Nanowrimo and Parenting or Again

Again, by Rowena Murillo

The first time I did nano, I had a one year old and I was pregnant with my second. I went through the infant stages, the toddler stages, preschooler, kindergartner, early elementary and now the mid grade years. Every year, I managed to keep them alive and fed and relatively clean and happy. Nine years later and I have attempted nano every year and only failed the year I also moved cross country in November.

The thing about nanowrimo is that life never gets out of the way for it. Every year, it's the holidays. Every year, there are technical difficulties with family and work and living and health and relationships and money and time. Every single year. I've moved in November, twice. Last year I got separated in November. I've struggled with the flu. I've needed to find a new job.

The other thing about nanowrimo is that if you keep going, if you keep putting one word down after the other, if you keep giving yourself 15 minutes, half an hour, nap time, the minutes while the chicken is baking, an afternoon while grandma babysits, an hour after the kids go down for the night, if you keep giving yourself that time to write and you actually do it, you will succeed.

Make the time. Keep writing. Don't judge yourself. Don't edit. Sit down and write. Find the time. Commit. Just do it. Write. In little bits and drabbles or in long bingeing periods where you forget to eat and neglect your kids (actually don't neglect your kids, just pawn them off on someone else) just keep writing.

Nanowrimo tells me that over the course of the last 9 years, I have written over half a million words during nanowrimo. That's right. 500,000 words. And that's not counting the work I've done outside of November, the new work, the research, the outlining, the editing, the revising. I actually have one full, finished final manuscript that I am sending out to agents. And I have become a much better writer for all the effort.

As parents, we might not have as much free time as other nanowrimo participants. We might have more responsibilities and sticky handed time bandits, but we also know what matters in life. We know what matters to us. We know that if we want something, we have to take care of it.

So the first question to ask yourself at the beginning of nanowrimo is this: how much do you want it?

The second question to ask is what will you to do take care of it?

Shooting in the Dark

Shooting in the Dark

One night, past sundown, I was sitting in a lovely little waterside bar, with my new camera beside me. I had missed the sunset, arriving just a bit too late. It was getting darker and there wasn't much to see.

My plans for capturing the sunset had failed, but I said to myself, "self, what do you have to lose?" And I picked up the camera and took a picture. Even though it was too dark to really see. Even though I'd tried dark shoots with my old, crappy camera, and it was always a crap shoot.

And then I looked at the picture I had just taken.

Water!
Egrets!
Boat!
Pilings!
Nature Preserve!
Deep blue with just a touch of pink!

Now, I am not a professional photographer. I just like to play with pictures and capture pretty things. I consider it a hobby and a tool, and myself an amateur. I couldn't tell you why this camera takes such better pictures although my uncle the photographer tried to explain it to me. I can't explain anything about apertures or shutter settings. I forgot that after my long ago high school photography class. I am relieved to not have to deal with developing or chemicals or any of that stuff from the last generation. I just like to be able to play.

And I can also recognize when an image sizzles.

Here's the lesson I learned.

Take the chance. Even when you are not sure what might come out, what the results might be. Even when you feel like you don't know what you're doing and you have missed your opportunity. You have nothing to lose. Take the chance. Even though you feel like you are going blind and don't understand anything, trust yourself and take the chance.

It might not end up like what you expected.

It might be better.

Ideas

It is the end of October and tomorrow is the first day of November, the first day of Nanowrimo.

My mind is awhirl with ideas.

Tomorrow starts the month when I put my ideas down on paper and attempt to make something concrete out of them.

It's a scary thing, often, making your ideas real. Sometimes it feels much better to keep your ideas in the realm of the maybe, to not put them down on paper, to not show them, to not turn them into something real.

The thing is, ideas can be wonderful and great and genius and perfect, but once you put them down on paper to make them real, they will be real in their flaws, lumps, awkwardness, and imperfection. Before you put them down, when that page is blank and full of nothing but potential and possibility, your hopes of what might be can get so big and important that it's too frightening to write them down and expose them.

