serendipity

by Rain Trueax
 

It's hard to believe that it's already December. This year went by soooo fast. I am not much of a holiday person, though I had years where I was. Now it's mostly get through the season, to the shortest day and start heading toward spring and then summer. 

There is a time in life where I was more traditional but that's not this time. I look with some nostalgia on those days but life is what it is. I do see people where their lives seem to stay a lot the same for religion, community, family. Do we choose whether that happens or is it what it is?

Using a Mistake

by Rain Trueax 

You have written all morning putting together a blog. It's gone along well. The words flowed from the original idea. You hit a key, and suddenly all you see is a blank page with the letters lk. You panic and think-- hit the reload current page symbol at the top of the page, hoping that will mean the one you had before the apocalypse happened. lk stares you in the face. You just made your second mistake. 

That was the fate of the originally planned Saturday's blog.

When something like that happens, I always wonder if what I had planned was a mistake. I considered that but decided it had been a good idea. Maybe though there was a better way to proceed.

I took my idea to Word, where autosave doesn't happen. Before beginning, I was curious. Might 'lk' have meaning? It turns out to be an internet shortcut for like. Was my computer having fun with me? Are they often having fun with us and sometimes maliciously? 

One of the movies we watched last week, due to our grandson being here, was inspired by a Stephen King story, where the machines turn on humans due to a comet having passed. Could it be sometimes our computer/internet does the same-- without needing help from a comet (although, a comet did pass pretty close at that time)? 

 More likely, it was just typing too fast and hitting the dreaded, short-cut keys-- two of them though??? Anyway, onward and upward as a friend of mine used to say.

My Artist Life While Aging

One of the boxes of my mother's creative sculpting and her automated doll's violin.
Her display dolls from the 50’s are represented and documented in the Rosalie Whyel Doll Museum in Belleview, Washington.
 I also wrote an article in Doll Reader Magazine about how my mother made me feel growing up as her doll creating partner.
 I am humbled by how well she made doll making a shared family involvement. She even extending her sharing her skills in an leading a Girl Scout interest group in which we casted our own clay sculpted puppets for Jack and the Bean Stock characters.
 She introduce me to plein air painting as a group activity with other children in the Big Sur Camp Ground.

At age 75, as a result of my mother's nurturing and my continued involvement in art, I am grateful to her for my now having the most productive and creative period in my life. I am filled with joy and thankfulness. Yet, I am aware that my elderly years are precious, much more than the selling of the art I make. So I am immersing myself in the process of creating as opposed to marketing.

The paintings accumulate.

 My priority to do lists includes making an illustrated Power Point catalog containing all the work  ready to be exhibited or sold. Will it be enough for my heirs to have my art well documented with catalog numbers and my statements?  Maybe at some point I should seek on line painting sales and gallery representation taking a load off my heirs? Or finding more places to donate it?

My husband and I do less and less of the things we used to do. We no longer belong to a roller skating club,  or a mountain rescue club. We do not snowshoe, or camp in a tent while backpacking to name a few of the ever growing list of things we no longer want to do. So my husband is home with me more with all our toys taking up space. Even when we got rid of a few toys like a couple of Model A's, my art encroaches on  my husband's shop area.

 I am looking for another artist who can use some of my unneeded art paraphernalia. Some of  the art media I have been fortunate enough to have experienced recently is paper making. Paper making was a short lived family activity. Other remnants of media that I am giving away include bookmaking, ceramics, batik, mosaics and cement garden sculptures. I am having difficulty thinking about giving up oil painting. I am starting to paint in oils now that the weather is nice but this might be the last season of oils if the watercolors without glass becomes my primary medium.

Years ago faced with a full shed of her decades old disintegrating latex dolls, I selected a few more permanent tools that reflected her creative process.   I kept a plaster mold for casting  and her books that instructed her hoping they would become family heirlooms. Maybe some family member will want to use Margaret Widler Doll heirlooms in making installations or even videos or what can be imagined.

As an artist I see my life in phases. When I was a very young child painting was all about the doing of it. The result did not hold my interest. In the in between years I saw myself as the maker of a product that would please a teacher, or someone who might buy it. Now I still care about how the work looks when finished. Caring is central to the process. I care that my paintings satisfy me. I hope  to involve the viewers of my paintings in the process seeding their creative drive as well. I've come full circle doing art for the sake of the experience of being in the present, always learning and really seeing.

