Tiny Drawings

Inspiring ideas can be elusive. Yet, I often find that having too many ideas feels overwhelming. It is knowing which idea to pursue at any given time that is the real strength of an artist. How will we know which idea we need to develop unless we let that idea exist in a draft?

When I find that my drawings aren’t coming out right and my compositions feel stiff, I cut out a few small pieces of paper and make tiny drawings. I use a fine point mechanical pencil because it's important to use a satisfying tool that helps you love the process. In those tiny spaces, I can explore any idea, quickly, without the pressure of a large space.

Blind Contour Landscape Drawing Exercise

If perfectionism is the antithesis of creativity then what can help us access more creative ideas?

One answer is to approach art making with a sense of experimentation.

Yesterday, I felt overwhelmed with ideas that I didn't know where to start. Then I realized that I needed to create an experiment that would help me to immerse myself in the process and not the result. I asked myself, "What would happen if you drew the landscape without looking at it?"

Then I did this blind contour landscape drawing exercise:

1. Sit near a window


2. Have colors at hand and paper in front of you


3. Pick colors without looking at them - this helps to find new color combinations you might not have thought of


4. Look outside your window and start moving your pencil


5. Feel your paper with your hands, moving your pencil with your eyes along the landscape


6. Notice the shapes, textures, and forms


7. Notice how uncomfortable it feels not to look at your paper


8. Practice observing


9. Draw slower, moving your pencil with your eyes


10. Make light marks and hard marks


11. Remember how good it feels to make marks on a paper

Sketching And Walking With Juniper

My biggest source of creative inspiration is this artist I know who lives with me, my daughter Juniper. Yesterday, we walked around outside in the slightly windy afternoon and made drawings in our sketchbooks. In the past I have taken many photos of her with my phone because she's my kid and makes the best drawing reference for my picture books. But lately on our walks, I have been taking my sketchbook (and leaving my phone behind).

While sitting on dirt or grass, under trees, I will start to draw Juniper while she is poking something with a stick, drawing, or hopping from rock to rock. Since she is four years old, she moves very fast. This forces me to do two things: pay attention and observe her body and posture, and draw quickly.

I am always amazed by how sketching and walking can be one of the simplest ways to excavate creative ideas.

 

Stars Falling From The Night Sky

 

A Gift From The Universe

 

What am I supposed to do with this?

Tiny Birds

From my writing desk I see only trees and sky.

When I don't know what to write, sometimes I look out into the trees. 

I marvel when many birds are flying from branch to branch. The branches flutter when they leap off. If it has been raining, drops of water spring off. I watch a little bird land on papaya tree branch then quickly jump to an outstretched guava branch. It flies away and I wonder if I'll ever see the same bird again.

The attempt to make meaningful art is often feels like trying to accurately convey to someone how wonderful something is, like watching tiny birds.

Lie In The Grass For Just A Little While

It's okay to lie in the grass for a little while feeling listless, uninspired, and invisible. However, do not stay there too long. Gather yourself up and keep moving. There are magical things to find, but they do not just step out of the clouds and present themselves. They need to be searched for, excavated out of the ground and held tightly. 

She Wondered About Particles

 

Clouds

I marvel at the cloud's shifting, mysterious shapes. How they can expand across the horizon, scatter delicately, or envelope the sun in shades of color.

Clouds are like life experiences; fleeting, constantly moving, changing, sometimes ordinary yet always unique.

I wonder how many people are staring at the clouds right now, taking a photograph of a sky in hopes of sharing it with someone else as if to say “Look at how lucky I was in this moment.”

Sometimes, I’ve photographed the clouds and then time passes and I notice that the clouds look even more marvelous, so I take another photograph. And I wonder what will I do with all of these photographs of the sky?

Perhaps I will make a little book to one day show my daughter how much her mom loved the sky. To make something...anything... to express that achingly beautiful feeling of seeing clouds travel across the sky.

Drawing

One of the most fascinating things is to see what your hand will draw when you simply start without weighing your mind down with any sort of plan of how it will turn out.

Moving the pencil along the paper. Inventing a the rules as you go. Drawing can thrive with uninhibited mark making.

And sometimes I wake from dreams, wondering how on earth my mind concocted those images. Such idiosyncratic feelings and subtle, particular events.

One reason that I make pictures is because I have a wild imagination. If it is not focused and reigned in, the scenarios my mind will cause me all sorts of stress and anxiety. To purposely create poetic stories is empowering.

 

 

Beaming Magic

That Spot In The Library

Oh, libraries. The expected quietness, people reading, studying, learning, thinking. That kind of world is so important for us human beings. 

I used to love going to the library as a kid. At school I felt anxiety but in libraries I felt peace. There was something magical about reading in a seemingly large chair near rows and rows of books. 

Hedgehog Wants To Paint

Yesterday, while I was reading "Writing Picture Books" by Ann Whitford Paul (a fascinating guide), I was thinking of a character I had been imagining. 

The author mentioned many different ways to imagine your story draft, including turning your human character into an animal or your animal character in a human. I have not often drawn animals, but I decided to turn my girl character into a little hedgehog...

And OH MY so many lightbulbs went off. No wonder animals occupy so many children books. We can project so many qualities into animals.

Now I want to draw more hedgehogs.

