Rhythms, a doodlebug and little piggies

A Creative Life, animals in art, artistic inspirations, books, creative thinking, fabric design, fine art, illustrated poem, kitchen art, mental health, poetry, reading, sketchbook, visual story, visual thinking, whimsical art

I recently read “Hare Brain Tortoise Mind” by Guy Claxton and was reminded of how rhythmic things like weeding a garden or doodling can be calming to the human mind. This physical neurological response to “uniformly random rhythms” is also part of the human reaction to rhythms in songs, poetry or prose – we respond neurologically to refrains and repeated patterns, with variations, in all of the arts.

I include cooking here – it too is one of the fine art forms that has comforting rhythms both for the person stirring the stew and for the person eating. I think of how soothing it is for a small child to be held and rocked – what if all of the human fine arts are basically rhythms that can hold “rock” and soothe our physical brains?

So I’ve been thinking more about rhythmic patterns in my own creative efforts. I’ve begun doing doodlebugs… and other projects that involve “uniformly random rhythms” of patterns. I’m also making some changes to my morning sketchbook sessions that involve making more patterns.

As you know things that encourage good mental health skills are important to me and if I can foster my own mental health via rhythmic pattern creativity – and by sharing my work perhaps help others too – that seems a worthy artistic goal.

Here’s a doodlebug I did in my sketchbook and a fabric pattern I made from it.

Here’s my orange doodlebug pattern on a throw pillow.

Orange Doodlebug by Clancy https://www.spoonflower.com/en/fabric/14583100-orange-doodlebug-by-sueclancy

Recently someone sent me some photos of one of my wallpaper designs that they applied to their kitchen island. They were pleased and said it was “just the whimsy we were looking for”! I’m glad they were pleased!! I’ve learned in the process that grids are fun ways to make visual rhythms!

Here’s a painting I finished this week that I’ve titled “This Little Piggy”. It was inspired by the nursery rhyme: (please note the rhythms) “This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef. This little piggy had none. This little pig cried wee, wee, wee all the way home.” As you can see in my painting below I also repeated visual rhythms, like the rhyme, and did a few playful alterations.

In the video below is a look inside my studio at “This Little Piggy” – I created using ink, gouache and color pencils many of the supplies you’ll see briefly in the video.
It will join my other paintings for exhibits later this year via Amy Biederman Caplan at the Caplan Art Designs Gallery. www.caplanartdesigns.com

In my email newsletter this week I shared my “This Little Piggy” painting and I’ve been sharing my sketchbook pages. I’ve finished sketchbooks C and D and am working on E currently. The doodlebug image above is in book “D”.

This book is my current evening and weekend reading. It has a library in it that is dedicated to poetry… be still my heart!

And because I like to share particularly good things: here’s a link to a good recipe for LENTIL CHILI along with my additional notes and variations: Add a can of roasted chilies and use chicken or veg broth or water (whatever available/handy). Add cumin, dark cocoa, Mexican oregano, chili powder, salt, pepper – cook 30 or more mins on simmer, stir often and add more broth or water if needed.
Variation: add a chopped carrot, frozen corn and or chopped bell pepper

And look at the rhythmic visual pattern of the beans in my cookpot too!!

I hope your week forms a pleasant daily rhythm for you.

See you next Monday or so.

Love wins, kitchen leprechauns and Irish poetry

A Creative Life, Artist interviews and profiles, artistic inspirations, creative thinking, fine art, kitchen art, poetry, recipe illustration, sketchbook, small things, whimsical art

A local brewery was targeted because Drag Brunch is held there. Adults dressing as they like and eating a meal with other adults is offensive, it seems, to a hate group who busted windows and doors at the brewery claiming drag brunch to “justify” their violence. Here’s a recent newspaper article about this topic. https://www.columbian.com/news/2023/mar/11/heathen-brewing-feral-public-house-vandalized-saturday/ So in support of Heathen Brewing and our community my wife and I went with our Fairy Goddaughter to happy hour!

There was a line inside and almost every seat filled!! We had beer, nachos and sweet potato fries. We talked with people in line. We talked with people at the tables next to us. We petted dogs. We laughed! And we all had a grand time! Love is definitely winning!! The Go-fund-me page shows they’ve gotten more than 3000 dollars ABOVE their goal! Yea! Love wins again!!!

