#Inktober52, #Inktober, "Bubbles"

I was hiking around to endless historical monuments on a hot, sunny day with a friend when I said, "I need to stop for a pop" as we walked by a convenience store.  My friend burst into merry laughter.  My face rearranged itself into absolute befuddlement.  I didn't see anything funny in my declaration.  I was hot and thirsty.  My friend didn't have the faintest idea what I was talking about.  "A Pepsi, Coke, something like that", I clarified, shaking my head at the obvious.  "Oh!  A soda!"  In my mind, a soda is something from the 1950's when teenyboppers went to the soda shop for a malt, but okay.  I realize more of you out there say soda than pop, but you have to admit pop is a better word when you open the bottle.

Someone else recently reminisced with me about going to her grandparents and getting pop from the basement.  "Me too!"  Happy grandparent stories flowed back and forth and I vividly tasted Vernor's ginger ale even though I haven't tasted it in years.  It's amazing how these things stay with us, and how much little things matter down the road when it didn't seem to make that much difference at the time.  We just had practical grandparents who put soda pop in the basement because the basement was cool and brought it upstairs when the grandkids were there because they loved us.  It's these little moments that made us feel special and secure.

The other day I contemplated what to have for supper.  I seem to have gotten very vegetarian during the shutdown and I have to say I'm sick and tired of vegetables.  I flashed back to dinner at Grandma's and wished so strongly for one of her basic meals of ham, mashed potatoes, and green beans.  I wanted it so badly I could smell the ham and hear her putting a spoon down on her stainless steel kitchen counter.  I thought of Grandpa and his perennial assortment of Chex cereal and ever-present vanilla ice milk.  Tinkling dishes, cheerful laughter, and ice tea.  Vernor's pop, full of sugar and bubbles, in the middle of the day, for no real reason other than my grandparents knew I liked it.

I saw a post where a 10-year-old girl created a door screen out of a shower curtain and plastic bags so she could hug her grandma during the shutdown.  Yay for the kid!  But gee, it sucks to be separated from your grandma!  Maybe all this separation will prove to teach more of us to appreciate people while we have them?

Happy memories keep us warm inside when faced with too many vegetables, but it isn't all about looking back.  It's about thinking about your priorities and making decisions about what you want now and in the future.  Our thoughts create possibilities.

Thinking about drinking a bubbly pop on a hot summer day may not seem important at all.  Remembering merry laughter between friends is important.  It isn't about things, it's about people.  I'm really hoping that everyone appreciates their people even more when they can hug each other again.

This art is just a TV doodle around the time I was salivating over Grandma's ham :)

"Street"

My knee is permanently scarred from a close encounter with a tar and chip street.  I also lost my virginity in the bicycle accident as I was riding a boy's bike and the bar slammed my pelvis in a bone crushing way.  Okay, maybe I didn't technically lose my virginity, and I didn't even know what a virgin was at the time, but tell it to my younger self as she clutches herself in the grass and tries not to vomit at the side of the road.

Other than picking tarry rocks out of my knee, I kind of liked the tar and chip road.  The tar bubbled and oozed on hot summer days.  I skipped around and popped bubbles.  I squiggled my bare feet in thick, black splotches.  It's not like there were any cars getting in the way of my fun.  I'm sure Mom loved the black tracks I made across the living room floor when I got home, but I often cleaned my feet first with gasoline.  Yeah, very healthy.  I feel kind of whoozy at the memory of the fumes.

Can you really remember being a child?  Not just a mental picture like a snapshot in a photo album, can you feel the sun on your head?  Smell the pine trees and tar?  Hear the crickets chirping and the breeze blowing?  Taste Grandma's cooking?  See your own small body by looking down?

Creativity seems magical.  Ideas can feel like divine inspirations we draw from outside of ourselves.  Yet, I think most of creativity has real, tangible sources like observation and memory, skills all of us can develop.

