Glitter birds

As usual, click on the underlined words to see what I’m blathering about.

1. I can’t decide whether glitter bird magnets are awesome or not my style.
2. Bead artist Jan Huling has fantastic birds and a composition called “Forgiven” made out of found art and beads. The kewpie beadwork is amazing, but a wee bit creepy.
3. The daily painters daubed a bunch of cardinals. The Daily Painters gallery bills itself as the first and largest gallery of daily painting artists. The ravens selection is lovely — especially the one of 3 ravens.
4. Birdchick’s blog always has the best pictures of birds. This one is of a nuthatch.
5. One of the most evocative names for a philanthropic wine brand? Burning Hawk. eep.
6. Eskimimi Knits has a bluetit intarsia pattern and a good story. The pattern almost makes me want to figure out how to do intarsia. Almost. Since I probably don’t have time to spend learning intarsia, I’m beginning to think I could try duplicate stitch instead. Or maybe see if I could do a little bit of cross-stitch for Christmas ornaments.

My brain is lately for the birds. Hope you’ve enjoyed the meander inspired by glitter birds.

Juvenility Juvenility*

Today, I was on a conference call that was fairly long.

A female goldfinch came to the thistle feeder outside my window, and I sat there trying to figure out how I could get a camera without being heard by the people on the phone. I didn’t figure out how to get my camera, so no pictures were taken.

I’m amazed how strong my urge was to drop everything to snap a photo. It’s possibly the result of art training, when we had 15 second sketches before the model fell on his face or shifted pose some other way. So, anyone else find themselves not quite as grownup as they hoped? Or, perhaps, responding to current situations with training from years ago?

Topical note: I also didn’t get to see the speeches, because I was working (I do try to watch them no matter which party has a new president in the White House). And yes, I did want to go to the theater to see it with everyone else on my block. Ah well. [Ahem: who is this clone who does things her parents did and sits watching the news for hours on end? No comment.].

*Points for which character from MASH (the TV show) who I’m misquoting in this blog title. No I haven’t decided if the points mean anything.

Gifts for Artists and Musicians

One of the things that get cut in a bad economy are the Arts — schools cut art and music classes rather than sports. One way to counteract this economic Grinch effect is to provide kids and kids at heart with the tools they need to practice their craft of choice. Luckily, it doesn’t have to break the bank.

• If there’s a kid in your life who loves trombone, clarinet, violin, and you know the family can’t afford lessons, see if you can get other family members to help you cover the cost — maybe split it up so each person covers one day’s lesson.
• Match sheet music to the musical taste of budding performers — sheet music from Wicked or Pirates of the Caribbean may fill a young musician with joy.
• Paintbrushes, sheets of disposable palette paper, and refills of paint colors that get used up quickly (for instance, titanium white) are welcome additions to any painter’s studio. Ditto for pastels, kneaded rubber erasers, and tortillions for other artists.
• If they’re learning to draw, provide them with art pencils, colored pencils, and paper.
• Little artists need refills of paper for painting easels, child safe paints, inexpensive brushes, glitter glue, crayons, and modeling clay.
• Teens might enjoy a book on drawing cartoons and caricatures, along with some of the tools mentioned in the book.

And, of course, give the gift that’s free — encouragement. If your niece or nephew want to play their violin, drum, or clarinet after dinner on Christmas Day, sit and really listen. If they want to show you their latest artworks, smile and look for things you can identify and talk about (like color choice, if the art is abstract). Remember — even really great performers like Wynton Marsalis, Yo-Yo Ma, and Marian Anderson and famous artists like Mary Cassatt probably needed encouragement when they were young.

Rainy Days Remind Me

…. of working with pastels. Lovely smudged charcoal skies, with staid brick buildings suddenly turning pink in the light. Grass turns an incredible Kelly green. Tree trunks turn black, and crepe myrtles suddenly have impossibly bright fuchsia blooms.

In my mind’s eye, I’ve used white and watery yellow to smudge the swirl of light where the weak sun shines. And now, I’m adding streaks of clouds that show lighter than the sky, and layers of light slate blue where they curl up against one another.

Days like this remind me of art class, days spent at the museum, or lazy days sitting on the porch, watching a sheet of silver rain obscure summer. They also remind me of summer’s end. What do rainy days make you think about?

“F” Is for “Fountainhead”

Water for a neighborhood pond

No, not Ayn Rand. I’m focusing on Project Spectrum — water’s source as a means of discussing creativity. Where does creativity “well up” from? What inspires us to create and then hold our work up in the light?

I try to paint well, attempt to write with elegance, and seek to go beyond my limits. And why? To keep inspiration alive. If you think you’re a hack artist, it’s hard to aspire beyond that. Some thoughts from Paul Graham:

…one of the reasons artists in fifteenth century Florence made such great things was that they believed you could make great things. They were intensely competitive and were always trying to outdo one another, [...] maybe like anyone who has ever done anything really well. –Paul Graham

Artists wrestle with their work’s worth, as do writers. Bankers, lawyers, and others tap into creative forces, too. The creativity is just less visible to the outside world.

The fountain of the pond

So, as you go through your daily routine, think about this — what gets your creativity flowing?

Often I need to read someone else’s work to get out of a rut, and the current mythology project is a useful construct. I use knitting time as time to center my writing.

Do you need something external, like a walk away from your office, to kick start your ideas? Is coffee your daily focuser, or do you need Finlandia crashing its symphonic waves in your office?

Wishing everyone a little drop of inspiration in the coming months.