writing advice

Leaves books and rabbits

A Creative Life, animals in art, Art Licensing, art techniques, artist book, artistic inspirations, author illustrator, books, creative thinking, fabric design, pattern design, printed books, product design, published art, rabbits in art, reading in art, recipe illustration, sketchbook, small things, surface design, Sustainable creativity, visual story, words and pictures, writing, writing and illustrating

After finishing my Pembral Forgets project I was asked if I would make a fabric design from the leaf pattern I had created for the book Pembral Forgets which was written by Steve Tubbs and illustrated by me – (details here)

So this week I’ve been making a fabric pattern of leaves that I’m calling “Leaves From Pembral” and here’s my process…

First I cut out a 12 inch square area of the original hand stenciled paper I did for the Pembral Forgets book. Carefully I chose an area that wouldn’t have leaves touching the 4 edges of the paper. Then I used acrylic paints and created more stenciled leaves to fill in where there were gaps, trying to make the new design square balanced and interesting.

When the above was dry I “cut up my darling” – to borrow from advice given to writers about editing – and made all 4 outer edges now be on the inside of my 12 x 12 inch square paper. Basically I turn my design inside out.

Next I fill in the new gaps with more stenciled leaves.

Then when that was dry I photographed the finished design, trying to keep the soft creamy look of the original and keep the pattern square with my camera. This is easier said than done. After several attempts I was happy with this image below.

Next I uploaded my digital photos into my laptop and used the Spoonflower system to set up my pattern for a basic repeat…so my pattern will flow across any length of fabric without interruptions.

As I worked on the digital file I was thinking of leaves falling and then laying on a wet sidewalk.

What you see below is a screenshot of my finished pattern as I set it up to be repeated on a “fat quarter” an 18 x 21 inch area.

Now I’m waiting to get a proof sample from Spoonflower which I will approve – or not – before it gets added to my public shop on Spoonflower. https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/sueclancy After that I will tell the person who requested this fabric pattern that it’s there and will hope they’re pleased. In the meantime I hope this blog post will amuse…

I enjoyed playing with leaves in my sketchbook, too, this week – with my rabbits. Another bit of advice for writers is to develop a character and use them to explore ideas and situations instead of creating a new character each time one sits down to write. This technique is most obviously used by mystery novelists who create a character (or two) that repeat over a series of books.

I’ve borrowed this concept for writing and applied it to my fine art and artist books… I have certain motifs and characters – selected species really – which repeat in various ways throughout my projects within a span of time.

In my sketchbook page below I have leaves, books and rabbits. For almost a year now rabbits have been a constant character… (previously I have done series of Dogs and Cats … click on the word Dogs or Cats to see a collection within an artist book)

I posted the above photo on my social media pages and someone asked for an art print of my sketchbook page. So I created an art print of the sketchbook page on my Society 6 shop. The unframed print looks like this (below)

In the evenings I’ve been reading about meditation and, of course, reading a mystery novel. Thinking of little things; leaves, drops of water, ones breath are ways of calming oneself for meditation. Little things; scraps of paper, drops of blood, air quality are often clues in a mystery novel. So I keep thinking of little things…

I broke up a chocolate mint and put it in my hot chocolate. It was a tasty little touch – Yum!

I know it’s not a holiday but little pleasures really do make an ordinary day feel special.

Speaking of feeling special; my artwork was featured on Louise Primeau’s website https://louiseprimeau.com/featured-artist-sue-clancy-from-vancouver-wa/ Thank you for your kindness Louise!

Hope we all have many small pleasures to enjoy this week. See you here next Monday?

libation label list line

A Creative Life, art commissions, art techniques, artistic inspirations, creative thinking, functional art, illustration, kitchen art, poetry, sketchbook, Sustainable creativity, visual thinking, words and pictures, writing

Around the edges of doing a cat portrait commission and Chef Carosi’s illustrated recipe I’ve done some wine label artwork to be used by Burnt Bridge Cellars for their 2018 Holiday Wine. To meet the winery’s request for art that was “festive but not religious” I used 5 writing techniques along these lines to generate visual art ideas:

  1. Freewriting: I wrote and doodled in my sketchbook concepts that called to my mind a social festive season not attached to religion. This also meant writing down the religiously associated concepts so as to avoid them!
  2. Listing: I wrote a list of items one would buy when planning a casual social event. I doodled some of the items too. I also looked up some event-planning websites and went to a local party store and browsed – adding to my list.
  3. Clustering: I selected a verb/adverb from my free-write or a verb related to an item from my list and wrote further associations that came to mind when thinking of that word.
  4. Thesaurus/Dictionary/Encyclopedia/Google: I looked up words like “party”, “festival”. I looked up historical references to past well-known holiday parties.  I read poetry that mentioned parties or was associated with the Holidays. (Twas the Night...)  I thought of, and researched, holiday fashions such as the “ugly sweater”.
  5. Consider the Audience/Project Purpose: After I had done the above 4 techniques, in a wild free-wheeling way, I looked at what I had written/doodled from the point of view of the Burnt Bridge Cellars winery and what they wanted to accomplish with the label art during the Holiday season.