Because reality is never perfect, and genius may start with a genius idea, but to make it real, it takes an awful lot of work and pruning and revising. It is so much better to put that flawed idea, that uncertain attempt, that maybe down on paper than it is to sit with the flawless, intangible idea floating around in your brain.

Put it out there. Try it out. See what happens when the floating idea lands on the page and inspires a second idea, and then a third. Or maybe it turns out to be a bad idea that doesn't go anywhere. In that case, scrap that idea and move on to the next. Just make sure whatever it is, you commit to those ideas, you make those ideas real.

I May Wander But I Am Not Lost, Turning Failures into Something New

Sometimes, when I am printing up one of my paintings that someone ordered, something will go wrong. The ink will splotch or an unnoticed spot will appear or the colors will be off or I tried to use the wrong paper or something will smudge or the printer will break down or it just won't be right.

I won't send those prints out. I will stick them in a box and pray the next print comes out. Every once in a while, that one doesn't, or the next one doesn't. So every once in a while, I go through my boxes and files of failures and look for something that I can take and do something with, make something of.

I had a whole series of prints where the color was off. I finally just took them out and chopped them up into little bookmarks. This is one. You can see the tip of a flying girl's foot right above the 'wander.'

I thought this was a kind of fitting metaphor for life, and a good illustration of Tolkien's quote.

I wander from my path. I fail in my endeavors. I get lost in the details or in the living. Then I unpack all my mistakes, and see what I have learned, how I have grown, what I can make from my failures.

Interestingly, I'm doing the same thing with writing. I'm doing Nanowrimo in a few days where I will write 50k words in a new novel in the month of November. I've done nano for the last 7 years. I dropped out last year because life was just in too much upheaval, but even the two years before that, where I met my wordcount goal, I wrote stories that were failures as stories. The first of those stories didn't work, so I tried again the next year, and that one didn't work either.

They wandered. They wandered terribly into places that didn't make sense and didn't seem to get me where I needed to go, narratively speaking. I explored paths the story wasn't ready to take, and so the "novels" I wrote never went anywhere. That would be 100k words of a novel that wandered, without ever getting where it needed to go.

So here I am again, getting ready to write that novel that I failed at twice before. Unpacking those hundred thousand words, reading them, salvaging what I could.

And I chopped that sucker up, just like the bookmark. My new outline starts with the one scene that worked in the first novelistic failure.The same scene that I started again with the second novelistic failure. After reading both drafts, I realize that my second draft improved greatly on the first draft of the scene, so I got ONE thing out of rewriting it twice.

My new outline for this twice attempted book is taking an entirely different direction. The book, while it has the same characters and basic premise, will have an entirely different flavor. I believe it will be richer and smarter and darker. It will mean more.

Because the thing is, I have learned things over these last three years of failed noveling that have actually gotten me past the struggle I was having with writing the new story. Some of those lessons are about writing and character and plot, but some of those things are about myself, living, love, fear and pain.

I am very optimistic about my writing for this nano, and about the story I am going to tell. Is it because this time I put my energy into planning and outlining instead of winging it like I tried for the last three years? Quite possibly. Or is it because in my wanderings I have grown and am now ready to write the story that needs to be written? Maybe that, too.  I may wander, but I am not lost.

Today Is A Day To Honor Who You Are, or Self Portrait With Eyes Closed

Self Portrait: Eyes Closed

One of the things we can forget to do when we try to step out into our dreams, is to remember who we are.  It's so easy to look at all the wonderful things that are out there, the beautiful paintings, the beautiful people, the talented folks, the successful business people, the brave and exciting and important paths that people take and think, "Oh, that is just not me."

We compare ourselves to everyone else and decide that we are lacking. They have it. We don't.

It's so easy to do. So easy to focus on the negative and the flaws.

So today, I'm going to look at myself as if I weren't me, as if I wasn't privy to all the fears and failures and missteps and dead ends that I've gotten caught up in. I'm going to look at only my own beauty and talent and success and bravery and adventures and contributions to the world.

