Blocked and Unblocked

If you follow my posts you know that I was away from home in January, and I got an incredible amount of work done.  It was great!  I completed pieces that have been 'in progress' for a long time, years in some cases.  I also came home and made some very big decisions about the direction of my career.  You know, the kind of decisions that make your blood vessels constrict just thinking about them.  This was followed by several days of glorious Flow working on some pieces that had been too large to take with me, taking up the paint brush and experiencing the physicality of acrylic painting and how it differs from my scratchboards, basically to put it in terms my sister uses 'falling in soft' with my art.  

It was great.

Then it all stopped.

I've experienced what I've called artist's block before - but never like this.  One morning I got up and looked at my paintings in progress, looked at my scratchboards in progress, went to get some coffee, wandered around and looked at the works again, checked Facebook and email, glanced at the painting on the easel beside me, refilled my coffee, ambled out on the porch and just stood there looking at the scenery for awhile.  

Okay, so I was having an off day - everyone's entitled to an off day if they have the luxury of taking one, tomorrow will be better!

But tomorrow wasn't better, nor was the day after that. 

I tried the 'work for 15 mins' approach which usually does lead me to get into the groove and keep working... but after 15 minutes I felt restless and would get up and find some dishes that needed cleaning, or laundry, or maybe I should have a snack or more coffee.  There was almost a strange undercurrent of desperation to physically not work on my art even though that's what I wanted to do.

Sketchbook...whyyyyyy?

Then I would stand on the other side of the room with my coffee looking warily at my works-in-progress (of which several had accumulated by that point).  I wanted to work on them, I just couldn't.  I would distract myself by thinking about them... 'how will I tackle the background on that one, where do I want the light source coming from on this one, what colour scheme will I use for this other one'.  All valid things to ask, and issues that truly did need to be addressed for each work.. but not necessarily at that moment, and not for so long, and not at the expense of actually working on the art itself!  They were becoming an excuse, a distraction.  Similar to the housework, which also needed to be done - but again there is a time for chores and a time when chores are clearly a procrastination tool.

This went on day after day.  Then, predictably, the fact that I'd not gotten really anything done for several days started to cause stress.  One very non-constructive way to deal with stress is to escape into video games.  When you're feeling unproductive firing up Skyrim is really NOT the best thing to do (although Jane McGonigal can probably explain better than me why this is precisely the kind of thing that we DO do when feeling nonproductive).  So of course it's exactly what I did, and for me the reason that it is not a good coping mechanism is that I do it with gusto (yes, a bit of diversion in Skyrim is cool... Skyrim until 4:30am is not cool), and then I berate myself about what I did until I feel so bad that the only answer is to eat pringles and go back to Skyrim where I can save the world and can't hear the voices in my head telling me what a lazy procrastinator I am (also not effective if you listen to Jane's twin sister, Kelly).

I'm not an artist, I am a great Enchanter of Things!

It reminded me a bit of depression.  That obstruction to feeling that one can have.  You remember what it was like to feel - happy, sad, etc - but there just seems to be a space between you and there.  I remembered how to do art, what it felt like, and yet there was this uncrossable chasm between me and that ability.  It is the strangest thing in the world to me to stand in front of my easel with a half-completed painting or scratchboard on it and simultaneously feel so strongly that I want to work on it and at the same time that I absolutely can't. 

My mind would say 'Pick up the scratch tool just do a bit!' and nothing would happen.  I actually had conversations with myself - 'Work on this a little, come on, you know you can do this, you know how good you feel when you are doing it, you know what nice artwork you can produce if you just pick up the gorram blade and do something!' (yes, apparently one of my inner voices is Jayne Cobb) to which my internal answer was a vague 'Yeah.... I know....' followed by, you guessed it, nothing.  As if my muscles just wouldn't respond. 

The cognitive dissonance of this eventually would make me have to walk away from the art, the situation, the whole thing - and find something to distract my brain that was now becoming distressed.  This is when some house chore would prove absolutely urgent to complete, or I'd remember that I had to go pick up groceries, or if none of the above were available I always knew that Skyrim or Borderlands were just over there waiting for me. 

Oh Gaige!  You seductive minx!

During this period I stumbled on something that I think really helped - it is a series of YouTube videos from Peter Draws.  In desperation I did 'Circles & Lines'...

 Which spontaneously spawned 'Stems & Leaves'....

Then I tried 'P or P' (Perpendicular or Parallel).... and little animals started to appear!

Bonus points if you can guess what animal is top and center (and where he's from)!

I'm not saying that my block broke immediately, but these exercises really did help.  Around the same time a friend of mine loaned me 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron.  An old book, but one I've amazingly never read.  I'm working through it week by week now and it's just awesome!  I highly recommend it whether you're blocked or not, whether you consider yourself an artist or not.  I'd say ESPECIALLY anyone reading this blog who does not consider themselves an artist should read this book!! (I'm serious, do it!  Do it now!).

She discusses blocking in great depth, getting into the psychology of it.  Her exercises are very helpful too (I'm still working through her 12 week program).  And as my block lifts I do think this was a stepping stone in moving forward with my art - it was terrible while in it, but now I feel better than pre-block about what I'm doing.

