Drawing on the Walls: Roundup

I've been working away on my book, Artmaking as Playful Prayer: A 12-Week Guide to Developing Your Creativity as a Spiritual Practice, and finally got a draft out to my marvelous test readers earlier today. Now, I'm waiting to hear what they have to say and working on the hands-on explorations that will appear in the book! And you know, I'm going to need some people to test out the art stuff (hint, hint).

One of the things I mention in passing in the book (and may need to explore in more depth - perhaps in my own basement) is the idea of drawing on the walls. It's basic, right? It's exactly how our ancestors got started, and it's a straight-forward form of artmaking. You have an object that makes marks, and something to make marks on, and the nearest, easiest thing to make marks on is . . . well, the walls. And then I remembered seeing something on-line about people doing just that . . .

A few hours of Googling later, and I have found some cool goodies to share with you. If you're a bit shy of messing up your walls, there is paint-by-numbers wallpaper (found via casasugar), like this from Jenny Wilkinson:




If you're ready to just dive in, but like a little structure, you might try something like this frames wallpaper by Taylor & Wood (found via the droolicious blog on babble.com) and available in the US via the Graham & Brown website. I really want this for my office, and it would be super fun in a bathroom or kid's room! It also has the advantage that you can steam it off and perhaps take it with you - avoiding the whole "I'm moving and I have to paint over my artwork" trauma.



Or, you can just grab your permanent marker and go to town! I found two brave souls who have done just that via compactbydesign.com. The first is Charlie Kratzer from Kentucky who grabbed a Sharpie and decorated his basement - you can even see a video of the whole thing on the Kentucky Sun website, but here's a taste:


Or, if you have a gold pen and steady hand, you can check out Kellie's blog and see what she got herself up to in the hallway:

Yup, I'm looking at the office in the basement in a whole new light . . .

Drawing: The 100th Post

Here we are - my 100th post. It arrived a lot faster than I thought it would.

In Honor of the 100th Post

To honor the 100th post and the end of January - A Drawing (almost) Every Day Month - and the culmination of the L&TofM5K Flag Makeover Contest, I'm going to do something really cool. For you, the readers . . . I will randomly select one person who leaves a comment on this post, and I will design them a flag! Imagine - your own personal flag, designed by me!

Defining Drawing

From the Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Unabridged, Second Edition:

draw, v.t.

1. pull; haul; drag
2. to pull back the drawstring of (a bow)
3. to attract; charm; entice
4. to bring forth; elicit
5. to take into the lungs; breathe in; inhale
6. to pull out; take out; remove; extract
7. to bring about as a result; cause to happen; bring on
8. to pull out of shape; distort

I love these different definitions, these different ways of looking at a word that we typically think of as meaning mark-making, or making marks as a way of representing something we see. We might also think of the mark-making as something that elicits a response, something you breathe in, an essence you extract from something, something that you distort as you view it, something you use to charm a viewer . . .

And Here's the Flag

Very flaggy. With a leaping Salmon. The green field represents an abstraction of the mossy, tree-filled state of Oregon; the blue band on the top represents the Columbia River; the wider blue band on the left represents the Pacific Ocean. The gold band running North-South represents the Cascade Mountain Range; the gold band running East-West represents both the Oregon Trail and our trade relationships with Asia and exploration of the sea; and the Salmon represents our natural resources and a long tradition of both Native American peoples and more recent immigration. The slight crookedness of the lines, well, that's just an accident.

Oregon Flag Makeover Project: Back to Basics

Note: I would like to begin by apologizing to all truly obsessive people for implying in yesterday's post that doing the same thing two days in a row qualifies as "obsession."

I've definitely been letting flights of fancy take me where they may with this whole Oregon State Flag redesign, but today it's time to get grounded. I decided a quick review of the official M5K Flag Criteria was in order:

1. A flag needs to look, you know, flaggy. Patterns of bold color with, if you must, simple and iconic symbols. No photos. No intricate drawings or text. (Intricate drawings and text are on the current state flag, of course, but that's a big part of why we are designing a new flag.)

2. Flags are one-sided. Duh.

3. Flags are rectangular. Don't get all Nepal-Ohio on me.

4. Ideally, a flag should be distinctive and immediately recognizable, yet sit comfortably among traditional flag designs.