 

I'll be running after your memory forever

I made this drawing a few weeks ago trying to express a certain feeling of trying to hold the memory of my brother close and not let it leave. I was thinking of how it feels like the memory is intimately close, yet lightyears away. 

This is the first year I have attempted to make a picture describing that feeling, even if it didn't come out the way I envisioned it. There is a landscape of grief that only grievers know. 

I am grateful for art and drawings and poetry and music and everyone who attempts to express those ineffable feelings.

The Magic Of Solitude

Listening to The Ravenous Blues

[caption id="attachment_12439" align="aligncenter" width="684"] 23/100 Moon Conversations "Listening to the Ravenous Blues"[/caption]

This is one of the quickest paintings I made during 100 Moon Conversations, and as it turns out, the one with perhaps the most comments and interest (from people on social media).

I woke up early, went to my desk with this title in mind, found a reference photo in my phone that seemed to fit and chose the color blue. I didn't even want to spend time painting the figure with accurate skin tones. All blue. My best work is made when I'm not overthinking.

The title comes from a poem I wrote in 2013:

Well

The small ones are close
their eyes are pins
and they float to the surface
sleeping, but they hear you
separate from them
listening to the ravenous blues
pining in corners

What does this even mean? I couldn't tell you. It's such an eerie, cryptic poem but hey, this was the kind of poetry I was writing in 2013 and sharing for critique with a poetry class. My process of writing poems was to imagine things and write them down, find word combinations that fascinated me, look in dictionaries and thesauruses, write until other words came to mind and form the words together like a tiny sculpture.  At the time I was a bit fearful to be vulnerable in poetry, or reveal anything too personal. Yet the strange poems I wrote in 2013 inspired some interesting titles for illustrations that grounded them in something more real.

The line listening to the ravenous blues emerged, and on it's own was a specifically dreamy thought I liked thinking about.

The road to good ideas is often paved with failures.

Good art isn't supposed to tell you what to think. Illustration, is usually more directive, yet there always has to be mystery. In between magic and the mundane is where the most interesting artwork exists.

"The ordinary + extra attention = the extraordinary." - Austin Kleon

 

Moon Conversations & The 100 Day Challenge

The Summer of Shooting Stars

Pools of Light

Hands Extending into the Blue

Pressing on the Golden Stem

Leaves As Gems

& A Book of Clouds. 

Those are some of the titles I've come up with as prompts for my next series of illustrations, 100 Moon Conversations. There have been these magical ideas floating around in my head that fill me with happiness yet I haven't taken the time to draw them. This year, I've written out 100 abstract notions/lyrical phrasings derived from song lyrics and poems I've written with the goals of 1) creating images I want to see out in the world and 2) making a book. I've rekindled my love for writing by waking before 6am, meditating for ten minutes and then writing before working on art.

I've rediscovered that writing is always the answer to improving and inspiring the artistic process.

On April 4th, along with many other people all over the world doing all sorts of projects, I'll be starting another 100 day journey.

In my first project 100 Dreamy Beach Babes, I came up with a little illustration (literally, they started out approximately 2 x 2") of a whimsical girl on the beach. In my second project, 100 Ten Minute Skies, I went for a conceptual approach where I would draw the sky everyday for ten minutes no matter what it looked like.

Every idea sounds interesting when you start. The challenge is in pushing through, not falling behind, and finding new ways of approaching your idea when it inevitably gets monotonous.

In those projects, I thought my themes were specific enough to yield continual inspiration, but I found myself spending a lot of time finding a reference photo for the "beach babe" (I later just took self portraits) and by day 20 I was already bored with painting a girl and the sea. I realized that even small paintings took me quite a bit of time.

[caption id="attachment_12166" align="alignnone" width="950"] Dreamy Beach Babe on Day 76, measuring approximately 4 x 5"[/caption]

The following year, at the start of Ten Minute Clouds, the Kilauea volcano erupted and filled the skies with thick vog, creating skies that were white and gray for many months. I quickly adjusted my focus and started to create abstract works inspired by the sky. It was the simple act of making; dedicating time to drawing (often while my daughter ate breakfast), observing what I could make in ten minutes, and pushing through creative frustration that brought the most happiness.

In my first project I learned the importance of preparation for the 100 days. Practice beforehand, imagine what the situation will be when you are working, and consider how long each piece will take.

[caption id="attachment_12160" align="aligncenter" width="744"] 100 Ten Minute Skies on Day 6[/caption]

In the second project I learned that a timer is a valuable tool. Think you don't have time for something? You can actually accomplish quite a lot in ten focused minutes instead of scrolling social media or watching a show.

Essentially, the most important part of any 100 day project is just doing something... every single day, no matter what. When you push through boredom and tedium you will find new ideas you never thought were there. The magic is in the consistency. Constraints and routine can equal the utmost freedom.

If you are doing the 100 day project or interested in one, I'd love to hear from you.

I take a lot of walks

This is a continuous, 35mm, cross processed roll of film of branches found in Los Angeles. While walking along my routes I would aim my Diana mini camera up at the trees and take photographs. These are made on different days, with different trees, on different walks. I like to think that I was able to photograph how I feel while walking through trees. How I experience the solitude of walking. A place that exists apart from the realities of the noise and crowdedness of the city.

Drawings Circa 2009 - 2012

 



 

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