I'm going to make a list of the things I am good at, the things I know how to do, the things I can speak with authority on. I'm going to list my successes, because for all my failures in life, I've had successes, too, we all have. I'm going to focus, today, on who I am as a positive force in the world. What I can give. The effect I have had. I am going to focus on my own power.

Try it yourself. Try making a list of all your strengths... without adding caveats and exceptions and 'buts' and trying to convince yourself that you're not that good. Write out the ways you are wonderful and beautiful and strong. Take stock of your own strength and power and abilities. Every time those negative voices come up, tell them, 'thanks for sharing, but we're only looking for positive qualities now.' Ignore the negative and move on to the next positive.

It takes practice to look at the positive aspects of yourself without that negative voice, without the pessimism and doubts and fears. So practice. Answer that internal 'I suck' voice with a new internal 'I rock' voice... even if you don't believe it at first. Keep focusing on your own greatness, and sooner or later, you might even start believing it.

There Are No Failures, Not Even This One

Yesterday, I had the sudden urge to carve myself a new shop stamp.

I love all things handmade, and enjoy the thought of doing it myself.

I took my old stamp and inked it onto the new stamp carving material. You see, you have to do the carving in reverse in order to make it work out right when you stamp on paper.

Did any of you catch my mistake?

Oh yeah.

I out clevered myself. Using the old stamp as my outline, I had reversed the reverse and thus when I stamped, it was all wrong.

Unless of course, you hold the paper up to the sun and look through it. Ah. There's my nice stamp.

I really like the hand carved, hand written quality of it. It's what I do, make things by hand, right?

Pardon my issues with things like left and right, reversals, and negatives and positives. It shows up with arithmetic and numbers and even letters sometimes.  It actually turns out that I have a learning disability that I never knew about until I was a grown up. It's called dyscalculia and is like dyslexia with numbers. I can usually logic my way through things, but every so often, my problems come out. Sometimes I wonder if my life would have been different if I'd known about this learning disability. I did pretty well in school, mostly by trying to stay as far away as possible from math, but what if I'd had learning strategies? What if I knew why I could never remember how to figure out the math problems at home, even if I'd understood them in school. Who knows what I would have been doing now if I hadn't spent my formative years avoiding math?

Oh, don't worry, I turned my mistake around, literally, and used the backwards stamp to stamp a NEW block of carving material, and this time, when I carved it, it was in the CORRECT direction.

I used it to stamp some cute new little bookmarks for my shop.

This brings me to my lesson for the day.

There are no failures.

There are just steps we take on our journey.

It could all be falling down around your ears, but if you keep going, if you fight your way through, and come out the other side, everything that fell down before becomes something to help you climb higher. Every mistake you make, every flaw you possess leads you to the positive outcomes of your life. Every struggle you fight through, even if you lose, makes you stronger for your next endeavor... which might not be a fight at all, which might be made easier, which might even be a pleasure, because of all the hard lessons you learned in your failures.

The stamp carving went smoothly. I already knew it would work. And I solved the problems of the previous attempt, and I was confident in my abilities, so the tension of tiny work was not there. It went faster and more smoothly.

And voila. I have my stamp. It took a little longer than I wanted, but sometimes that's just the way life is. There are bumps and detours on our life journey.

Maybe it just makes us ready when we get to our destination.

The Evolution of a Doll, Creating Yourself

 Every day, I feel like I am creating myself. Who I am as a mother, as an artist, as a friend and partner and sister and daughter. Who I am as a thinker and a doer.

It's an evolution not unlike creating... art, crafts, food, novels, business plans, outfits, papers... whatever.

Dolls.

Like this here doll I made my daughter for Christmas.

Here she is, nothing but a sketched out pattern and some upcycled t-shirt material.  I took my scissors to it and cut away everything that she was not.

Leaving her with a basic, disassembled, empty shape.

 In this scene, my doll has been sewn up and filled with stuffing. I've begun to MAKE her, to take the ideas of her and put her into reality, give her form and shape. She's a doll now. Anyone could look at her and say, that's a doll. (Here she's sitting next to another gift, unformed, which turned out to be a pink kitty.)