And, in the interest of simplicity and a very bad childhood experience with the Minnesota state flag, I have added a fifth criteria:

5. The flag should be simple enough to be drawn by any third-grader as part of a social studies project without causing anxiety attacks. (sample of anxiety-inducing flag below)


Of course, I also don't want to limit my creativity too much . . . and the ideas just seem to keep popping up. And at the most inopportune moments.


I also decided to refer back to my two favorite all-time state flags to see what made them so memorable: New Mexico (named as the L&TofM5K winner in the Best Flag, American State, category) and Alaska (also a runner-up in this category).



They are both simple, graphic, iconic. While they lack representations of giant fruit (a serious shortcoming), they really do evoke an emotional response - and I think they capture a little bit of the spirit of the states they represent.

Picking up where I left off yesterday, I started trying to think simple, graphic, iconic. Here's where that got me.


So I tried to go more graphic, focusing on the "fields of color" imperative. I want Blue to represent our rivers and coastline, and Green to represent the lush, mossy tree-ness of the state (ok, at least the Western part of the state . . .) So why not abstract the state itself?

Of course, resorting to the level of symbolism required by "one rain drop for each county" may be a little excessive . . . and I did like the Oregon Trail element . . . perhaps even using the covered wagon icon from the state seal . . . just simplifying it a bit more . . .

I wonder if I could make it even more abstract? Bolder? Maybe eliminate the covered wagon?

Hmmm . . . . is it a good sign or a bad sign when the state flag starts to look suspiciously like a Pink Floyd album cover?


Clearly, it's time for bed.

More Oregon Flag Makeover Madness

I've gotten a bit obsessed. I come home from work. I play Dance Dance Revolution. I think about the Oregon Flag. I blame Michael5000 and his flag makeover contest. Not for the Dance Dance Revolution part. That's clearly not his fault.

Apparently, I didn't quite get the Beaver/Salmon hybrid out of my system yesterday, so here's "the Beamon skiiing - er, snowboarding - on Mt. Hood" as a flag:

I also finally looked up images of Beavers and Salmon and created this yin-yang, forest-river, earth-water flag featuring those state icons in their slightly more natural forms:

I like that the little gold swirl represents the power of our natural resources. Or at least that it could.

Of course, Oregon is much more than Mt. Hood, lush forests, beautiful waterways, cute beavers and slick salmon. There's fruits and nuts!

The state fruit is the pear, and the state nut is the hazelnut. And I have a strong affection for blueberries. So, I began working with those elements, and threw in Mt. Hood for good measure:

Then, I was reminded of a wonderful set of giant fruit and vegetable postcards that I have. Here's one that features pears:

And here's one that features a cucumber:

Now, while cucumbers are not particularly significant to Oregon as a state, this is the culmination of the Oregon Trail - the end of the road for a lot of folks hauling a lot of things in covered wagons. Heck, it's even on the state seal - featured prominently on the current flag:


So, here's what it might look like to bring it all together on a flag:


Of course, it could use a little tweaking. And some blueberries.

The New Oregon Flag: Initial Attempts

Michael5000 recently posted a flag makeover contest on his blog. As a proud Oregon resident - and as the person who first suggested the ridiculous idea of a flag makeover contest - I feel obliged to enter.

Now, I'm not real keen on competition. Ignoring the fact that I recently sponsored a contest on my own blog, the whole "who's better, who's best" thing makes me a little wacky. But, I do love a challenge. And I love visual brainstorming.

In the spirit of quantity not quality and deferring judgment, I wanted to let you in on how this flag development process is going.

I started by considering some of the elements already on the flag: a beaver, the color blue, the color yellow, the state seal, the easy-to-spot-in-a-line-up words "State of Oregon." I considered elements that are iconic elements of our state: beavers, salmon, Nike, Mt. Hood, wine, trees, eco-stuff, grass farms, tree farms, rain, skiing, rugged coastline, a wide variety of berries.

How to present rain in a flag? Or, how to present the fact that only recent transplants, tourists, and Odd Ducks on Very Rainy Days will actually use umbrellas here in the Beaver State? I began to sketch, using the only paper available to me while eating lunch at Chili's with the Sweetie: the envelope from my PCC W2 form.