I have to think a minute to remember what I had for dinner last night.  Pea soup.  Why bother remembering?  It doesn't matter unless I want to describe it to someone else -- and creating is all about sharing something.  If you want someone else to like your creations, appeal to a person's senses, the more senses the better.  My pea soup has a lot of potatoes in it, carrots, snow peas... This is a shopping list.  My stomach growled when the microwave dinged and I burned my fingers when I lifted the hot, creamy soup amidst the wafting cloud of thyme and tarragon... You see, more senses, more details, more interesting.

It's the same with painting.  Many people draw something floating on a white piece of paper.  Give it a background!  Give it a shadow!  Remember how things look in real life.  Memory isn't magical.  We all have it.  Look around in your brain and see what's in there.  Maybe your childhood street was cement.  Maybe you chalked pictures on it?  Can you taste the smell of chalk dust?

Then, after you've worked so hard to remember things and add details, start eliminating.  If it doesn't add to the story you want to tell, erase it.  In writing, I've decided I don't need the word "that".  It's often a waste of space and I use it a lot.  Delete.  In a painting, maybe I put too many petals on a flower.  Be willing to paint over, write over, everything unhelpful to your project.  When I first wrote board reports, I thought I had to tell board members and bosses everything I thought was important.  They don't care and don't have time to read it.  I changed my ways and got praise for my 1-page, bulleted reports.

The painting above wasn't meant to be anything, and I just photoshopped street lines on it for IF's word for the week.  I created the painting by fooling around with some cheap supplies and thought I'd use it as a background to something else.  I like bits of it though, and now I'm not sure what to do with it.  Maybe I'll use parts of it in something else, which is part of creativity too.  Experiment, play, pop tar bubbles on the street and see where the road takes you.

"Mischief"

Bro3 was the definition of "mischief" as he ran away from me to do exciting, fun, dangerous things and causing me a world of anxiety for his safety.  My puppy ran through the house with the end of the toilet paper, wrapping it around table legs and up steps until I could flatten him in a corner.  I have a lot of stories about Bro3 and that particular dog.  I'm still torn between exasperation and hilarity since neither of them actually died in their adventures.

Dog allowed me to leave the house for a limited amount of time.  If I was late, he took everything out of the refrigerator, including all those expired condiments I'd forgotten about, and arranged them all over the kitchen floor with the fridge door hanging wide open.  He sat in the middle of his plunder and gave me that look of "you deserve this for neglecting me".  I used baby locks, duct tape, and heavy furniture to keep him out of the fridge.  Nothing stopped him except my timely arrival.

Another time, the dog family was left in the fenced yard for the afternoon.  I came home to a rabbit head on my floor.  Ew.  Thankfully, I had a brother around for head removal while I checked out the rest of the house for the bunny's corpse.  It was laid out on my cedar chest, skinned and gutted, with icky slime oozing on the floor.  Hey Bro!  Would you mind taking this out too?  Yuck.  I cleaned it all up, and then wandered around saying, "this doesn't feel quite finished yet".  The cookbook, which had been inside the upper kitchen cupboard, was in the back yard.  The index was dog ripped to R stands for Rabbit.  That dog was so smart it's a good thing he didn't have opposable thumbs.

I don't suppose I have much of a point in all this other than to say we need "good" people keeping the world going round in predictable ways.  The mischievous make that world more fun (exasperating, anxious) and they give us stories.  I don't know what the proper proportion of good to mischievous should be, but I'm sure we need at least a few around.

We need raccoons too.  I'm not really sure why, but the world would be less interesting without them getting in garbage cans and fishing in decorative back yard ponds.  I spent a day this summer watching a coon family teasing my dog and trying to nab my fish.  The baby coons were just too adorable as they played in a weaving string of cuteness up and down and around trees, dropping sticks on my dog, barking at her barking.

