My ability to learn is up or it is down, but sometimes it is “just right”.
Learning to Make anything takes practice. I get experience from practice.
If I try maybe I will have success.
Practice is the travel companion to Art (and anything really).
A finished work, price tagged and “re-homed”, gives at least two people, maybe the gallery too, pleasure.
No one sees my practice.
But it pays.
c. Lemuel
01 November 2018
Sometimes a person needs another person to be whole. The sweet life.
One more round of billiards is a cool end to the weekend. Fine good friends.
Run one more mile before calling it a workout. Stick to it.
That won’t do.
Art requires much of me. On one side, I am filling my notebook with reminders to correct errors. In that book I record the blunders, the almost-but-not-good-enoughs, all the lessons I am learning are in there. “That’s one for the Notebook” is a common phrase around me.
I started over each time. Ate the mistakes, went around the breakdowns, and overcame the log-jams.
That is design. The stylish well-pressed clothes and perfect hair under the lights, well, that is glamour. I hope someone else is paying for that.
On the other side, I am stocking my toolbox with tools that will help me to continuously improve over time, every day.
Attitude is part of my tool box, it is a mental process of improvement. Improvement makes me more efficient and less likely to blunder (so much).
The Fundamentals have been banged in to me from first memories:
Marketing is essential, but I must have something to trade on, something to grasp someone’s imagination and I must communicate clearly and simply.
Just right, those nails have held well.
Talk is cheap. I must rock my art.
That is why I work every day. Art makes sense that way to me or else it is a hobby. Nothing sideways about that, go for it if that is your gig.
Art is my Fire.
Art makes me whole.
If you would like to comment feel free. I usually respond within 24-hours during the week.
I use Field Notes for sketches or to scribble a line I want to remember. The thing is the notebooks help me remember.
The notebooks are well-made and thoughtfully designed. They have withstood rain torrents, sawdust, oil, sweat, and dirt in magnificent fashion. Well designed indeed.
The hazard I have discovered that eats them is the washing machine. I suppose I need to keep two notebooks: one for sketches and scribbles, another to remind me to remove the notebooks from my clothing before I throw them into steamy sudsy water for a robo-wash.
Funny thing, Field Notes did fine in “white-water” when I quit the raft. I suppose I didn’t hit enough rocks to do it any damage.
Need to work more on ‘being aware’. Washing machines are dangerous to notebooks.
I need a label.
Patience is an artistic activity I want in my tool kit. I need patience.
Patience slows me down — smaller amount cross-hatching here and try fewer brushstrokes. Patience is the personal endurance to stop and allow the whole piece to reach a complimentary quality before I move forward.
It is tricky to know which “forward” I should take. That is where patience helps me. Going impetuous is not always the best action. I am reminded the drawing will be there when it is finished then I can see all the parts.
Patience shores up my determination to complete the work. I still sneak in an odd brush stroke if only to see what I can make.
That’s my old friend curiosity.