Not entirely satisfied, I wanted to see how it looked in color - using blue and green, the colors I primarily associate with my adopted state, so full of moisture and lush, mossy growth:

Sadly, it's not very . . . stately. So, I began to look at iconic animals. The salmon. The beaver. How to get them both on the flag? Representative of our waterways and our forests and their interconnectedness? Hmm . . .

What about a hybrid? The . . . Beamon! A quick sketch of the Beamon skiing (er, sorry, snowboarding) down Mt. Hood was rejected for further development, but the Beamon concept was explored in color. Unfortunately, the artist did not have reference images of either a beaver or a salmon at the time of the drawing:


The Sweetie commented that it looked sort of like a shrimp.

Back to the drawing board.

DEMO! Stuffed Misfits

Note to Those Watching for a Drawing a Day: I got completely bamboozled by the work The Other Side of My Brain was doing, and lapsed for several days. I like to think that the multiple drawings for this demo cover those days, but then, I also find it hard to get through the day without a good juicy rationalization.

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Mr. Mojo!

As you can see, he's a bit harried by all the attention - even though he knows the ladies can barely resist his undeniable charms and the paparazzi will chase him. After all, nowhere else in all of sentient fiberdom is there a creature with such green and bushy eyebrows, such a pettable soul patch, or such snugly stuffed pants . . .


Need to make a little Mojo of your own in time for Valentine's Day? I've provided you here with the basic instructions - a great place to start. Or a great place to leap off from into the wild and woolly world of intuitive sock monster creation!

I highly recommend John Murphy's book Stupid Sock Creatures. Mr. Mojo utilizes several techniques from Mr. Murphy in his construction, but is ultimately his own creature. And I encourage you to approach your critter creation with the same sense of adventure! Have nothing but gloves? Try glove monsters - check out these samples from Sister Diane! She's also got a podcast interview with John Murphy, a great thing to listen to while you Frankenstuff. Just have old sweaters and towels? Take a peak at the latest issue of Craft (Volume 06, the one with all the monsters on the cover!) More interested in making dogs, cats, pigs, and elephants? Check out Sock and Glove from Miyako Kanamori for some great ideas on construction . . .

Or, just dive in.

DEMO!

To start, you'll need:

• A sock
• A stretchy glove
• Some stuffing material (you can use polyfil or old fiber scraps)
• A long needle (I actually like the ones that are labeled for soft sculpture or book arts)
• Embroidery floss, dental floss, or other heavy-duty polyester thread
• Scissors
• Buttons (for eyes)
• Scraps of old t-shirts, sweaters, or other fiber bits for hair or eyebrows
• Extra sock and/or glove for clothing items
• Chopstick (or other skinny tool to aid in stuffing)
  

Beginning with basic anatomy . . .

Just to get you oriented, and so that the drawings I've done make sense!

First, make about a 4" long cut in the sock, splitting the toe and foot part of the sock into two pieces. Cut down to about the arch of the foot - stop before you reach the heel. If you lay the sock down with the heel up, the toe and foot part of the sock should now look like two ears. Imagine that the heel will become the mouth or snout of the creature.

Cut the thumb and the two middle fingers off the glove.

Turn the sock and the glove inside out. Stitch along the cut in the sock, making two long ears. Then, if you want the creature to have a neck, stitch darts along the sides of the ankle of the sock, below the "snout."

The glove is going to become the legs. Stitch up the hole left by the thumb, and stitch up the hole left by the two missing fingers.

You can use a machine (I prefer a zig-zag stitch) or a long sewing needle threaded with three strands of colorful embroidery floss.

With the sock still inside out, cut two tiny slits (barely big enough to poke a finger through) in the ankle of the sock right under the "neck." This is where the arms will be attached. The cuts do not have to be big, and I don't recommend actually removing any material. The fabric will stretch, so a tiny hole is all you'll need.

Then, take one of the two middle fingers that you cut off of the glove and position it inside the sock so that the hole in the finger lines up with one of the holes in the sock. Now, stitch the edge of the finger to the edge of the slightly stretched hole. Repeat with the other finger. You've got arms!