The current outpourings of love in response to hate reminds me of the late 1980’s gay rights activism in Oklahoma where I participated. We did what we called “Love Ins”. Wherever hate had happened or was happening many of us, LGBTQ and allies, would fill the floor space with our bodies. We would sit and spread out on the floor playing cards, coloring in color books, building things with toy blocks and we would sing or read poetry outloud. Sometimes a drag queen would read a story aloud. We had printed signs addressing the specific issue at hand. (The basic human right to access healthcare, the right to equal employment, the right to fairness in housing, the right to marry the person we love… to name only a few issues.) We also had general signs saying things like “We’re here, we’re queer get used to it”. But we did NOT verbally shout back at the people shouting hateful things at us. We played our games on the floor and ignored the haters. People had to step over and around us. Whenever a hater purposefully kicked one of us – the person who had been kicked said to another person on the floor “Ouch! Did you see that?” to which many of the floor sitters would loudly respond “I saw that! Are you okay? We love you!” and various other phrases in support of the person who’d been hurt. The perp, the kicker, was deliberately, overtly, ignored because we were focused on creating the loving world we wanted to inhabit. Often the shouting and kicking from the anti-gay side stopped in the absence of reciprocal violent exchanges – or if not completely stopping the violence failed to escalate – it seemed hard, for most, to keep yelling and kicking at people who were just playing cards and loving everyone even if some of the card players were wearing sequins.

And the LGBTQ community did, slowly, gain basic human rights – including the right to marry – even in Oklahoma. Love totally wins!

While thinking about all of this I created a sketchbook page and shared it on my email newsletter… it’s another description of why I do the kind of artwork I do.

Yes, it was so good to see love winning again more recently at the local brewery! Life, love and good things are for ALL of us! That’s what the ideals of equality and democracy are reaching for, however imperfectly, and it’s a worthy goal. It’s a goal for all of us by all of us!

What if our innovations, our future advancements, rely on how well we’re able to care for and about ourselves, people and plants? What if life, the future and everything is really all about love and how well we can do that loving of ourselves, each other and the natural world? (Rebecca Solnit writes a wonderful essay here about the real potential of this!)

Anyway, as I forcasted in my last blog post Amie McGraham at Cook &Tell interviewed me about my kitchen sketchbook and what was on my St Patrick’s Day menu! There are photos and sketchbook pages and recipes – https://amiemcg.substack.com/p/shot-in-the-kitchen-sue-clancy

Here’s a leprechaun, aka me, in the kitchen. 👇

Below is a quick look at my St Patrick’s recipes and what they looked like when served… more details on Cook & Tell.

Here’s one of the Irish poems I enjoyed with my Irish Coffee. It’s by Andrew Cherry. I find it both fun and encouraging.

This is the book the poem came from. 👇

Here’s some green plants in a recent painting I did titled “White Elephant” which I had also mentioned in my email newsletter.

Ah the hardiness of plants like those mentioned in the poem by Cherry! Love and luck to thrive anywhere and everywhere like clover! 🤔😊 Such an inspiration for humans don’t you think?

We’re in this life together. See you next Mondayish.

Touristing, a happy hippo, and a pink elephant

A Creative Life, animals in art, art prints, artistic inspirations, books, ebook, fine art, humor in art, kitchen art, mental health, poetry, sketchbook, travel art and writing, travelog, travelogue, whimsical art, words and pictures, writing and illustrating

We went touristing and drove 20 minutes from our house to Camas WA independent bookstore called Its Bookish. It’s a delightful store focused on children’s books up to young adult with some adult books too. Here’s some views of what we saw on our way to Its Bookish. Not pictured, because I wasn’t able to get pics due to intermittent clouds and terrain, were fleeting views of distant snow covered mountains.

The door to Its Bookish was warmly welcoming and was a delight to see!

Naturally I made a beeline for the poetry section and then had a more general browse. Both my wife and I found books/authors that we’re always looking for that are sometimes hard to find. The store was quite crowded with lots of kids of all ages and their grownups but during a brief quiet moment in the young adult section I snapped this selfie with my wife in the background. It was a pleasant experience. No bookstore cats though which was understandable given the high level of children’s activities.