Paper making paraphernalia in my husband's shop.
 I want to give away all the paper making stuff plus cotton paper pulp I have used to strengthen recycled paper.
 

My answer to “How do I make time for painting?”

How I make time to paint is such an interesting question,  I wonder why it never occurred to me.

This is an excellent question for all of you beginning for the first time  as well as those painters with busy schedules.

The flip side of making time to paint is how I make time for taking care of myself, quality time with family, being a friend. Writing a blog to me is an outreach to creative friends.

 Of course there are the everyday chores I  make into art experiences. When it is time to vacuum, the first thing to do is rearrange the art on my walls so while doing repetitive chores, my mind is busy seeing new relationships between my paintings.

My patient, supportive husband deserves a great deal of credit.  He shares grocery shopping,  house and yard work as well as helping me prepare the paintings to be hung. The whole house is a staging area for my half finished paintings and sometimes when my husband and I are together, I am as though far away looking at my paintings.

The number one thing I have in common with those just beginning to paint is finding a medium that is best suited to my lifestyle. I am still looking for ways to increase the quality of my painting time. Cooking is creative and enjoyable to me but cleaning up afterwards not so much. The day before yesterday I purchased an Oster 12" electric fry pan with a ceramic surface. It heats fast and cleans with a simple wipe with a wet towel.  It holds promise for a variety of cooking methods so for some jobs step aside Instant Pot. I will have more creative time now.

Very important is having work areas that can be easily setup and put away quickly. I carry an on the go bag for travels whether I am going from my studio to the patio or to just pick up groceries or a larger bag for vacations.

 Just this week I found that 2 small pocket Van Gogh palettes half filled with pan watercolors are working the best with dilute gloss medium in the adjacent empty wells. The Van Gogh palettes have the right amount of paint and mixing surfaces  for the 11X14 inch canvas boards. These boards are fine to carry in a suitcase.

The prepared plywood boards take considerable work to prepare for painting and I don't like the rough feel. I will continue adding more coats of gesso and plaster. The translucency and wetting ability of  the paint respond so interestingly to customized surfaces, I don't want to go back to unmodified machine made surfaces.
 

The next most important suggestion is immersing myself in seeing. Even when not actually painting I think how I would in response to what I see.  I enjoy looking with painting in mind every day and plan the next painting series.

Please take a minute or two to vote on topics that would be useful to you on making time to paint.Answer in comments but if you prefer I will be happy to get your email at dondianewenzel@msn.com

1) A series of blogs about my on the go painting paraphernalia.

2) Inspirational books and web sites to jump start painting.

3) More about my progress in finding a way to work outside doing watercolors that are durably finished, ready to hang without frame and glass.

4) My remedies when a laps of time has occurred when I couldn't paint and I find it hard to start again.

5) Do I have to paint every day to consider myself an artist?

Inspiration, Craft, Tools Part I

by Rain Trueax

Creation begins with an idea, a concept-- inspiration.  Something is required to get from idea to reality, whether that is a book, an invention, a painting, or any physical manifestation. What carries that idea forth is a combination of craft and tools.  Idea ---> tools---> craft/rules---> Product. I know some don't want to think of a book or painting as products but whether you sell it or not, it is when it takes on reality.

Years back, when I began writing, I thought the tools I used, pen or pencil, encouraged my creativity.  Some writers never change their mind on that and always write their rough draft in longhand.  For me, I have changed tools as I've found something that lets me take the ideas formulating in my head to a first draft of a book.

An old, upright style, Royal typewriter was my first step beyond handwriting.  I still have it.  To me, it is quite pretty. It was a kind of thrill to see the neat type appear on the paper. It took strong fingers to make the letters equally dark. After taking typing classes, it was much faster than a pen.  Mistakes were covered up by small jars of white and a brush. Later, it was little sheets of white paper where you typed the mistake to cover it up-- mostly. Big mistakes led to wadded up paper in a trash can.

When the opportunity arose to buy an electric typewriter, I had no doubts that I could work with it.  No more worry about uneven letters. A different sort of tool, it was in the same family with which I was familiar. Electric typewriters took me through many rough drafts with boxes of manuscripts under my bed, a few sent off to editors only to be rejected. I loved the satisfaction of seeing the stacks of paper and knowing my books were saved for possibly a future time when editors would look with more favor on them.