You see the thing is, nothing we create will ever get to BE anything until we actually start, until we put it through that sewing machine, and take it all the way, see what happens with all that machinery and sharp pointy things and fears of what might go wrong or how the machine might break down (mine did) or how we might forget how to use the mighty machinery (I didn't) or maybe my doll might not look like what I wanted her to look like (she didn't really look like what I imagined at all, she became her own thing.) You just have to do it. Put yourself out there and say, YES, I will do this thing.

Once you have the basic shape of your doll, that's when you can start putting your personality into her. That's when you can start giving her the colors, trying out different ways of making her look. Here, I'm giving a go to see how the different colored felt pieces might make her look, trying out some placements for her cheeks and eyes and lips and hair. This was not the first combination I tried. I held up different colors, cut out many little circles, tried different shapes and sizes. And this was not the first time I'd made this kind of doll face, either, she is just another variation on work that I've already done.

 Here I have committed to my choices. I've gone and pinned them down. Made them real and permanent. There's no more changing my mind on the color of eyes or lips. Again, did she turn out like I thought she would? Not quite. But in the sewing, in the doing, she became her own thing, not just an idea, but a doll. This doll.

 Then I tried some of the stuff I'd never tried before. Always in the past, I'd made hair with yarn or embroidery floss, but this time I knew I wanted to try felt. How would it work? I didn't know. It was an experiment, something new to try, a risk. And I gave it a shot.

 Here she is with face and hair, after all my giving it a go and planning and making my ideas come real and trying out different variations and committing to my choices and stitching it all down and making it real.

She's a doll.

 I like her.

Originally, she was inspired by two things... the scrap fabric I had, aka brown t-shirt, and the vintage doll dress. I made the original pattern so that she would fit into this dress. After that, I allowed myself to be inspired by the various dolls I have seen and loved and by what I had already done with doll making. I mean, this is why you have a daughter, right? To make girly stuff for them?

It doesn't matter that she didn't like the yellow dress on this doll and made me make her a pink dress out of scrap fabric, right?  Or that she'll probably change the scrap pink dress, even though she designed it, and put her in a different vintage doll dress.

What matters is I went all the way in and trusted my abilities and my judgment and gave it a go. What matters is I took it to the end of the journey and didn't give up. What matters is I made it. I thought of it, dreamed it, planned it, trouble shot it, detailed it, put it all together and then put it out into the world, I mean, gave it to a five year old.

Make a doll. Make a craft. Make a painting. Make a novel. Make a home. Make a business. Make a life. Create yourself. Those things are not you, and yet, the making of them makes you.

What are you making?

Girl of Freaks: a novel of not werewolves (pending)

Girl Of Freaks: a novel of not werewolves by Rowena Murillo (cover mock up)
ink, acrylic and pencil on paper

This year, I am going to do my damnedest to get my novel published. It's ready, now it's just up to me to put it out there.

When I told Jen Lemen of this goal, she gave me an assignment to create a mock up of my novel cover.

Immediately, the impulse is for me to say, "no, that's not what I had planned for the day," but considering that I say "no" too often, and my word for the year is...

yes
sharpie, tape residue, and "vintage" foam core board.

..."YES" it was time for me to try the challenge. I took out my ink and my journal and searched for a likely photo reference (my first instinct was to use one of myself, but I really didn't want to paint myself for my book cover as the mc is not me) and got going.

This is what I did. Of course, when I get published, this will not by the cover. I'm not even sure it's the best cover for the book, but putting it out there, visualizing it, making it a real thing helps me to focus on my goals.

Thank you Jen for the good assignment and giving me a leaping off point for the rest of my year.

Abundance and 96-100 in the 100 days creative challenge,

 Branched
gold acrylic paint and pen on paper
96/100

Yesterday was my 100th day of my 100 creative works in 100 days challenge.

Woo hoo.

I actually did it. I didn't even cheat. I missed two months of painting and drawing because of my move, but I was able to get my grove back and restart my creativity. Maybe it's a good idea that I did commit to finishing this task, against the odds, because it meant my creativity didn't get lost in the many duties of moving. And life. Don't forget life.

