"Exotic"

I'm pretty sure that wherever you are reading this, it's probably more exotic than Ohio.  Sometimes I gripe that even our wildlife is non-interesting in various shades of brown.  Brown squirrels, deer, groundhogs, bunnies... brown, brown, brown with a little bit of gray mixed in.  We're great for camouflage here amongst the brown tree trunks and lead gray skies.  The best we've got in winter is a cardinal, and just cuz it's Ohio, even the female cardinal is brown.

Okay, so it's winter here and snow is falling after a week of miserably cold temperatures.  My attitude might be suffering and I think I could really use a vacation to someplace by the sea with colorful people, houses, birds, and fish.

The internet lets us travel without much effort, and the internet has been occupying me a lot lately because I finally have a new website for work.  Let me say upfront, I'm not going to dispute religion here.  You're either Christian or not, Protestant or not -- but I work for the Catholic Church and want to share my latest opus with you.

Redesigning the website for my job  was complicated.  There were different priests with different ideas and different levels of experience all trying to pull all of the order's websites together through an outside firm.  You never realize how many pieces parts and decisions go into a website until you have to sweat out all those details.

I admit I've spent a fair amount of time cussing this year.  I got forgiven for it by a priest one day, but almost immediately resinned, swearing like a sailor up till the end of this project.  But at long last, the website is finally ready.  See it here.  I'd love feedback.  Please make your comments here on my blog or in email instead of on the website.  I know at least one of the photos isn't the best.  I'll improve the photos as I get better shots.

It's interesting for me to look at the pictures on the site because I really didn't mean to have my current job.  I took the PT job for reliable income while I picked up whatever "real work" I could in a bad economy.  It was a little paycheck, but enough for me to get by while I was searching for something else, plus it's close to home.  I really enjoyed the freedom of going to work sometimes and the park other times.

My boss quickly started giving me projects far beyond our original arrangement.  I just as quickly figured out that I'm a lot happier with harder projects than I am with routine tasks.  I started poring over financial reports, talking with printers, designing things in PhotoShop... and then my boss suddenly died in the hall last January.  Now I was boss, and my casual PT arrangement became 7 days a week of OMG how am I supposed to keep up with all this?!!

It's been a stressful and rewarding year.  I work with a lot of nice people, and little old ladies bake cakes and cookies.  People pray around me all the time and there's a beautiful garden for me to watch the little brown birds and brown squirrels.  I get to use a lot of my old skills in art and advertising... but I really want a vacation to someplace exotic!

"Disguise"

I read about American Indians scouting pioneers' camps.  They'd dress like animals and work themselves into some kind of different mentality and become the animals.  The pioneers saw the Indians as animals, the Indians learned about what the pioneers were doing, and the Indians won a lot of battles.

Reading this when I was a kid made me think.  I decided Indians didn't really turn into animals, they just became persuasive in some way to trick the pioneers' thinking.  I was pondering this hard in front of a brick wall at school and decided if Indians could be animals, I could be brick.

People walked past me without seeing me.  A couple of people kind of hitched their step near me and looked confused for a second, but nobody seemed to the skinny kid, even when they barely missed walking right into me.  I was pleased with my success.  I became a tree, greenly translucent as the river, and blended with flowers in the garden. 

I was hiding in the neighbor's blueberry bushes when I really thought I'd get caught by the old Nazi.  He could smell me or something, but he couldn't find me.  He kept pacing in front of me, trying to figure out what was out of place in his world, but he couldn't see me even though I had barely enough time to hide when he came to the blueberry patch.  One of my very white, bare legs was in plain sight, but he couldn't see it while I examined his big, cracked leather shoes which were inches from my face.

Breathe quiet... He did another round of the blueberry bushes and stood in front of me again.  I am grass... I am green leaves... I am an Indian in the enemy camp...  My magic is stronger than yours.

It was a powerful moment for me, and extremely liberating.  I practiced at home in the living room.  One night Dad asked, "Where's Linda?" and I raised my hand in front of him.  "She hasn't been home much lately."  Oh, I forgot to turn off my magic.  I made myself visible again and waved my hand in front of him again.  "Were you there all along?"  "Yes."  Dad kind of shook his head and pondered me for a while.  "I've been practicing being invisible like the Indians."  Dad looked kind of troubled, but he didn't make me explain too much.  "Fey."