After we finished at Its Bookish we walked around downtown to a locally owned pub Grains Of Wrath. On our walk we passed by sculptures and many more locally owned businesses with welcoming to everyone signs in their windows or doors!

At Grains of Wrath we had really good beer and the best mac and cheese ever! Here in the Pacific Northwest every pub has their own version of mac and cheese and it’s fun to discover how much variety mac and cheese can have! My spouse and I split the dishes so we each got enough but not too much. We felt quite indulgent!

Back home I photographed our book haul from Its Bookish.

On my email newsletter I shared my sketchbook page of a dancing hippo … and as you can see by the above tourist play I followed the hippo’s advice

By request I made an art print of my sketchbook page… https://society6.com/product/dancing-hippo-reminder_print

Dancing Hippo Reminder – by Clancy – https://society6.com/product/dancing-hippo-reminder_print

Here’s the gouache painting I finished last week titled “Pink Elephant”. More details and the sketchbook page leading up to the painting are on my email newsletter here.

Also last week I released my entire 38 page year 2016 sketchbook as an ebook download. It’s part of my “book of the month club” paid ($7) subscription series on my Substack. My 2016 “Glad to be alive” sketchbook contains drawings from walks in nature and visits to various Vancouver WA and Portland OR area restaurants libraries and other places. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
https://sueclancy.substack.com/p/my-glad-to-be-alive-sketchbook

My friend Bernadette Laganella shared my Magic Beans on her New Classic Recipes blog ! Thank you Bernadette! Besides my beans recipe I shared how I learned during college women-supporting-women supperclub how to survive and thrive as an artist by knowing beans https://wp.me/pcAug8-kR

I’ve really enjoyed sharing both my art images and my stories via my email newsletter and also as a guest on blogs and other people’s email newsletters! I want to create more artist books and learn more about merging words and pictures together… and do more sharing of both my words and images… 🤔

This week, Mar 14th, Amie McGraham from Cook and Tell interviews me and includes my sketchbook pages for St. Patrick’s Day!! You’ll be able to see it here.

I hope your week contains happy hippos. See you next Mondayish.

Peanut Boater and PNW poetry prose bugs

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“Quick! The poetry section!” I said when we entered Annie Bloom’s Books. We were meeting our great niece for dinner and drinks but we were 20 minutes early so we stopped at a nearby independent bookstore. The clerk in Annie Bloom’s pointed to the nicely handwritten sign.

Below is a photo of what I grabbed during a less than 10 minute bookstore browse. Will go back as they have a nice PNW poetry collection. Both Le Guin and Chang are West coast authors. I grabbed The New Yorker because of the article about Salman Rushdie – an author known for resisting fundamentalism and authoritarianism. Here’s a video of Ursula Le Guin resisting capitalism and supporting the arts – and here’s another link about Le Guin’s pro-democracy efforts.

We met our niece at a 19th century style speakeasy called The Bible Club – such a club would be named like this back in the Prohibition era so as to fly under radar. The Prohibition era lasted to some degree until 1966 – and that year is not a typo. Oklahoma, where I lived till escaping 12 years ago, was a “dry” non-alcoholic state until 1959. Until the year 2018 there were still “dry” counties in Oklahoma.

In today’s era Portland Oregon this speakeasy, The Bible Club, only has a house number – no advertising sign – outside it but that’s not due to fears here in the PNW of fundamentalist authoritarians but because this club is also a history museum.

The ambiance, the drinks and food were some of the best we’ve had anywhere! Every element from architecture, furnishings, fabrics, glassware, the cash register- all reflect the 19th century! It was an amazing sensory experience. I forgot to photograph the food it was so remarkably attractive and delicious – I just ate and enjoyed as if the moralist “authorities” might come busting in the door any minute, which they aren’t because thankfully this is the PNW!

I finished a painting that I’ve titled “Peanut Boater” this week. You can see my sketchbook that lead to this painting in my email newsletter.

Here’s a doodlebug I’ve just finished using the Portland Rain ink. The rain and the local Pacific Northwest waterways were a blue-purple-grey color this week and that added to my play-with-ink fun.

This book came in the mail this week. It’s a publication produced by Humanities Washington a nonprofit. This book is as advertised- a gripping read that’ll keep you reading late into the night.

