I am freaking out because I have no idea what I am doing.

Sound familiar? It is not a new or unique problem.  If it was I doubt we would have any artists of any medium.

“A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people” 
― Edgar Degas

Dragon

Malestrom

Small and large, minimalist and so not.  These two paintings only look like they are from the same artist because I signed them. Yet they make the same statement in their way.  I let the art stand for itself most often and try not to impose my view upon the viewer.  To me these are both about beginnings.  Sometimes simple, sometimes messy; starting over is the only way to move on.  We all start over every day.

Love what I am doing and want to see more?  I am now on Patreon.

A Bucket of Fun!

Last week on Crafting Tuesday you barely got anything, because I had a tough week and didn't have much time for crafting. This week you are going to get some links! Why so many links? My amazing friends shared the with me when I was having trouble deciding what to do with all of these pine cones! So let's get started!

Martha Stewart

Craftaholics Anonymous

A Fanciful Twist

Why didn't I do any of these amazing things? Because they all, everyone, require more than just some pine cones and some ingenuity. Did I try?  Yes.  Did it work? Nope. Why no pictures?  Because I am too lazy to go into another room to get my tablet and photograph crafting disasters. I have some nice painted cones that I will probably mix with the lilac scented wax ones from last week into a bowl for decor in a bathroom this winter. Other than that Operation Bucket of Pine Cone was a total meltdown.

However, I did do a thing! Last weekend I purchased a hand drum. Similar to a tambourine but no cymbals. This one boasted a natural skin that I was dying to paint.  A field of grass and a field of stars with borders painted in red and yellow for fire and air. The paint improved the tone of the drum and now I have to decide if I want to play it or sell it.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be highlighting some amazing folks who do crafts.  One or two of them are much more than crafters, but would never see themselves that way. Love what I am doing and want to see more?  I am now on Patreon.

Monday...

First off a little family promotion:  If you are interested in some good fiction and better advice please tune into Crimson's blog. Interested in the Shadoe Stone's product line? Remember that we don't have a webpage yet, so see us on Facebook.  Finally, my mother is an amazing crafter and has turned her crochet into an amazing business on Facebook, Handmade by Phyllis by name.

Now onto our Monday...

3Ps is the MWF theme, we are only a few weeks in so there isn't much feedback and even less of a conversation about what you would like to see more and/or less of; so I shall continue in what has started.  Please always feel free to comment here or contact me directly.

Shades of Grey, Dawn Cowan

Speaking about black and white photography and poetry by colors in the last few weeks inspired this piece.  Sadly, it did not photograph well from my tablet.  The texturing of the paint is part of what makes my works compelling, if you believe they are at all, and in this one the red seems to be climbing out of the black and grey.

Color is great for making things pop out at you.  While the grey-scale photo with a red rose is almost trite now, the opposite is just as effective if properly done.  A riot of color is great, drop in a grey-scale aspect and suddenly you have stillness within chaos.  My favorite play with color in photography  though is when the colors are soft and still crisp and clean.  A photo shot in the night shadows, with spots of light for instance.

Spanish Moss at Night-Dawn Cowan

I have almost run out of my "found" acrylics and I am done with the canvases afforded to me by the sale (except, maybe, the one I am painting over) so I am done with painting for now.  It makes me sad when I can't get out what is in my head.  Okay fine, it pisses me off that it's money that is causing the problem.

I have dreams about the amazing things I can do with canvas and paints.  I drool over wall sized canvas and buckets of acrylic paint.  I would adore being able to create mixed media art pieces using my camera, paintings and some of my craft work.  Heck, I just want an easel, canvas and some paint too.

Love what I am doing and want to see more?  I am now on Patreon.

Mistakes

"We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents." -Bob Ross

Painting is easy in some ways.  Canvas, paint brushes, and paint meet and a picture is made.  What happens though when the picture in your mind and the one on the canvas don't match?  Or worse they do and then your brush grabs wrong and the color runs in the wrong way. What do you do?  Do you leave the painting as it is and give up on it?  Do you try and work with the mistake and make a new picture that is similar but incorporates the mistake, makes it beautiful?  Do you work with the mistake and make something new, something unique?

I think you know where this is going.  Mistakes happen in life just like they do in painting. What we do with them determines how we live.  Are we going to spend our lives stressed out and trying to fix so much that we never even get the chance to live?  Conversely, if we just ignore the mistakes and go on as if they never occurred, is that the correct response?  How you go on after a mistake is made often determines the size of the mistake.

