Austin Kleon

Mundane magic – aka joy breaks

A Creative Life, art commission, art gallery, artistic inspirations, books, creative thinking, fine art, life of the mind, mental health, poetry, Sustainable creativity, whimsical art, words and pictures

A friend asked how I maintain creativity while doing a commission. My reply: a schedule and lots of joy breaks. I deliberately make the mundane magical. Especially via joy breaks.

Joy breaks, also called “Joy Snacks“, is purposefully taking time to recognize and savor small pleasures. Think of the old fashioned coffee breaks office workers were allowed within a work day but for me now it’s a scheduled “check in” with whatever seems pleasant to me at regular intervals throughout a day. It’s allowing myself to fully feel the pleasure I feel however small the feeling may be. I add a corollary that it’s also avoiding killjoy thoughts – including those U.S. Southern style self depreciating cynical put downs of my own pleasures. It’s taking time to make note of a memorable moment in my journal/sketchbook each day. Yes, notes of things I’m grateful for but also just things I enjoyed and the surprising things that pleasantly caught my attention during the day. It’s also taking a moment to maintain awareness of what is within my control and what isn’t – a crucial thing to remember during creative deadlines – while allowing myself to relax and let go of some things in the Stoic philosophical manner.

In a technical/physical sense while doing an art commission (my current one is for the Caplan Art Designs Gallery) there are times I need to wait for parts of the commission to dry before doing other parts. There are also times when I have extra paint that I mixed for the commission leftover. So part of the mundane creativity task is to monitor the commission as it dries – to stay on task – and yet also use up any excess paint. This week I did a painting of a pig titled “Red Eye Gravy Train”… (details of the painting, the related limerick and a view of my sketchbook is on my Substack  https://sueclancy.substack.com/p/early-starts )

Red Eye Gravy Train by Clancy

I had mixed a pink color for my commission and had a wee bit leftover so I added a bit more of the white and used it on “Red Eye Gravy Train”.

During another days work on my commission I was mixing a particular shade of light blue and the tube of blue suddenly smooged out too much color in a gush. So I had a huge amount of leftover blue color to deal with.

So I consulted my sketchbook for ideas and with a watercolor pencil quickly drew a design and filled in with the extra blue paint (and the wee bit extra green too).

Even after painting that there was still extra blue paint left so I covered two boards edge to edge with the blue till the paint was used up. No clue at this point how I’ll use these new blue boards…but that’s what creative thinking is for!

Since I’ve been so busy working we’ve had lots of beans and rice for our lunches. I have a keeper of my precooked magic beans in the fridge so I toss a scoop or two in on top of the rice in my “push here dummy” rice cooker, to quote my adopted Mom’s phrase for simple kitchen appliances.

I add spices, freshly chopped onions and other vegetables to vary the dishes from meal to meal, press the cook button and head back to the studio to work some more.

Even though these beans and rice bowls I make are simple and cooked in a busy-artist-hands-free-cooking way they still feel like homemade comfort food. (My beans and grains bowl recipe/strategy can be found in my kitchen sketchbook “Favorites So Far“)

I like handwritten works, homemade food and just about anything made by hand. So I  enjoyed this post by Austin Kleon about how AI (and algorithms) can’t kill anything worth keeping.

And I admit to getting a joy snack style chuckle from this article about today’s teenagers going luddite and ditching social media and smartphones in favor of handmade real life!

The additional poetry book title by Andrea Gibson, the new favorite poet I wrote about last post arrived this week! I love it that it looks handwritten. I know it’s a font…but I like the look. Gibson’s words feel so true to my own experiences and the semi-handwritten hand illustrated look adds a sense of comradeship for me.

Speaking of handwritten poetry… I read a fun article about a park ranger who got creative and made a free little library style kiosk for poetry in the park!

One of the most delightful joy breaks was this video of what happened when a girl gave a street musician a coin.

And I hope today’s post itself gave you a small joy break. Remember to take breaks and notice pleasant things. See you next Monday or thereabouts.

Of odd hats flowers and books

A Creative Life, art exhibit, art gallery, art techniques, artist book, artistic inspirations, creative thinking, fine art, household surrealism, magic realism, mundane and magical moments, printed books, rabbits in art, visual thinking, whimsical art

I’m practicing household surrealism as I work towards fine art exhibits later this year. Ordinary objects and plants are sources of inspiration.

Here’s a few sketchbook pages in which I’m playfully combining hats and plants.

Below are some primrose flowers a friend gave us. They sat on my table and I drew them and photographed them.

The flowers eventually became part of a hat in an acrylic painting I’ve titled “Of Sense”.

“Of Sense” – by Clancy- 10 x 8 inches- acrylic and collage on board

In my new series of artworks for exhibits at Burnt Bridge Cellars and Caplan Art Designs I’m using a bit of collage. The collage elements come from my old falling apart copy of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”.

I replaced that old Austen book with a newer intact copy. I’m enjoying my Austen collection. Just like a writer constructs a bibliography for a book being written I tend to have a bibliography behind my fine art exhibits. Jane Austen’s prominent in this year’s art bibliography … I plan to talk more about that in coming posts.