Well, yeah, I've always been pretty fey.  Fairy-like and magical.  Sounds kind of cool, but it makes people uncomfortable.

I have to admit I still hide in view, sometimes willing people not to notice me when I'm working in my office because I need quiet time to work.  But really, I think we all do it in one way or another because everybody is putting on false faces to get the responses from people that they want.  We dress the part for work, or a date, or to hang with friends.  This is the face I want you to see, and then that's what people do see.  It's even what we start to see when we look at ourselves because we forgot we're all living in disguise.

"Beginning"

This feather was my first blog post.  I gave it away recently, and somehow felt like it flew to the right home at the right time.  I don't give things like this away very often because it represents two firsts.  First blog post and first art after a long break from creative things.  I like to keep firsts like this because it reminds me of my mental and emotional state at a different time in my life.

I really don't need things to remind me of the past, but sometimes a thing, or smell, or taste can bring that past up quicker and closer than just mentally trying to regrasp it.  I can imagine the sound of Grandma in the kitchen stirring cookie batter with a stainless steel spoon in a heavy glass bowl, and the metallic tink can remind me of the warm sunlight streaming through the white bordered windows in the turquoise room and the smell of vanilla...

When I was laid off, I had a lot of time to relive those kinds of moments.  I liked to write about them, and it seemed like people liked to read them to remind them of their own memories.  Since I've been working all the time lately, now I enjoy hearing about other people's happy childhood memories because it's a short-cut to my happy feelings.

Different pictures flit through my mind of crayfish hiding under algae-covered rocks, Mom's Chanel #5, Dad carving in the garage, my sisters laughing in the yard, red Kool-aid... the pictures come and go in my mind without any real pattern or story, just the bits of color in the pattern of my life.

Today, I told friends about being pushed into a 3rd grade math class when I was still in 1st grade.  I cried when I told the principal "I'm not emotionally mature enough for 3rd grade!" and surprised myself today when my eyes filled with tears again.  Maybe I'll never be emotionally mature enough for 3rd grade?

In the grand scheme of things, this was a little moment -- but it was a first moment too.  The beginnings of feelings of being out of step with the world around me.  I think everybody has them in one way or another, and we don't always get to go back to first grade and learn to adjust as I had the chance to do, with friendly, happy kids accepting me back into their flock.

I don't know how to understand "beginning".  The world is infinite, and infinity is beyond me.  I don't know where the beginning of space or time or God is.  The acorn is the beginning of a tree, but it's a bit of the tree that dropped it, so maybe the beginning of the tree isn't the acorn or the whole line of acorns and trees before it, but something that is so far beyond my sense of reality that it all blurs into... okay, this is probably why I get told to quit thinking so much?

The word for the week is "beginning".  The feather was my beginning into blogging.  'Nuff said?

"Search"

I can't find the battery charger for my camera.  I've searched all over my house and my office at work multiple times without success.  I'd like to blame someone else for this, or blame my recent housekeeping activities, but deep in the back of my mind I know I put it someplace "safe".  It's probably behind the butter in the refrigerator or someplace equally stupid.

The missing charger has become something of a Holy Grail for me.  I pop out of bed in the middle of the night when I think of some other place it could possibly be hiding.  I've been reading The Once and Future King by T. H. White because my brother insisted that it's a necessary part of my literary education, and I feel just as idiotic as King Pellinore searching for his beast.

Sometime after I give up and get a new charger I'm sure I'll find the missing gizmo.  It's the law of the universe.  It's right up there with finding a boy/girlfriend when you've given up looking -- when the universe might laugh at you by providing 2 likely candidates, which confuses things so much that you call Bill Mike or vice versa and both prospects disappear leaving you wishing for a partner -- but you can't find one (or 2) until you languish a while and eventually give up again.

The thing is, we're all searching for something all the time.  We always seem to want something we don't have.  It can be a job, romance, fulfillment... Whatever it is that we don't have, we want to go up a step on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  Once we get something we thought we wanted, it doesn't matter any more.  Now we need ______.  It's a fatal flaw in the human condition.