Now, turn your sock and glove right-side-out again. Using a chopstick or your fingers, stuff stuffing into the ears, head, and arms of the former sock and into the legs of the former glove. Now, you're going to join the two parts of the body. There are a number of ways to approach this.

After some experimenting, for Mr. Mojo I decided to cut two tiny slits just under the cuff of the glove/legs so that the holes lined up with the arms.
I then pulled the little glove body up onto the neck, and poked the arms through the holes in the glove body. This made it so that the cuff of the glove became a kind of turtleneck or collar around the neck of the creature. I then tacked the cuff of the glove to the neck of the creature. I also stitched around the armholes to secure the arms.
Finally, I added the touches that really give the creature personality: button eyes; a mouth formed from the heel of the sock; and bits of felted sweater to make hair, eyebrows, and soul patch. Once I had the soul patch on, he clearly became Mr. Mojo, even though he also had that completely unconfident google-eyed stare. To give him a little more panache, I took the cuff from another sock and created a little pair of pants for Mr. Mojo.

Have fun! And while I don't have any flickr groups up yet, I still love to see pictures of your creations!

Pattern-Making Process: Stuffed Misfit

I'm going to be hosting a Stuffed Misfit Stitchathon* at CubeSpace here in Portland on Saturday, February 9th from 1-4. Suzi Mayer will be there, too, guiding participants in the creation of hats from felted sweaters. It's a re-use-a-palooza for all the misfit garments, the shrunken sweaters, the mateless gloves, the single socks that you've doubtless removed from your closet in a resolute frenzy of New Year's clutter-clearing. For $5, we supply what you need to make a hat or your very own Stuffed Misfit. Bringing your own shrunken sweater or singleton socks is highly encouraged; I'll have needles, thread, buttons, stuffing, etc. for the Stuffed Misfits.

I'm excited to do this, especially since I didn't have the New Year's Day Stuffed Misfits party I had been loosely planning (see "ennui"). And, since I'm also way behind on doing a January craft project DEMO! (rationalizations: post-holiday ennui and nasty post-ennui energy-zapping head cold) and want to have some kind of original pattern or guide to provide at the Stuffed Misfit Stitchathon and promised to do a drawing a day during January and really just wanted to make a Stuffed Misfit tonight while watching episodes of "The Closer", I thought I'd do a multiple-goal, one project kind of a thing.**

Meet Mr. Misfit in Progress:

Now, I tend to work pretty intuitively. I put stuff together, poke holes, add things on . . . I rarely work from patterns - or if I do, I use them primarily as a starting point. I use books for inspiration and to learn new, very specific techniques.

Mr. Misfit in Progress (he doesn't have a name yet, just an initial sense of maleness) began as an old sock and a cheap-o stretchy glove. Cutting, stitching, and stuffing ensued. There is still stitching - and possibly cutting and stuffing - to be done.

But it doesn't always work in a classroom setting to say, "Ok, just kind of cut things off until it looks right and then stitch it up and stuff it and stitch some more." I try to provide some basic techniques, and then encourage people to run wild. My thinking here is that I'll create this little creature intuitively, but will draw the pattern as I go along so that people have a starting point and can see how I've blended the techniques that I've picked up from different places.

Here's the pattern drawing so far, which I think subconsciously borrows pretty heavily from John Murphy's pattern style, minus the legibility:

Uh-huh. So, it's the first draft. I think it could benefit from some words. It's tough for me to break down what I'm doing into freeze frames, especially when it's still under development. It's a good exercise, though, because it's really forcing me to think about the construction and alternative ways of putting it together . . .

With any luck, I'll get it finished and up on the blog tomorrow. That way, I can post it as a finished drawing, and as a DEMO! and use it in the workshop on February 9th! Multi-tasking - it's all part of my process.

Footnotes:

* "Stuffed Misfit Stitchathon" is not the name under which CubeSpace will be promoting this event, as I just came up with it a few minutes ago. However, it's catchier than my original title (" Make Your Own Stuffed Misfit: Soft Monsters from Stranded Socks and Odd Gloves with Bridget Benton") so I'm going with it.