Crimson is a big fan of Bob Ross.  Her Shadoe Stones product line is "Happy Trees" in his honor. Mr. Ross was a man who knew how to turn a mistake around on canvas.  Remaining calm is often a large part of the process.  I do not paint in Mr. Ross' style at all. I place emotions on canvas in an almost haphazard way.  Then came the day that I needed to form a picture to correctly carry the emotion I needed. I wanted a sky and a hill with trees. I used a watercolor paint for the first time ever, it was blue for the sky.  Then I went to put light into the sky and boom green.  Well, shit.  Yellow and blue make green.  Acrylic paint is fluid. Watercolors are "WATER" colors for a reason.  Yeah, so now we have a blob of green in the sky...how do we fix it?  Do we accept that the painting isn't going to be what it was supposed to be?  Do we try and make it fit anyway?  How do we fix this mistake? I tried fixing it. Made it worse. I then ran with it. I am uncertain how I feel about the finished product, I am not even certain, yet, that it is finished. Heck, I may use that time honored tradition of painting over. Going to need new paints for that, so it will have to wait.

We can't hit rewind in life. We live with our mistakes small and large.  It is what you do with them that makes life. I try very hard to live with no regrets. Every decision I have made right and wrong has brought me to where I am, and that is a beautiful thing.

The aforementioned painting.  I have done worse...and I have done better, a lot better!

 Love what I am doing and want to see more?  I am now on Patreon.

Procraftination

Procraftination has two meanings:

1. Crafting when you should be doing something else, i.e. knitting when you should be practicing piano (clears throat loudly).

2. Doing everything in the world BUT the crafting you are supposed to be doing.

Well, I am not the knitter in the family, so guess which one I am doing?  Procrastination or procraftination is something we all do.  When we see something that seems to be too big to tackle we attempt to go around it instead of through.  One of the hardest things to do is see the steps that make procrastination the harder path.  Everyone knows that taking it one step at a time makes a large project smaller and easier to do; it is figuring out those steps and making sure they get done in a timely manner that is hard and makes putting it off until later seem the easier thing.

There are several steps to fixing procrastination of any kind.  Often though we know those steps (as I do) it is actually applying them that is the hard part. Getting off of your ass to do something that is going to take a long time to fruition is HARD.  As mentioned, many times already in this blog, I am a poet and a painter and a photographer as well as a crafter and a writer of fiction and creator of games (I know it's bad English but it makes the point).  When I am writing poetry, painting or taking photographs my gratification is instant.  I do these things with singular focus, I even paint in watercolors and acrylics  because I hate waiting for oils to dry. Crafting, novel writing and game creation is harder.  I have to sit and think and work at it.  So often I will put it off.  I can do that later. I will get to it after I finish editing this series of photos, get off Facebook, write this blog post (you get the idea).  I actually created this blog and specifically this day on the blog to get me off my bum and get to working on "The Quilt"  and do you know what I have done on it?  NOTHING!  I got it out, photographed it and put it away. This stops now, today....after I finish writing....

Looking for some motivation?  Check out Crimson's Blogs on Motivation:  The Motivation Files:  1, 2, and 3.  Love what I am doing and want to see more?  I am now on Patreon.

Another way to sit at the computer and look like you are doing things while you do nothing:

The Elements and Artistry

I finished them and got photos!  Whoot!

EARTH

AIR

FIRE

WATER

I am exceptionally excited to have finished this, as it has been waiting for almost 6 months due to lack of funds.  We are still lacking in funds, but in the cleaning to find things to sell or pawn Sar found the Christmas present he had forgot he had purchased for me...so new paints!

Today we are going to talk about something on topic, but not related to these pieces specifically. 

 What makes an artist an artist?  

Short answer?  They do.  Long answer?  Fine, I'll do it.

An artist is an artist when they say (or admit-I have known several who deny it-they are normally the best, by the way) they are.  The viewer of the art can determine if they like it or not, but they shouldn't try to determine whether or not it is art.  Anything we are passionate about can be art.  Yes, anything-ask Don Juan and Casanova, better yet, ask the women they were with; whether or not they were artists.  You are a house painter, a plumber, a secretary?  You love what you do and you do it well?  Then YOU are an artist.  

That begs the question though of "do it well."  How do you determine that?  That depends on the criteria.  Secretaries should be able to type, file, search google for the boss' lunch again and many other things and they often have to be extremely flexible in what their day is going to be like (and I know secretary is passe. I don't care. I was one for years, I know what it takes).  At the top of their game there is some serious artistry involved.  There is also very little subjectivity to it.  A painter, a writer, or a poet though? Someone like me who claims to be all of the above and more?  There is a lot of subjectivity there.

So how do you know?  How do they know? This is the ephemeral part.  Art is art. Or is it?  My paintings would be considered "modern," but many people know 1st graders who could finger paint "better."  What makes one art and the other not?  Answer:  I do.  Art is the creation of work for the appreciation primarily for the appeal to the emotions or senses.  A small child creates to please yes, but seldom are they creating it as art.  An artist is expressing, sharing and giving you a part of their soul.

So I am an artist.  Are you?