I wanted a job when I didn't have one, now I want some peace and quiet and time off, especially after working another solid weekend and my laundry for tomorrow still isn't done.  Why is it always all or nothing?  My phone can sit quiet so long that I wonder why I pay the monthly bill, and then 3 people call at the same time.

I had lunch with someone recently who's upset she got passed over for a promotion.  Her BF says she ought to be happy with her current job, and after listening to the details, I think I agree.  She makes close to what I earn with a lot fewer headaches and a whole lot more benefits -- which makes me wonder if I should find a different job, which all goes back to the original premise -- we're never happy enough with what we've got that it stops us from searching for more.  I suppose it's why my ancestors left Europe and following generations decided to walk over mountains with all their stuff.  Something better simply had to be beyond the next hill.

 

I'm working on feeling happy with wherever I am and with whatever I've got, but if anyone finds my battery charger, I'm sure I could be even happier yet!

"Time"

I've often thought that 2013 was one of the longest years of my life.  I did a lot, but all I did was work.  My 20s went like that too, and sometimes I regret spending those late hours when I had all that youth and energy.

Time is relative, no matter how much some scientists want to tell us that falling out of an airplane takes the same amount of time on a clock as sharpening a pencil.  One of the things that I've known acutely through my life is that my life is finite.  There's only so much time to do the things I'm here to do.  Of course it would help a lot if I actually knew what I'm here to do, but I have an internal fury when someone wastes my time because none of us have a lot of it.

I knew all this when I was a kid, but 50 was a really long ways away, and catching crayfish seemed pretty important right then.  It looks different this side of 50.  I see old people hobbling into the Shrine where I work and think old age doesn't seem that far away any more.  How much longer can I run up steps?  Or eat stuff old people can't digest?  Or write the world's greatest novel or paint my greatest masterpiece?  Or maybe have that love affair that lasts forever?

Some of the things I wanted in my life didn't happen.  I wanted the white picket fence and children and the happy husband.  Somewhere along the line I noticed that white picket fences need painted, and I sure don't feel like doing that.  Kids make unnecessary noise and don't always turn out well.  Or the happy husband is sleeping around.  What do I really want, what can I achieve, and what is my real life purpose?  Somehow, spending the day catching crayfish seems like a most excellent use of my time.

I had a coworker who used to tell me that I was difficult, oh okay, she'd call me a pain in the ass.  I'd smile at her and say "and yet, there are people who love me!"  She'd sputter and I'd laugh, but sometimes I think being loved is the only thing that matters.  Sometimes I think hippies and the Beatles were idiots and I'd better get around to painting that masterpiece because that's the only thing that's going to be here after I'm gone.  It's a new year and I have a blank canvas.  I'm not much for New Year's resolutions, but maybe this is the year I'll start exercising, eat right, and paint for real?

Looking over my posts for 2013, I do feel a certain sense of accomplishment.  I'm amazed with myself that I've been able to keep posting even with all the current job demands.  I hung up thumbnails of all my posts since I started blogging, and sometimes I stop and study them.  It makes me feel like I have done something, with plenty of room to do more somethings before I go.

My brother and I were talking last night about love and time, and he contributed this drawing of his perception of things.  I thought about adding colors and messing around with it, but decided I like it the way he did it.  "Send steaks" is what happens creatives use whatever paper is handy, and maybe since it's been immortalized in art I'll send those steaks?  I did the time doodles on the sudoku page

"Reflect"

Yay!  Illustration Friday is back in action!  I reflect all the time, this post ought to be easy, right?  (That's usually about the time when everything starts getting hard, isn't it?)  I deleted my reflections on divorce and dating, contemplated wrinkles, thought about reposting my post about narcissism... Maybe reflecting is something I spend too much time contemplating?

In art, reflections are a funny thing, and most people get them wrong.  Perhaps one of the best lessons I learning in painting class is that there should be some of every color in your painting in all of the objects you're painting.  Just the idea of that opened my world to more possibilities and definitely improved my appreciation of the masters' work.