This is a painting of a branch. In gold. I had extra gold paint on my palette from painting another picture, so i wanted to use the last of it, and I've always loved those twisty branches, so... No special meaning behind it.

Monster Plans
watercolor, pencil, pen on paper
97/100

These are plans for a horde of monsters I am going to make my son for Christmas. A kraken looks an awful lot like an octopus, and godzilla looks an awful lot like a T-rex. Interesting. The plan here is to use felt and cotton knit and buttons and embroidery floss.

I need to do less planning and more sewing though.

 this bowl is full of abundance
pencil, water color, ink wash and acrylic on paper
98/100

This is another empty/full bowl. This one  I designed with gold leaves and pomegranates to symbolize abundance. The bowl is marked with hatches, which to me always represents time. The background is a dark, deep brown, like fertile earth.

An incomplete symbology

ink and watercolor on paper

99/100

Speaking of symbols, here I drew out my own study sheet. I was just thinking about some of the symbols I seem to use over and over again. Sometimes when I paint, it's a kind of language, I paint stories... or parts of stories, and the symbols are part of the meaning making. 

Too many years reading and writing poetry. :)

Miniature doll in progress
paper clay, silver wire
100/100

And for my 100th work of art, I am posting a paperclay doll that I started. She's not done in the slightest, but I don't feel bad about using a WIP for my last entry. It's a new challenge for me and I have been wanting to try it for ages. Plus, I think it looks kind of cool unfinished, just the white paper clay and the silver wire.

It was even better before I dropped it while the clay was still damp and it landed face down on the floor. She got a little smooshed. Oops. I tried to fix her the best I could. I think when she's dry all the way, the paint will go a long way to making her look better. What I've seen of the tiny dolls people make, they don't have to have all the details in the clay. You can just give suggestions of the features, then when you paint her face, she gets her personality.

I intend to give her hands and feet attached to the wire, then wrap the exposed wire with florist tape, then make tiny clothes out of fabric. I do not know who she will be. She might be a woman from the 30s or 40s... as I think about the hair style that I kind of molded a bit already. We shall see. Whatever she develops into, that's part of the fun.

And I guess that's why I picked this piece for my last entry, instead of another piece that I completed... because where I'm going in my creativity is still unwritten.

I think I've entered some territory that is new to me, and have developed some techniques and ideas that are rather interesting. That's one of the best things about doing this challenge, watching how you develop as you go. It's such an extended project, one of small babysteps, that you can actually see the journey you make and you can see how one thing leads to the next.

And so now I'm done and I can relax on the posting, but I do hope that I can continue with my art work and see where it takes me next.

I do recommend this as a challenge for anyone. It is a challenging journey, but if you keep your daily goals small enough, it is not impossible. You'll notice that whenever I got behind in my count, my art work would get smaller and simpler, and that's okay, it still moves you forward. If 100 days is too long a challenge, you can do a month of art works, or  43 days. Or whatever number suits your life. It's committing to the creating that makes it worthwhile.

Flight, Figure It Out, Ambiguous 26-27/100 in 100 Days

Flight
26/100 in 100 Days Creative Challenge
acrylic on paper

I am falling behind in my challenge. I'm afraid that I've bitten off a bit more than I can chew and it's overwhelming me.

It isn't over yet and I'm still working on things and I still have a couple of finished things that I haven't prepared for posting yet and I have a couple of things that I've started and haven't finished yet, but I'm still feeling overwhelmed by everything.

Having a hard time integrating my wishes for things with how to get them all done.

Figure It Out
27/100 in 100 Days Creative Challenge

Heh heh. Maybe that explains this painting. Trying to figure out all the details. Sometimes I'm just trying to figure out all the artistic urges, but more often than not I'm trying to figure out how to make life work, how to balance life and work and art and kids and all.

Ambiguous
28/100 in 100 days creative challenge.

My paintings are making me a bit dizzy. This one reminds me of Vertigo for some reason, or some other Hitchcockian movie. Maybe it's North By Northwest. Falling, flying, running, tripping, surrendering?