Love what I am doing and want to see more?  I am now on Patreon. Personal appearance this weekend in the Shadoe Stones booth, at the Indy Pagan Pride Day.

Inspiration-Painting edition

Inspiration is an ethereal thing.  You either have it or you don't.  If you have it and you try to grasp it, it seems to slip right through your fingers. Thomas Edison said:  "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."  Ignoring his raping of Nikola Tesla's ideas for that 1%; you have to consider how hard  it is to come by, even with all out perspiration. We have to consider when we are creative how to maintain the 1 % long enough to make the 99% worth it!

The mighty Crimson has discovered a great way to keep track of the inspiration so you can put in the perspiration later.  I want to share that with you as, if you are reading this you, Evernote is quite simply the best way to track all of the things!

Side note:  I am giving all of you these links, NOT because I am trying to get attention of these companies, but because I want to share the information with you.  Trust me if I wanted the companies to notice me they would...consider how you found this post after all.

Back to inspiration. When you want to be inspired what do you do?  Some people go for walks, some close themselves in.  I am an out and abouter personally.  I get my ideas from life.  That, actually, is one of the reasons it has been so long since I created.  I have been so ill, that I haven't had a life.  Now, I am starting to make my life out of what I am creating. I am truly creating to live.  It is somewhere between freeing and terrifying.

For paintings I am more inspired by how something makes me feel.  Angry/happy/sad whatever.  I don't paint things, I paint emotion.  I often state that I don't like most modern art and yet what I paint is modern art. Who ever said I had to be consistent.  There are days when I stare at a blank canvas with no way of knowing what I want and there are days when I am dying because I don't have a canvas to spill the excess emotion onto.  My paintings are truly the only things I create that I don't ever intend to sell.  Not that I won't sell; but that are not created with sales as the intention. I want to publish my novel, photographs and poetry some day.  My paintings?  It certainly wouldn't make me feel bad, but the painting itself is the thing not the money at the end of the day.  I have spilled my emotions out onto canvas and I feel better because of it.  When I write, I am compelled to write specific words or stories.  Certain land or water scapes make my hands itch for a camera.  I feel those things and I know they are as true a form of expression as the paintings, but I do not feel the same way when I see a photo, a poem or a chapter as I do when I finish the painting. The relief of getting it out is almost as overwhelming as the realization that I made mad/sad/joy into a visible thing.

                                                         -Black Eye, Dawn M. Cowan

Who you are, what you do, how you do it.  Are those things art?  YES!  If you put emotion into it.  If you love it, hate it, whatever; when you are inspired you make art.  Some days I am a couch potato with no inspiration and some days (like yesterday) I write a blog post, figure out something huge for my game system and finish two paintings, start 3 more and go to bed wondering what I am going to do to top it.  The answer is, simply, wake up and live again.

Love what I am doing and want to see more?  I am now on Patreon.  Personal appearance this weekend in the Shadoe Stones booth, at the Indy Pagan Pride Day.

OMG There was a sale!

I enjoy many crafts.  This post however, we are going to be talking about my Painting (remember MWF 3Ps).  Why? Because OMG THERE WAS A SALE!  We were out shopping, getting sand for bonsai trees and food for humans.  Crimson wanted to go to Sally's, Sally's is next to Michael's.  I wanted to price canvases because blogging has put a project in my head.  Crimson dropped me off and what to my wondering eyes should appear?  But a 3 for 1 sale that made my brain turn completely off and I went giddy.  I stopped thinking until we were back in the car.  You will be the beneficiaries of this as you get to see the six paintings I will make. I have three large and three small canvases and a new palette knife.  I also have two to finish.  Did I mention I am a little giddy about this?

I am currently working on and can now finish an elementals series.   Below you see "Water," when I have finished all of them I will show you the set.  The three larger pieces are going to be more mixed media then any thing else I have ever attempted.  I am quite excited to see what happens.  Here is "Water" on the wall.  You can see the bottom of "fire" and the top of "Earth."  "Earth" and "Air" are the two that need some work.

Like my other creative endeavors, I have not been working on my painting.  To the point that Sar didn't even know I painted...Whoops.  Crimson says I should sell my work after I get so many.  I say...eeek!

In photography I am looking to get something from a new perspective or to take the beautiful landscape in such a way that it has never been seen before.  Painting, though, is more like my poetry it is the process of putting my emotions on paper (or canvas).  Photography is bringing the external to the internal.  Painting and poetry are bringing the internal out to play in the external. What some see as paint smeared across canvas, I see as waves, raindrops, puddles and bath tubs.  Water isn't passive resistance it is passive insistence.  The things that do not give way to water are slowly worn down until, once again, water is getting what it wants and needs:  a place to go and gather together.  Water is joy in being while it is also strength in not giving up.

Hopefully I will have the rest of the series done next week and you can see the whole series!  Love what I am doing and want to see more?  I am now on Patreon!    Thanks for listening.