On another rainy day we visited Crooked House Books. Three friendly bookstore cats helped me with the book selection. We had more time to visit this eclectic store and I’m very glad we had the time! Even though the store is small there was so much to see and be amazed by!

We found one book written and illustrated by Edward Gorey and one book of Northwest poets that was illustrated by Gorey. Two additional books of poetry and one mystery novel also came home… our book haul is pictured below.

One of the books I found is a book of Irish poetry published in 1909! I’m becoming quite enchanted by storytelling in verse.

It our current day era of book bans, bans on blogs that mention Florida politicians, “don’t say gay” lawmaking and modern prohibitions on women’s healthcare or trans healthcare, bans on preferred pronoun use, plus renewed efforts to white-wash and rewrite history – I find myself interested in prohibition eras from the past. I find myself curious about how authoritarian regimes were/are resisted all over the world. I find myself interested in stories and how storytelling – and poetry – help us survive and thrive. The more I read and do my own creative efforts the more I think stories can and do make life more livable.

It’s related to this idea that’s thumbtacked to my studio wall.

Speaking of being glad…this coming Tuesday, for my paid subscribers, I’m releasing an ebook version of my 2016 sketchbook on my email newsletter.

Oh, and here’s another more in focus photo of the Crooked House bookstore cat and the wooden whiskey box shelves. Gosh that was such a fun bookstore visit!

Please keep the art, stories and poems with the playful, lighthearted silliness coming. I’ll do my best too! We all need more love and kindness!! As the variously attributed saying goes “a little nonsense is valued by the wisest”!

See you next Monday-ish.

P.S. here’s a resource and here’s another telling about some of the unpleasant political stuff I alluded to in this post.

Flying pigs, pastries and doodlebugs

A Creative Life, animals in art, artist book, artistic inspirations, books, creative thinking, fine art, humor in art, poetry, reading, sketchbook, Storyberries, whimsical art, words and pictures

One pig leads to another it seems. On my email newsletter I shared a flying pig and what inspired it. The finished painting was called “The Plot”.

That in turn inspired another pig with wings to appear in my sketchbook.

Which then became a painting titled “Higgledy-Piggledy” which I also shared in my email newsletter along with other things not mentioned here because I’m trying to not repeat myself too much across my social media, but … this is what’s going on in my world.

My artist book “We All Count” is on Storyberries now!!!
Freely available via this link as an #ebook !!!! https://www.storyberries.com/bedtime-stories-we-all-count-by-sue-clancy-experimental-art-books-counting-books/

This is now my 20th #childrensbook !! (There’s a search bar on Storyberries.com where you can type Sue Clancy to see all 20 of my books!!)

In case you missed my video flip-through…

Over on my email newsletter I had shared my original idea book notes in my poetry sketchbook… but so you don’t have to click away here it is below. My sketchbook is where everything begins…

We went out for pastries and coffee earlier this week before the snow descended. While there were muffins (like in my Higgledy-Piggledy painting above) I opted for a croissant. I thought about drawing these delectable morsels but instead of drawing I just enjoyed eating.

In an earlier post I shared about getting a set of Haikubes … well, this was the playful poem absurdity that happened this week…

…followed by a doodlebug dancing. Instead of being a “violet grace” color though the bug ended up grey blue-green with a purple shadow. 🤷‍♀️

I agree with Austin Kleon here when he says “Books are toys”. They are! Art supplies are toys too. So are cooking utensils. Here’s a stack of books I’m playing with.

Reading about creativity and how it works neurologically is fascinating to me. Creativity is what creative people do – whether the artistic method used for expression is writing, drawing, music or any of the other arts – and regardless of the mood or topic expressed. Much like heating food is what a kitchen stove does – whether the stove is used to boil, bake, saute or in any way apply heat to a soup, a sandwich or a casserole.

Anyway, hope your week is full of grace and playful creativity in whatever colors or flavors.

See you next Monday-ish.

Marinating in the fun stuff

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This week I finished the painting I was working on in my last post and I continued playing around in the fun too!

I played with the new inks (see also my last post).

I made postcards for friends with these 2 inks as seen on my Substack newsletter. As you know I see art as a way to connect with people.