Caught between things.

Lets see if art helps me make sense of it all.

Transition- Waiting, Flying and Falling 20-15/100 days

Waiting

acrylic on paper

25/100

I am finding myself having problems, not with my 100 works of art in 100 days, but with blogging said works of art. I've gotten back to my novel writing, too, and while that is going more slowly than my painting, I am moving forward on that. It is hard to find the time to paint, write, blog, work, cook, keep house, spend time with my kids, and various other necessary activities. 

I am also in a decidedly transitional period, and am finding that to affect my concentration and ability to commit. 

 When Camouflage Doesn't Work
acrylic on paper
20/100

There are decisions that need to be made, priorities that need to be adjusted. And I am still figuring out how I want it all to work and how I will manage to get it to work.

and if I surrender
acrylic on paper
21/100

All in all, that means I've slacked on the blogging. Sorry about that folks, but sometimes you have to do what is necessary.

But I am still enjoying the challenge of painting, and painting with a limited palette.

Blue, Gold, White. What happens when you mix them? What happens when you thin them? Use them solo, blend them all together. Paint with them, draw with them, water washes, scumbling, layers, opaque and transparent.

 tilt
acrylic on paper
22/100

This one is confused about what she is. She doesn't know. She thought she wanted to be something else, then she got up in the air, and got lost up there a little.

I'm exploring other ways to integrate the flying girl, I think.

Flying Girl Flies Again
acrylic on paper
23/100

Like this one. Arms akimbo in a swirl of orange.

Is she flying or falling? It's always a question.

Are those bubbles rising up or stones weighing down?

Oh I don't know.

Breathe
ink on paper
24/100

A change of pace. A reminder. A drawing.

Waiting

25/100

This one is my favorite. She started out all gold, then I added color. I'm moving away from the two color palette, although I'm still using variations of blue and gold with the turquoise and brown. The rose actually showed up accidentally. The drawing from the last page in the journal was pressed through the page onto the next page. Only in that one place, though. So I went with it. I like to go with the accidents of life, and see what comes of them. Sometimes it is very interesting, sometimes it just doesn't work.

I have another portrait that I forgot to photograph, then decided I wanted to work on it some more. And I'm working on another figure. I might consider adding layers to that one, too, instead of just the single color.

I can't believe I've been doing this for almost a month already. Time does go fast, and it's nice to keep track of your growth with the little bits of paintings that you leave behind you.

Woman in Triangles and Woman Lost in Stripes, #9/100 and #10/100

Woman in Triangles
acrylic paint on paper
9/100 in 100 days creative challenge

I have decided to do less story telling about my paintings. I'm okay with not knowing what exactly is going on in them. I'm okay with not having the answers in my art. I saw this vintage photo  of Nita Naldi, sultry silent film star, and it led to #9.

I don't really know what I am doing with it or where I am going, but I am going in this direction, whatever it is.

It really is the most important thing about creating art, I think, committing to making art. Committing to each work of art. Committing to yourself as an artist. Committing to your vision. There's a lot of trust involved in committing to art, or to anything, for that matter. You are trusting that it won't be a waste of time, that you will like what comes of the commitment, that you won't be hurt by what comes up.

There's a lot of bravery involved in committing, a lot of bravery in following your heart.

Woman Lost in Stripes
Acrylic Paint on paper
10/100 in 100 days creative challenge

Especially when you don't know what will come of it.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea

Somewhere Beyond the Sea
acrylic on paper
9/3/12 moleskine
03/100 days


I think this was inspired by a dark painting I saw. I liked the colors and thought I'd try it.  But when I painted it, I thought it was too dark and didn't like the way it turned out.

So I kept working on it and came up with the final.

The entire time I was painting it, I was singing "somewhere, beyond the sea" and that's why I named it that.

Look. Here I am showing up at my daily challenge, even if I am not all that sure if I like my painting. Even if I have a pounding headache, and this, the first day of school has miss half-day kindergartner trying to force me to come to her impromptu dance party and buy dollar treats. Just so you know, I've "bought" the treats and done some dancing, but apparently this is a party where I have to keep dancing.