My sketchbooks also reveal what’s on my mind – and I’ll post pages from them too. My sketchbook pages in this post have quotes about dealing with emotions. Jane Austen’s work is about emotions and the social comedy of dealing with ones own emotions or reading the emotions of other people. So I’ve been thinking about that…

My most recent published sketchbook “Another Sketchbook” is a prequel to my current sketchbook and fine art series. You can see it here. Spoiler alert: it’s lots of drawings about books and cultivating one’s mental life.

It’s nothing new for me to be as fully my odd self as possible – in fact I’m doing this as I work towards my new fine art exhibits – but I saw this image below on Austin Kleon‘s Instagram – and I thought heck yes. So I’m going to continue to be odd with household things for a while as I contemplate emotional health and Jane Austen out loud – so to speak.

If you haven’t seen Austin Kleon’s books, blog or newsletter it’s worth a look.

My recent children’s book “This Rabbit” has been read over 11 thousand times on Storyberries.com as of this writing! Wow! Thank you! 🤗 And yes, I plan to make more kids books … as one of my followers you’ll be the first to know. But for a while there’ll be odd household surrealism from me in this space and I hope you enjoy it.

See you next Monday? Stay weird and know that you’re loved by the universe.

This Rabbit likes good eggs

A Creative Life, Alphapets, Alphapets Too, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, Art Word Combinations, artist book, artistic inspirations, author illustrator, books, creative thinking, fine art, greeting cards, humor in art, illustration, life of the mind, mental health, Numpurrs, printed books, publications - publishing, rabbits in art, Sustainable creativity, This Rabbit, whimsical art, words and pictures, writing, writing and illustrating

This Rabbit, my newest children’s book, is now a free ebook and audiobook on Storyberries.com! How fun is that? Click here to both see the book and/or listen to it read aloud! Basically This Rabbit is now officially available worldwide! Wahoo!

The Aurora Gallery also now has my signed books – This Rabbit being one title – along with a number of the original illustrations from the books framed and on the Gallery walls!

For example the Numpurrs book and some of the artworks in that book are there at the Aurora Gallery too.

Also framed are a few of the original illustrations for This Rabbit….and for Alphapets and Alphapets Too. (More about each of these books in my portfolio)

Since rabbits can deliver more than just treats for kids this time of year in addition to making lots of rabbits for a children’s book I’ve also made a collection of my rabbits available on my Zazzle shop. These are intended as fun gifts for grownups; greeting cards, jigsaw puzzles and coffee mugs. (The photos below are a small sample of what’s available on my shop.)

A note card: https://www.zazzle.com/my_heart_is_with_you_note_card-256344942961836795
Jigsaw puzzle: https://www.zazzle.com/rabbit_sax_jigsaw_puzzle-116637967822588564
Mug: https://www.zazzle.com/hares_to_hot_beverages_and_comforts_mug-168629126897898357

Since we’re nearing Easter naturally my thoughts turn from rabbits to eggs. This week I tried, in the name of I’m-to-busy-to-cook, a sheet pan breakfast with eggs, bacon, green bell peppers and sweet potato chunks. It worked reasonably well … one set of eggs got a little more firm than I like but everything – including the eggs – were quite enjoyably edible. And enjoyably edible counts!

This week I rearranged the most important bookshelf in my house: the one in the bathroom. It seems that the average person spends 1 hour and 42 minutes per week in the bathroom. Or to put it another way during an average lifetime we will spend at least 92 full days in the john. Might as well use that time for some encouraging reading. Here below is a photo of my bathroom bookshelf. The purple ceramic thing serves as a bookend as well as holding the extra roll of TP.

For the same reason I have inspiring books in my bathroom – notice all the books by Austin Kleon! – I also like having good artwork there too. Keeping good books and art where they’re viewed often is a way to keep my own creativity sustainable. The framed art you see in this photo is by another Pacific Northwest artist named Jill Mayberg https://jillmayberg.com/ I like the colors and textures in Jill’s work.

We’re here, so we might as well get comfortable. Reading books about writing and creativity are where we learn about, and practice, being human. I’ve written elsewhere in this blog (see links here and here) about the similarities I see between the creative acts of writing and making fine art. Verbal storytelling, writing, drawing and reading are such quintessentially human activities. Are we completely human if we don’t do those things?

These thoughts are why I find it such fun to depict animals reading books and doing other typically human behaviors – it’s my way of pondering what in means to be fully human.

Btw: there are more animals besides rabbits running around in my brain now. The new critters are getting comfortable too. As I wrote in my last post I’ve been thinking about human development and about dealing with feelings. I’ve also been thinking about Jane Austen and her descriptions of emotions within her novels.

Anyway, I’ll keep thinking and drawing… Share more with you next Monday? Oh, and Happy Easter, aka Rabbit-delivers-fun-things-day, in advance. [Thanks again Kris and Nan for this stuffed rabbit!]