I’m having fun with new combinations of colors. In a recent post I tried a yellow and grey color set. After posting about that a friend said she liked pink and grey together. So I tried that combination this week.
I’ve enjoyed playing with odd sized elements so I continued that in this new ink and gouache painting I’ve titled “The Comfort Was Indeed Beyond…”. Again I used some text collage from that falling apart copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice I’ve spoken of.
As mentioned in a prior post I’d played with yellow and grey colors while doing a cup pattern for fabrics on my Spoonflower shop… here’s how that turned out. I titled my pattern “Cups Of Comfort”
And thinking of rabbits…I made an encouragement greeting card this week with a rabbit character. Everyone needs encouragement so by making this card I hope to help people encourage others in their life.
Speaking of encouragement to keep going: we have had some serious snow in the Pacific Northwest United States. Over 18 inches! So that’s encouraged me to continue my reading, working in my studio and puttering in the kitchen. Taking everything that happens in life as encouragement to keep going seems a helpful habit of mind.
Speaking of habits of mind: I tend to blur the line between art studio work and my kitchen. Here’s my kitchen sketchbook and the meatball recipe I made this week. I make meatballs to freeze and store in my freezer to add as desired to future meals. I love having ingredients on hand that make other recipes easier.
As I mentioned in my last post I’m working on a new children’s book with lots of rabbit characters. I did the illustrations first this time…mostly. Here I am working on the poem couplets to go with the illustrations. There’s a cup of tea at my side. My spouse took this photo.
I spread out my illustrations on a queen size bed to sort, resort then sort again. As I sort I’m referring to my poetry and rewriting. I have far more illustrations and poetry bits than will fit in a 32 page kids book. So I have still more sorting and winnowing to do.
This is a physical way of creating a book. With real-life illustrations laid out I’ll write the poems on index cards for sorting purposes. After I get them all sorted then I’ll start photographing the illustrations and typing the poem. Lots to be done. More about this project in future blog posts.
When I was thinking of describing, for this blog, my working process towards a children’s book I thought of my recent reading. Here’s a shelf of books I’ve been collecting on the topic of how our physical world, the objects, technology, the environment affect the ways we think. And vice versa: the ways we think affects our physical world.
When I work on a children’s book using physical elements as opposed to abstract outlines, book dummies or computer files it feels much like what I do in the kitchen. It feels like having a full pantry, a stocked freezer and refrigerator to choose from for making meals. “It” exists and all I have to do is rummage till I find it.
The work feels easier this way…and more fun!
For my pleasure reading this week – with coffee, hot tea or hot chocolate depending on the time of day – I’ve been reading a hard-boiled detective mystery.
I hope you’re snug, cozy and are able to rummage for the good things in your life. See you next Monday?
I’ve always liked pink and gray together. They have a ’50s retro feel. I had to save the magic meatball recipe to try. They sound really good! I love the encouragement card! Mr. Bunny looks so sincere, I do believe him when he says that better times are on the way. For hard-boiled detectives, my all-time favorite by far is Phillip Marlowe.
Oh!! After I finish replying to you I’m googling Phillip Marlowe! Thanks for the recommendation!! It pleases me that you’ll save my meatballs recipe…and I hope you’ll enjoy them when you try them!! Thanks for your comment…. and for the book rec – I’m off to google! 🤗
Stay warm and cozy 😊❤
You’re welcome, Sue! In addition to creating the quintessential hard-boiled detective in Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chander was a consumate prose stylist.
On my reading list now Thank you!!
Oh, good! I’d love to know what you think.
I will keep you posted!! I now have a few Chandler titles on hold at my library…so I excitedly wait my turn!
🤗
Oh, good!!
Such expressive faces on all those sweet rabbits, Sue! I’m looking forward to seeing your new book.
Thank you so much!! I’m making good progress on it and updated my blog today! Thank you so much for your comment!
What fun to see your process with the illustrations and poems all laid out. My best visual artworks are collage pieces, and I’ll often collect many, many elements and then continue to pare them down and rummage through them intuiting what goes together and arranging them to please my eye and artistic sense. I’d never thought to do such a thing with pages of a book.
So many wonderful choices amongst your rabbits. Enjoy the choosing and writing and re-writing! 🙂
I think I’d enjoy cooking more if I had such a fun, illustrated recipe to refer to as I went.
The odd sized elements together intrigue me. I’ve never tried that in drawing my own images. But again, I suppose it’s something I enjoy about collage. When you are limited to found images and/or objects, a mix of proportions happens naturally and adds to the intrigue. I hadn’t realized it until now, that I’ve lost that aspect when moving from cut out magazine and paper elements to digital ones. In digital collage I can manipulate the size ‘to fit’. Perhaps I’ll try capturing some things and leaving them as they land on the digital page…could be fun. Now you’ve got me wanting to do some visual work rather than my novel editing! I have to buckle down on April 1st, so maybe it’s a good time for some creative play. Thanks for the inspiration!