Just doodles without much reason, but should "mischief" have reason?  I'm not talking about nasty mischief at any rate, just teasing play where nobody gets hurt.  But the more I think of doodles, the more I think that they're very important.  They're a meditation, sometimes give us an insight into ourselves, give us ideas for future projects.  I don't know that these will turn into anything other than what they are, but I can see making a raccoon like this out of cardboard.  Maybe waterproof it and put it by the pond to protect the fish?

Also, it's come to my attention that some people feel stressed when doodling because they're "not good at it".  Um?  You don't have to be good at it.  Nobody grades it or calls you incompetent, or if they do, get rid of those people.  Draw nonsense lines if that's what makes you feel happy.  Scribble with your eyes closed and see what happens.  Let a little mischief into your life.

"Perennial"

Humans are creatures of habit. We get up and do the same things we did yesterday. That’s true for babies, teenagers, old people, and everybody in between. Some of us like to think that we’re different and unique, but our parents thought that too, and so did their parents. Everything and everybody is on a perennial cycle. I’m rather inclined to being philosophical today, but it’s too hot in Ohio for that today. I think I’ll talk about the perennial nature of light instead.

I said I might write something about reflected light when I made my lesson on shadows, but I think I need to talk about the nature of light first. Let’s just consider this a serial proposition. It worked for Charles Dickens, maybe it will work for blogging too?

Rule #1: Light travels in straight lines. We could talk about bending light with gravity or other cool things scientists talk about, but for our purposes, light travels in straight lines.

Rule #2: Light gets interrupted if things get in the way.

Rule #3: Light reflects. Light colors reflect more light than dark things. Yeah, I know, I just said I’m not getting into reflected light yet, but bear with me.

Imagine you’ve got a flashlight. You turn it on, and the light is brightest by the light bulb, and disintegrates the farther away it gets from the bulb. The light spreads out and gets fainter the farther away it gets from you. If you’re standing in dark woods, you may not be able to see what broke that twig in the distance, but maybe you can see the reflection of the gleaming eyes of whatever is lurking out there. (This would be a cool place to insert a ghost story, but I’m just not that good at that kind of thing, so try this out instead.)

Okay, after someone has dealt with the ghost looking for her golden arm or the hungry bear, what happened to the light from the flashlight? Remember rule #2? Light gets interrupted. Even though we don’t think about air getting in the way of things, it’s full of dust, campfire smoke, and bugs. Each dust mote can interrupt some of that light. When enough of that crud has gotten in the way, our light from the flashlight has been so diverted, it runs out of steam – but it might have just enough life left in it to reflect against those shiny eyes hidden in the dark.

These same ideas hold true in daylight. The reason that mountains or trees look bluer and foggier in the distance is because of all the crud in the air between us and them. Things closest to us will have a lot more details than things far away.

You can use these principles to enhance the mood of your art. If there’s a campfire, the smoke will affect the light. In fact, that’s a good reason to have a bonfire tonight. Once the logs have caught, look around. Sing some campfire songs too. If you’ve got someone with a guitar, even better. Who says research needs to be boring?

These are my tv time doodles, scribbled with a ball point pen on bond paper. I suppose it’s completely uncool to mention that I got into a whole side trip thinking about the nature of atoms and light while I was waiting for commercials to end, isn’t it? Ah well, that’s just part of my perennial nature of contemplating stuff that really isn’t going to get me anywhere. I also like drawing flowers. Seems like that would’ve made so much more sense to post for “perennial”, doesn’t it?

"Satellite"

Illustration Friday's word of the week sends my mind in unusual directions.
"Satellite" makes me think of science, and my science education was spotty. I had an obligatory biology class in college, but even the teacher knew it was a joke. I also took biology in high school, but quickly discovered that I was expected to cut up long-dead, soggy animals floating in formaldehyde, and the boys in class thought it was funny to leave them on my chair or drop them down the back of my shirt. I quit going to class, but passed the final, so somehow managed to graduate high school.