Then I created several images based on the above brainstorming sessions:

Cat A List by Clancy
“Celebrate!” by Clancy

Then I sent the above artwork in for the winery owners consideration.

Here below is the artwork they chose and how it looked on the bottles:

MyWineLabel72

The winery was pleased with my work – and has said that their customers were too! (Whew!)

The Holiday Wine inside the bottles is very good (I’ve tasted it!) and I feel like I got to participate in a collective effort to add enjoyment to people’s Holiday Season! What fun!

P.S. I originally got the idea to use writing techniques when generating visual art ideas from reading a book by Umberto Eco titled “Confessions of a Young Novelist“.

on writing and giving speeches about art

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, fine art, writing

During my art exhibit opening Oct 1st I’m giving a 5 minute talk about my artwork. If you had told me when I was 9 years old that one day I would, fairly regularly, give short public speeches about my artwork during gallery openings I would not have believed you. At the time I was in speech therapy daily and the thought of talking in class terrified me. I had only worn hearing aids for a year or so and had been deaf for far longer. Hearing sounds was still new and scary.

I spent lots of school and recess time sitting with my speech therapist in a tiny area partitioned off by a curtain from the school’s boiler/heater/janitor’s office, wearing my new hearing aids, trying to understand in that noisy space what the therapist was saying and then accurately repeat out loud what she’d said… well, let’s just say it was a stressful time.

After a year or so of that my therapist and I were good friends – and I’m now 10- but still when it came to answering a teacher aloud during class I’d sweat and my heart would pound and my voice would shake. So my therapist suggested that I take acting classes. I did! And over a long time, and lots of acting classes, I became a regular ham, okay, a ham and cheese on wry, and talking in class or anywhere else became relatively easy.

Eventually the only people who said anything about the quality of my speech, like “you talk funny”, were under the age of 6. The kid’s parents usually gasp in embarrassment and try to un-do their kids comment. I typically ignore the grown-ups and talk directly with the kid, explaining that “I don’t hear like you do” and pull off one of my hearing-aids to show the kid and answer questions. After such a conversation I usually have a friend-for-life in the kid (and profoundly relieved grown-ups).

Fast forward lots of writing classes, lots of practice writing and speaking, lots of reading books on writing, books on giving speeches etc. – and here’s what I’ve learned about writing talking about ones artwork:

When writing a speech: write like you talk, avoid jargon (it is usually hard to say anyway), in simple brief terms describe what kind of art you do, how you do it, a short bit about why you do it – ideally revealing a bit of who you are in the process – then sum up with “what people enjoy about your work”/ “how they benefit” from your work.

When delivering the speech: remember to breathe, talk slowly enough so as to pronounce everything, and keep going even if you mangle a word (most people over the age of 6 are not likely to point out the error). Practice your speech out loud. Practice speaking confidently. Practice smiling at your audience. Practice thanking everyone for listening.

It helps to have a sympathetic supporter listening to you while you do all this practice.

Here is a photo of my speech practice partner – Rusty – who has kindly listened – for days now – as I have practiced the short talk I’m to give Oct 1st.  If only my 9 year old self could see me now! Oh wait…

rnwnewbedtoy

Sue Clancy’s dachshund Rusty listening as Sue practices her speech for the Oct 1st wine dinner opening for her fine art exhibit via Caplan Art Designs

 

 

Sue sketches Ursula

A Creative Life, sketchbook, words and pictures

Sue Clancy's sketchbook page created during Ursula K. Le Guin's talk at Powell's bookstore

Sue Clancy’s sketchbook page created during Ursula K. Le Guin’s talk at Powell’s bookstore

Disclaimer: the “quotes” written around the drawings are what I think heard Ursula Le Guin say during her talk at Powell’s books – any and all errors, miss-scribbles and darn-doodles are mine and mine alone. Any and all brilliance, insight and encouragement is Ursula Le Guin’s.  Her website is http://www.ursulakleguin.com/ and she does stuff here: http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/ – And you can get more accurate quotes from Powell’s twitter feed here powells.us/1UI5Epa