** Figuring out how to do exactly what you want while still meeting your personal goals and satisfying the obligations, needs and requirements of those within your chosen environment is a very particular application of creative skill, one that is present in abundance in young children, college students, lawyers, and professional mediators. I consider it a critical life skill, though when coupled with self-delusion, lies, and/or statistics (as it too often is in the case of college students and lawyers) it can get pretty ugly.

Quadropus and Sea Pomegranates, II

I seem to be slightly obsessed . . .

Four-Legged Squid Thingie and Sea Pomegranates

Chalk Pastels and Oil Pastels, cut out and layered . . . things squished around on the scanner a bit.

In which our heroine fails to flog herself.

Oh gentle reader, I failed to post a drawing yesterday. I was being sick. And lazy. The good news is, I think I have turned the corner, and may in fact be on the road to Wellness. Or at least the pathway to Lesser Sickness, a rather modest suburb full of Thera-flu, strip malls, and phlegm but slightly more energy than the town of Utter Ooginess where I have been residing these last days . . .

Cartoon Caption Contest Winners

It's a tie - here's the two winners:

"Her heart set on dabbling, she spent some quality time with a large dish of ice cream and tried again. It was a good day." from M5K

"All those painting exercises really paid off!" from Leah


Each of these lucky bloggers will receive a handmade magnet and thumbtack set!

Still Sick: The Still Life

The shape of the cup is all wonky, but then again, so is my head. Can't wait to get back to 100%.

The New Food Pyramid

Still sick, and apparently, dreaming of tea parties . . .

Foreshadowing?

So, yesterday I talked about being at home in my body . . . and today, I'm sick. Nasty little head cold. Yuck. Still managed to draw this while taking in fluids and watching "Ugly Betty," which is actually a much better show than the premise makes it sound like it would be.

At Home In My Body

I take a lot of supplements. So I decided to draw them - some of them - today. Iron. Vitamin E. Flax Seed Oil. Part of this is about finding creative and artistic inspiration in everyday objects - their shapes and colors. Creating compositions out of thin air.

And some of this is about home. A lot of my artwork and writing during the 90's dealt with body image. Now, a lot of my work deals with ideas of home . . . what makes a home and what it is to feel at home or to come home. Some of this is about place, some of it about people.

And some of it is about self. I have gone through long periods of time in my life when I haven't felt at home in my body, or really felt at home anywhere. With anyone. The last few years have been about coming home - getting more comfortable in my own body and my own life.

It's a work in process, but it feels pretty good.

Too bad there's not a supplement for it.

Absract Drawings

The Quest Test

Recently, my friend and encaustic painter Linda published a blog post reflecting on the year past as well as her goals for the new year . . . including a quest to find the right balance in her life. Part of this was how to know which opportunities to say "yes" to and which ones to say "no" to. She came up with a five question "quest test" to help her evaluate opportunities.

Last year was a year of tremendous transition for me - I bought a house and completed my Master's Degree in Creativity. I committed myself to making my art a priority, and slowly shifting my business to reflect this priority. I know it's going to take time: time to find the best way of offering classes and training in creative thinking and art-making, time to figure out how to present myself and my classes, time to get into a rhythm of making and showing art. And in reading Linda's five questions, I realized that my quest was more about development, and my questions needed to reflect it. So, here are my four questions:

Does it help me develop as an artist?
Does it help me develop my business?
Does it help me develop my personal self?
Does it help me develop my relationships, including my relationship with the Divine?

And the Drawing a Day in January project on the blog seems to really fit - it gets me exercising an underused artistic muscle (I talk about my relationship to drawing here), keeps me engaged in making art and continuing to unwrap the creative process (which is the heart of my business), gets me looking at myself and other things with new eyes (and what else is personal development?), and helps me stay engaged with you folks - and since artmaking is my spiritual practice, it keeps me in touch there, too.

(I won't go into exactly how the Caption Contest fits, but I feel pretty good about that too - and dang, there are some great suggestions so far!!)

(A note about today's drawing: a semi-blind contour drawing of the Sweetie as he snoozles on the couch. Semi-blind because I let myself look each time I switched colors, and the few times I lifted the oil pastel off the page. )