Playing in my sketchbooks is a way to explore and experience new art supplies as well as my own thoughts and feelings. I used on of the larger 8 x 10 inch sized sketchbooks as seen in this recent post when I got a batch of new sketchbooks.

This week we visited a locally owned bookstore called Broadway Books. I love their curated poetry section and got two books of poetry and some “haikubes” for added wordplay fun!

Another day this week we went to a 2nd Powell’s bookstore location on Hawthorne street. They have completely different book selections in each of the Powell’s bookstores so it’s fun to visit the curated collections for a good browse.

And we celebrated our anniversary of 27 years together and 10 years married at one of our local craft brewpubs!!

What a great week of soaking up the fun and celebrating life!!

Much love to you all and thanks for sharing in the fun!!

See you next Monday!

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 )

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.

Painting, poetry, pasta, pretty cups and books

A Creative Life, art commission, art gallery, artistic inspirations, books, creative thinking, drawing as thinking, fine art, Fine Art Commission, mundane and magical moments, poetry, sketchbook, small things, words and pictures

I’m very busy working on a top secret painting commission for Caplan Art Designs. So instead of talking about that – look! Poetry! Pasta! Pretty cups! Books!

Poetry: Two books of Andrea Gibson‘s poetry came by mail from one of my local bookstores! Gibson is my latest favorite poet.

Here’s one of Gibson’s poems on page 32 of You Better Be Lightning.

Pasta: My wife got a mixer with the pasta attachments for Christmas! So we’ve been making pasta together! She makes the pasta from scratch while I make the sauce.

Here she’s making large elbow noodles.

I made a butter and parsley sauce for our first pasta attempt so we could primarily taste the homemade noodles. Yum!! Homemade noodles really are worth the effort for the flavor!!

Pretty cups: Recently we’ve been to a few special events with dear friends. There were pretty cups at each occasion. Having recently made a calendar of coffee cups perhaps I was primed to notice them. Even so the cups, and my awareness of them, added a soupecon of extra special to the time with friends.

Here’s a related-to-cup-thoughts page from my sketchbook.

Books: I finished reading this book about books and oh my! What a marvelous invention writing things down and storing them in a book format has been for us humans! And how easy it is to stand on the shoulders of giants simply by reading.

I enjoyed this video about why we should read more. This article about how reading is itself a creative act. And this article about how creativity is actually a practice of resiliency.

So here’s a photo of one of the books I’m reading now in addition to Andrea Gibson’s poetry, a book of short stories and a book of essays.

Hope your week contains good books in it. I’ll see you next Monday or thereabouts.

Adventures in the dining room: holiday art and Jolabokaflod books

A Creative Life, art supplies, art techniques, artist book, artistic inspirations, books, greeting cards, poetry, whimsical art, words and pictures, writing and illustrating

So as to not spoil holiday surprises I’m sharing the advent calendar adventures on my social media, including this blog, and celebrating Jolabokaflod. A friend gave us an advent calendar of Arteza art supplies – which has been lots of fun to open! Even more fun is discovering a new source for good quality art supplies!

I designed a few projects my wife and I could do together. Here’s the first one.

I made triangle tree shapes.

My wife did the tree ornaments.

And then she did the stars on the tree tops.

I did the shadows and hint of snowy landscape.

Then I did red wrapped gift box shapes.

And my wife did the gold bows on the gifts.

Another joint project is our gift book to be given away for Jolabokaflod aka holiday book flood. This gift will be given Dec 23rd on my email newsletter so please be sure you’re subscribed! You can give a subscription to someone else too.

Here’s the Jolabokaflod poem I wrote and recorded – in case you missed it.

Yes, were getting very serious about Jolabokaflod now and here’s how it goes at our house!

And here’s some of the books that have come by mail from 3 of our local independent bookstores!!

Happy Jolabokaflod to everyone! Happy Holidays too!!

P.S. please make sure you’re subscribed to my email newsletter so you can get your gift ebook on Dec 23rd!!

Dogs on the block and places

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, artist book, books, Dogs in Art, fine art, gift books, illustrated poem, pet portraits, poetry, public art, sketchbook, The Professional Dog

This week the holiday begins at Caplan Art Designs with seven artists who have created 3D box sculptures. I’m one of the seven! My box sculpture is titled “Dogs On The Block”. Here’s a series of photos of my box. You know I like dogs…