Sigh.

Anyway, maybe she'll be happy to do some drawing with mommy, because I have to get back to my painting for my challenge and she wants some girl time.

Anyway. I've taken my ibuprofen. Time to get started on my day and try to get something done.

Hopefully I'll have something more profound to say tomorrow. It's okay if I am not perfect here. The point is to get it moving, and with movement, meaning will come.

Keep it moving.

For official guidelines on the 100 in 100 days creative challenge, go here.

Swept Clean, and a new 100 in 100 Creative Challenge

Swept Clean
acrylic on paper, moleskine notebook
8.5"x 5, 1/100 in 100 days

Good morning and happy September.

I've been struggling with staying on track lately. I've been slacking in my creativity, getting lazy, not being productive when I know I have goals...one of those goals I had was to start a 100 in 100 days of creativity again.

I need to get back into the habit of painting every day. And on this happy new September Day, I've decided I'm just going to go to it and get started, even if I didn't prepare the way or start a movement on pinterest or whatever.

I need to do it for me. And that's what I'm going to do. Perhaps over the next week or so I will post something asking if other people want to join me. I already have the "rules" since I made them years ago when I first started playing this game.

I have been thinking about starting this 100 paintings in 100 days for a while, planning on September 1st as a start date, but I let town fairs and back to school and shopping and kids and cleaning and work all get in the way and just forgot.

Then this morning I remembered. "Oh! Today is September 1st! I wanted to start painting again!" And instead of saying, I can't, I didn't plan. I didn't make a log sheet. I didn't post about it on my blog, I just up and grabbed my paints and my journals and started painting.

And you know what happened?

It felt good.

I don't want to be stopped by what I haven't done right or am not ready for or the long list of to dos I have to take care of every single day of my life. I just want to paint.

And I want to stop saying no.

And I want to stop thinking about the negatives and how hard everything is and how nothing is ready or perfect or how it's all too scary to do everything.

No more "nos". Just "yes". Just "I'll try."

So I'm starting my 100 in 100 creative challenge.

I am going to paint 100 paintings in 100 days. I don't even know what day I will be done on, but I'm going to keep it up and I'm going to commit. Some days, it might be a tiny painting. Some days it might be a rough sketch. Somedays, I might hate it, but I'm going to do it.

Would you like to join me in a creative challenge wherein you create 100 things in 100 days?  Take a look over at the official rules, which are about bending the rules to fit your lifestyle and your creative needs, then leave a comment here, and I'll create a 100 in 100 sidebar of participants.   What the hell! I'll also create a 100 in 100 group board on pinterest and invite you to join so you can pin your challenge. Just leave your pinterest account in the comments.

Are you ready for a challenge? It's scary when you start out, but it's so satisfying. You can do it, you know.

This Is Your Ticket

I can't promise that it will be easy, in fact, I can promise that it won't be easy, but today, I am telling you that you have permission to follow your dreams and go for that thing that fills your soul with light.

Take that first step. Take the next one, and the one after that. It might be a very long journey. There might be long convoluted detours. You might be delayed. You might pick up travel companions along the way, and you might lose some. You might get weary. You might lose faith in even the existence of that glorious destination. Try anyway.

This is a ticket that says, Yes, you have the right to try for that very hard, very beautiful thing that you have always longed for.

This ticket says your dreams are worth the sacrifice, the hard work, the road less traveled.

Sorry for the dark picture. But in a way, the dark picture is fitting. This ticket was drawn during the middle of the night, because I had to. And the photo was taken in the middle of a thunderstorm, because when the sun was shining, I forgot about what I wanted to do.

Well there's something else for you. Sometimes we need those storms, those shadowed moments, to remember what it is that fills us with light.

So, like I said, you have permission to follow your dreams.

This is your ticket.

Go.

Strangers in a Bar

This is my second post in my July photo challenge. And my second picture. The theme for this was "strangers."

It was a hot day. The air conditioning was nice. The cold beer was nice. Sometimes it's nice to just sit in a nearly empty bar by yourself and be a stranger. Yes, I think I was the stranger.