For instance, You've painted a backdrop with Alizarin Crimson in it.  You paint Aunt Becky in front of it.  The pinks of her cheeks should include Alizarin Crimson so she looks like she's actually living in the setting you've given her.  You've painted Uncle Dave in front of something Ultramarine Blue.  Uncle Dave's 5:00 shadow, or maybe the shadows in his ears, should have some Ultramarine Blue.  Or, sometimes just to keep things interesting use the exact opposite color.  Your mind understands oppositions.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people making these days is treating the object of a painting separate from its surroundings so that object feels like it's floating on a page.  Your object needs something to ground it.  A shadow helps a lot.  Reflecting colors from the ground will ground it more.

This painting is from the era when I was learning such things.  When my painting teacher told me to put orange in the blue bowl, my jaw was tight with irritation.  No way!  Orange doesn't belong on a blue object, and you're just messing with my head!  But there's nothing like a challenge, and I put orange everywhere.  More orange than necessary to tell the truth, but it served as a good lesson.  I loved learning from Mr. Larrabee.

Another thing about reflections is that they come hard or soft.  The highlights on the purple ball in this painting are very white against the dark purple.  That means it's a really shiny object.  The reflections on the ceramic pot are more subtle because the finish of the pot wasn't as shiny.  The reflections on the wooden bowl are most subtle because it wasn't shiny at all.

When you do something metallic, put your darkest blacks next to your whitest whites in the front of the object.  Let those oppositions get more subtle the farther away they are from the viewer.  I have a lot of fun with metallic things.

Here's to hoping that everyone either makes art or appreciates it in the coming year.  Wishing everyone the happiest year yet in 2014!

Happy Holiday!

It's Saturday, it's cold and rainy outside, and I'm ready to do another blog post.  However, no word for the week yet.  Refresh the illustrationfriday.com site...  pfft, still no new word.  There's nothing really to do except take the initiative and start blogging anyway, letting you in on my rambling thoughts and activities...

Happy solstice to everyone!  This means the days will get longer for everyone north of the equator.  Yay!  Tomorrow will be 1 minute longer than today!  Yay!  Oh yeah, and happy Christmas and merry Kwanza and joyful whatever other holiday you might choose to celebrate this time of year.  May you spend this time with people you like, with good and plentiful food.

My brother got 2 large, frozen turkeys from his work last night.  I would happily stick one of them in the oven, but I think I just mentioned they're frozen.  Sigh, delayed gratification again.  I got together with friends for lunch today and had a very happy conversation about books.  I stopped at my usual neighborhood store and laughed a lot with the owners while we contemplated the coming extra minute of light.

People in other departments at work were overheard complaining about that contractor whom I complained about in my post last week.  I feel some vindication, and I'm happy that my part of the project is finally coming together.  I'm abandoning ship this week and will let them fight it out without me while I hope to take some long-overdue time off.  I'll still have work to do at home, but I can do it in sweats and messy hair.

In other words, my world is in a good place in this particular moment.  I don't have any real plans, and I don't really want to make any.  I've hit the refresh button on the IF site a couple more times, and am starting to contemplate that 2' x 4' canvas I bought a couple months ago.  Or maybe another jigsaw puzzle.  Or I could finish the book I've been reading, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.  It's a good book, but I have to admit the idea of yet another book or movie with a vampire in it is irritating me, and I'm more irritated that I'm enjoying the book anyway.

I did this art for a customer who failed to fully appreciate my efforts since they didn't buy it.  I'll admit it's a bad scan, but in my attempt to relax I'm going to go with the file at hand without looking for the original.  Besides, I'm having computer problems, and generally grouchy about software engineers making my life harder than it needs to be, not to mention that the lack of an IF word caused me to do actual work instead of blogging this afternoon.  Oh well, a little less to do this week?

I could go on a side rant about how trying to have Christmas spirit is too much pressure and not enough fun, but sometimes the holidays are fun, and maybe this is your year to have everything you want?

My dog thinks it's tv time and I should quit typing.  I'm thinking about that very nice bottle of wine my boss gave me too.  Maybe sometimes it's perfectly wonderful just to ramble about nothings without any actual point?

Wishing everyone happiness this holiday!