I've found studying science is much more fun by hanging out with scientists. One pleasant memory involved a long walk with my nuclear physicist friend, Dr. Philip Ugorowski, Research Assistant Professor at Kansas State University, Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Department. He told me to forget the classic image of an atom as a solid ball with a smaller solid ball orbiting around it. I didn't need to forget it. With my spotty science education, I never learned it in the first place. He talked about the nucleus as a jostling swarm of bees, and I happily absorbed his explanation of the orbiting electrons as more bees, or maybe gnats.

We drank wine, enjoyed the sun and trees, and he waxed poetic about nuclear fusion with a lot of laughter about which insects best represented the different functions of atoms and molecules. When he started on fission, I said we had to stop because my brain was too full and couldn't accept any more knowledge at that time. Sometimes it occurs to me that we've never revisited fission, so my education remains incomplete.

It was a satisfying day, and a good memory. I cannot think of atoms as anything other than some assortment of buzzing insects that are full of life and energy.

I gave Phil a chance to comment on this blog posting...

The usual picture of an atom is the little balls orbiting the nucleus, which looks like a clump of balls. That picture was outdated by the end of the 1920's, but it was used as the logo for the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission), entered popular culture, and now there seems to be no getting rid of it. I think you have the right analogy for the nucleus, but the "orbiting" electrons are a little tricky.

When we say "orbit" we think of things like moons (natural satellites) or artificial satellites. Even the Milky Way galaxy has two smaller galaxies (the clouds of Magellan) orbiting it. The lighter mass goes around the heavier mass, but even the heavier mass moves in a small circle. The motion of the earth perturbs the suns' motion slightly. The electrons around the atom are more like clouds with areas where you might find an electron and areas where you would not. Since the electron acts more like a wave than a ball in this situation, it goes between the areas where it may be found without passing through the areas where it may not be found, even though the "forbidden" areas lie between the "allowed" areas. Thus, it does not "orbit" like a satellite, even though in chemistry they talk of "electron orbits".

What happened to the whimsy of buzzing bees? I think I should've given him some wine before asking his opinion of my post, or maybe not written when he's at work? I said as much in my email response, and he added the following...

BTW, the clouds of Magellan are called "satellite galaxies" if you want to include that. Today my head is filled with numbers and spreadsheets, so my poetic neurons are taking a break.

Let's just hope Phil sorts out his budget and gets some grants for funding. I don't think I'm going to progress science too much with doodles of buzzing bees!

Perspective

“Perspective” seems like a great word today. I’m watching snow fall in Ohio, wishing for spring, and dreading shoveling my driveway. For some reason, a poem my dad used to say every spring came to mind…








I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

-- William Wordsworth


When I saw the end of the poem again, I understood why I was thinking about daffodils, and it seemed to make a perfect connection to “perspective”. I can think of myself as snowed-in, or as wonderfully untroubled by the outside world today.

When I decided to create this blog, I thought I would try to include something useful with each posting. Maybe being reminded that spring will come again and that there’s more than one way to paint a daffodil helps someone else who’s stuck in the snow?

The daffodil above is colored pencil and marker on construction paper. It was a doodle, and the fact that I didn’t mean to do anything useful with it probably made it better than if I were actually setting out to create an abstract daffodil for a client. I’ve learned to keep some of my doodles because sometimes I have a hard time being loose when someone tells me to be loose. This is the kind of thing that I will scan into the computer, then cut out the background in PhotoShop. I’ll then scan a clean page of construction paper and put my cleaned up, morphed doodle over it in a different layer. That lets me change the background color without changing the image. It’s easy at that point to keep the file until that magical time that I need a goofy daffodil in another piece and I have an impossible deadline to meet.

I can waste time doing this kind of thing, but it’s also a meditation time that I use to think about other projects. The fact that I sometimes get some gold out of the effort makes me keep doing it. Sometimes the hardest part of a project is getting started, and doing this kind of thing gets me going.

I messed around with this stuff today, and actually managed to create a post, so it wasn’t wasted time at all, right?