Yes! You’re perceptive! My creative process is very similar to making a collage! I think of collage as permission to play. Odd sizes, odd proportions, odd juxtapositions – it’s all good! I feel like it’s more natural, more like the ways our minds work. We combine and recombine things in our minds every which way. This is why it’s important to think about our thinking and do a bit of mental editing from time to time and purposefully decide what stays, what goes and what needs rearranging.
I’m so glad to know that I inspired you!! Play, have fun and I wish you all the best on your novel editing! You can do it!!! ❤
Thanks! I did play and collect some visual images. But I didn’t put them together yet. I think I’ll need to collect a lot more before I feel the connection between them enough to arrange them. But now I’ve got a folder to fill when in that mood. 🙂
Turns out, I’m so excited to work on my novel that I began the process early. I thoroughly enjoyed organizing the notes and reading through 11 chapters of the draft this weekend. I can see it’s shape clearly and feel optimistic about the next month’s editing work. 🙂
Thanks for the encouragement!!
I’ll continue to enjoy seeing what you’re up to through your blog posts. So glad I decided to ‘follow’ your journey. 🙂 Have a great week!!
This is wonderful news to hear!! I am so glad you’re excited about your work! I look forward to hearing more about it! (I think I have followed your blog too)! Yes, I too find it so helpful to have a spot to collect the various elements of a project, a space to collect whatever excites me when the mood strikes. It’s like creating a basket to catch and hold beads of love to be sewn together over time. Similarly to you I also find it helpful to collect far more than I need and use a collage type approach to sorting and organizing later. It is all fine with me, the messy collection stage and the uncertainty about what it will become…I just love watching projects unfold and “become”. It’s so interesting how a collection seems to slowly come into focus until one day it is clearly there – and couldn’t be anything else besides itself!
A side benefit from collecting more than what will fit into one project is that the “leftovers” in collection can so easily become a new project. It’s like cooking: leftover elements from one meal can become a different meal entirely with a few new ingredients!
Thank you so much for following my journey- and for your comments! Such fun it is to share with you!! I hope you have a great week too!!
I ended up picking up a couple of your puzzles from Zazzle yesterday too. ‘Suspense’ is a perfect gift for a friend, and I picked out another one to do with a friend that centers around tea and has her favorite colors. If she likes it, I’ll let her take it home after we finish it together. I also couldn’t resist the coasters with the bird perching on the coffee cup with a book under its wing. Those are for me. 🙂 I better quit looking at your products for a while. But I promise I’ll come back when I have more gifts to consider. 🙂 Thanks for posting so many lovely offerings to choose from!
Wow!! Thank you so much for giving me the honor of sharing smiles with you and your friends!! You made my day! 😊❤
I also own the book, ‘A Sideways Look at Time,’ that I see there on your shelf. Definitely some interesting and unusual perspectives there. I picked it up at a bookshop that was closing its doors, and I’ve never heard anyone mention it nor seen it anywhere else until now. What did you think of it?
I loved A Sideways Look At Time! I have read it several times (pun intended) now. One of the gifts I got from that book was the realization that time will pass no matter how successful or not any one moment is…that realization made it easier for me to relax and just enjoy making my artwork, reading books, cooking etc whether there was or wasn’t any money in it or any other societally accepted mark of “success”. Seeing time as a gift that transcends how a society defines “a good use of time” was liberating. Whenever I have the feelings of not being “successful” enough or feeling guilty about sitting and reading instead of doing something else “more productive” I remember this book and relax about it. This book is a jewel. Come to think about it I think I found my copy on a bookstore sale table too. 🤔
What did you think of the book?
I also like the freedom of the idea that stuck with you from reading it. But the way various cultures count time interested me the most. Especially how some don’t really count it at all. They just see markers of change. Time is, at its root, Change.
I took from the variation of perceptions of time, a feeling that time doesn’t matter – just the moments. I quit being so driven by the clock. I ended up where you did – more relaxed about doing what I felt was good and important in each moment – instead of trying to live up to a perceived measure of what ‘should’ happen in a day or week or month. I still make goals that are measured. But I don’t feel I’m a slave to it anymore. I only watch the clock when I have an obligation to others involving measured time, and I do so to give them respect – a value worthy of any moment. 🙂
We share the same “take away” that you describe so very very well! Exactly so!!! After reading that book I began being more task oriented in my work rather that time oriented. For example I’d say “I want to do X today” instead of “Do X by 10:30”. I found that focusing on the task – however long or short the time duration it took to do the task – helps me get things done in a way that feels less stressful, more enjoyable.
Such fun it is to talk with you about this wonderful book about time!! Thank you!!
Yes, it was fun to find someone else who read and appreciated it. And extra fun to share what we learned with such positive results for us both. Thank you!