And in an attempt to not be a stranger to my blog readers, I am trying to get back to the habit of posting. Even if this is the July 4th weekend and everyone is out doing summery celebratory things and this isn't exactly an enlightening post.

The theme for today's picture will be "lunch". I might be able to manage this.

See you tomorrow and have a happy Independence Day. And if you don't celebrate Independence Day, have a happy Sunday.

Night. Street.

Night

I'm going to try to do this photo challenge, here. I've been such a bad blogger lately that I need a prod to get me going again, but I don't know if I'm up to doing any of my old painting a day things. I like to take little photographs and my camera is easy to carry around, so I thought this might help me blog better again.

This photo above is my first attempt to fit into the challenge. The theme is "Street". Is it kind of fudging the challenge if I take these moving-car-on-the-road pictures quite often? Oh, who cares. The challenge is the commitment, not each individual theme. Today is "Strangers" and that will be harder for me because I am a rather private person. I don't like to bother strangers. (Never mind the public blog, ok? I don't mean writing. Writing is not the same as being face to face with strangers.)
Rain. Green. Street.

watercolor on paper 5x8

In fitting with the theme, I did a watercolor sketch a few days ago, in my journal. More than the painting itself, I think it was important that I sat out side on my porch with my watercolor set and actually painted.

It was good to sit in the moment and focus on what the moment was about, not the future or to do lists or worries or things to do or any of that. Just the moment, the rain, the green and the gray, the paint, the paper.

Paying attention to the world you are living in. Paying attention to the moment that is happening right now. This is important.

Tumbled, Four Self Portraits

Tumbled, Self Portraits. 1-4

Sharpie, Acrylic Paint, Recycled Chip Board

Yesterday, I had the urge to paint a self portrait. I actually painted one a few days ago that I was not pleased with. I thought, I don't really know what I want to paint... but really, I didn't know HOW I wanted to paint.

So I snapped a picture. This is it. I took my hair out of the bun, and it tumbled down. And I liked the motion in the tumbled hair, so I decided to use it as the basis for a quick drawing/painting.

Then I had some 3x4 pieces of chipboard that I had cut out, because I like to cut my recycling into useful bits. Then I took a sharpie and drew out a quick contour drawing. Moments, it took only moments, and that's the way I liked it.
Tumbled #1

Then I filled the face with titan buff, and outlined the features in black, colored in the hair, added some pink, shaded a bit with pink, buff and black, painted the background with cobalt turquoise and buff, then added the white hilights and shirt.

Tumbled #2

Then I took out another piece of chipboard and did it again. I was afraid to ruin the first one, because I liked the expressiveness of it. Thought maybe I couldn't do it again, it wouldn't be the same, I would lose whatever it was I liked. Except that didn't happen. The next painting, using the same techniques was different from the first, and in some ways better. Some things worked even better. I even went back and added some of the things I learned from the second piece into the first piece, taking from both sketches to improve the painting.

Tumbled #3

Each time I started over, I came to the painting with more to give. And I learned more from each painting. And each painting became it's own, important, individual thing, with something new to reveal about the subject. I like the swoopy feel given by the contour sketches. I like that the features don't stay the same, but there is still emphasis on the same things, the eyes, the cheekbones, the jaw and hairline. I like the way the hair changes shape each time, tumbling through the variations.

Tumbled #4

This is a great exercise to try, to lower your own expectations of yourself, to handle your own fear of not doing things right or not being perfect.

I spent twice as much time on that other portrait (which I'm not showing you) and like it have as much as each one of these. There is something to be said for loosening up, and not being so attached to a perfect outcome.

Try it yourself. Try to make small sketches of the same theme. Or take your recycling and turn it into something, without worrying that you are ruining something valuable. Or take an old story that you have given up on and chop it up, rearrange it, remove characters or throw in a plot twist. Take an old shirt that you no longer wear and make it into something for summer. Chop it up, stitch it back together, add something that is special, but not precious to it. Accept it for what it is, and then make it loved.