When my husband suggested my using an Atari to write, I resisted as it seemed a step into something different.  Where it comes to new technologies, I am a Luddite. I was concerned that it would block my creativity. The typewriter was familiar and comfortable.

Then, I tried it.  Oh my gosh, it allowed me to move whole paragraphs when they were not in the right place.  I could erase whole scenes, with no paper and no white-out.  As for my creativity, this technology only made it better and faster.

The arrival of new and improved computers constantly lead to faster and better ways to write my books.  My Luddite side didn't protest and saw only advantages to a Thesaurus, spellcheck, punctuation checks and best of all allowing me to save the document multiple places. Word processing changed the process so much that it's hard to imagine thinking anything was better. I began typing all my existing manuscripts into it. That was a lot of work but better than boxes under the bed. I had no idea how much innovation lay ahead when eventually a book could be sent to a publisher and soon people could buy it.

One might think, that there would be nothing new beyond improved computers.  Or perhaps, I might have thought, except, I started hearing about those who were using voice technology instead of a keyboard.  They were able to see their words appear on the screen and in their document by speaking them into reality.

Luddite mentality kicked in.  How would my creativity, my inspiration work when I wasn't typing?  Would speaking scenes become a limitation?  I decided , while it sounded interesting another amazing step forward in technology, it was not for me.

When I noticed some early symptoms of carpal tunnel.  I posted my interest and questions in Facebook.  One of the other authors, Jacquie Rogers, told me she would be happy to talk to me about it in a phone conversation.  We had an enjoyable talk, and I learned more about the potential of voice recognition.  I learned I already had it on my computer with Word. She felt it worked better than some of the other programs that were for sale. She told me she writes about half of her books with it.  It also allows her to stand up while writing and even walk around-- that last is a biggie.

Part of my weight gain over the last six years has been sitting too much.  If a writer considers what she is doing as a career, it takes hours sitting.  They now say that for health, that is as bad as smoking.  It certainly hasn't done much for how I see my body.  I am fat, where most of my life, I had either been about right for weight or overweight.  Being fat is hard to take.  I wasn't sure that having voice recognition would get me enough exercise to change weight, but it would be healthier.

The question was, of course, the one I had worried about with each technology advance.  Could I think using voice instead of a keyboard?  In the beginning of November, I determined that I would find out.

The microphone Jacquie Rogers suggested was a Sennheiser.  I had doubts about it fitting over my head, but it had the advantage of keeping the mic close and in the same place for my voice. I ordered it and began going through the tutorial, reading suggested text. You are supposedly training the computer to recognize you, but it also helped me see when I had to slow down and which words were likely to not be recognized. I printed off that terms I'd have to use. You can't say quote. You say open quote. There are pages of instructions-- for now I don't need most.

That still left the question-- how would it impact the creativity I'd always felt concerned about. I didn't want anything to become a distraction for that inspired scene... I hoped. As might be expected, I started into it with the usual trepidation.  And then, the story began to flow.  Answer to whether I could tap into my inspiration was - -yes.

Some suggest, that you do not edit as you go.  I mostly do and correct when I cannot say the word in a way that the computer recognizes.  Surprisingly, the bigger issue turns out to be small words not the bigger ones that I would have expected.  To teach my computer to learn my voice with those words, I highlight and repeat them, eventually choosing from a list of possible words. The computer is helped by my taking the time to do that. It learns my vocabulary.

I still type, but this was written with speech recognition and a keyboard edit to follow-- especially in places where there was no way the computer would be able to learn a word.  Overall, it has been fun to learn something new and save my hands for other tasks. I am a fast typist; so it's not faster. It saves my fingers and wrists, and it works.

Next Saturday, I will write about craft as it impacts writing a book, a blog, a poem, etc..  That will take me to the following Saturday and what is the more exciting part of writing-- inspiration.

Craft and tools are part of the writers arsenal.  Without both, whether that involves a pencil or electronic device, inspiration is going to stay just within the creator.  I never dreamed that I could write a book with dictation.  But then, I never dreamed of all a computer might be to a writer. The beauty of where we are today is we can still use that pencil. We have the choice.