Post-block ideas for tiny scratchboards - yes IDEAS!  And lots of them!

During the period of block one of the several works-in-progress that were suffering was a commissioned portrait of an amazing little dog named 'Banner'.  His portrait sat on my drafting table and stared at me, day after day.  Each time I put blade to board, though I was making scratches but I didn't feel that I was making progress.  The work was inconsistent and I didn't feel confident.  The nagging idea that I was going to screw up anything I touched was hard to keep fighting - I felt weary from it.  But being a commission there wasn't the option of just stopping so I pressed on, until one day I looked at it and realized I had to start over.  Yes, after more than 10 hours invested in the work I took out a new board and started from scratch.   

(LOL - I see what I did there!)

"Banner" first draft (abandonded).

In hindsight though, I have to wonder if the fact that I was so blocked, and so detached from my work, is why I was able to see the flaws in the above piece - and to learn some very interesting things that I knew but had always sort of done intuitively.  My biggest concern was that the crop was off - the face was slightly too large, his chin was going right to the edge of the board.  The other is that his eyes looked 'wrong'.  My blocked state meant that I spent much more time than normal staring at it and pondering why they looked wrong, and then it occurred to me - they are too human!

When a dog looks straight at you, as Banner was in the reference photo, their eyes will appear a little bit crossed.  Most dog's eyes are slightly on the sides of their head, as compared to ours which are front facing.  So the original portrait, in which Banner's pupil's were perfectly centered, was just plain wrong.  When I restarted the piece I was easily able to correct this - and the eyes in the final portrait turned out to be my favorite part!

'Banner' final image (c) Pam Boutilier

I wanted to share both this experience and my crappy, abandoned first draft because I want everyone reading this to know that this happens to everyone even though it doesn't ~feel~ that way when it's happening.  You look around and everything posted online by every artist looks polished and finished and gorgeous and you know that you alone suck, in fact you could be crowned the Queen of Suckitude.  In reality though every artist has bad pieces, things that didn't work out, things that they struggled with - they just don't generally post them on their website, which makes sense, but is easy to forget that when you're blocked or feeling down. 

If you're blocked, or the self-confidence gremlins are gnawing at your heels, or your inner critic just won't shut up - I highly recommend you sit with your sketchbook and do Peter's exercises.  Do them long enough and the gremlins will get bored and leave, the critic will fall silent and then your shy little artist will come out and you may find animals, or figures, or flowers - whatever it is that you like to draw - starting to emerge from the abstraction.

Art is not without struggle.  And being a good artist doesn't mean that you don't struggle, it means that you keep making art, you find a way through, and you forgive your inner artist if they hide from you for awhile. 

A moment of soul-baring

So much has changed recently.  For some reason blogging about all of these things - moving, job changes, etc - just doesn't feel right.  What does feel right is that as a result of all of these changes I find myself sitting outside sipping coffee and looking out across a Caribbean landscape.  I find myself with what I've always wanted, more time to devote to my art, and with that comes a weird kind of pressure and an even weirder kind of mental 'push back'.  

 Quickie sketch of how I'm feeling - not how I look, just how I feel!

Faced with the freedom to develop my art career my Left brain starts in on me, telling me what kind of art I should be doing, how many hours I should do it, how I should feel while I'm doing it.  As much progress as I've made in the past years to stop self-identifying with my L-brain voice (or 'chair-voice' as I like to call it, because.. reasons) it's still present and in times of stress or change it's hard to not listen to it. 

'If you're going to call yourself an artist every drawing or painting you do should be beautiful'

'People don't get to do art as a career, there's too much competition out there, you aren't good enough'

'If you are getting to do all of this art you should enjoy it, every minute of every day, if you don't love every minute you're not a real artist'

'You should do art of things people want to buy, but not anything that's already out there because that's just derivative'

'Did I mention that you're not good enough - your art is (insert contradictory critiques here - not spontaneous enough, not planned enough, too subtle, not subtle enough, too unusual, too mainstream)'

You see, chair-voice is insane.  Its arguments are usually contradictory and always stressful.  So why do I even listen?  Well one thing I do know is the most sure-fire way to shut chair-voice up (and all the voices in my head) is to do art... that's part of why I love it.  And yet if chair-voice gets a good grip on my mind it can be hard to shut it out.  It's also good at coming up with self-preserving excuses to not work on art, usually in the form of 'Oh, you should update that thing on your website... it would be really good to make a list of your art inventory... you should look for websites on art pricing and time management and....'

And on it goes. 

This morning I was reading the blog of an artist I greatly admire, Tina Mammoser, and she was talking about 'morning pages'.  You know, first thing in the morning writers should have a notebook on their bedside table and write in it, people should jot down whatever is on their mind or they are inspired to write... something, anything.  For an artist it can be an exercise in just getting some drawing done every day - which is so important, and yet during times of stress or distraction can get skipped.  

After reading her post and thinking 'well, what would I sketch if I were to draw something right now' the first thought that popped into my head was 'a blossom'!  You see the beauty of where I'm living now is that there is beauty everywhere... you can't walk down a street without glimpsing the most gorgeous blossoms, and that's without even looking a the ocean or mountains.  I turned a deaf ear to chair voice, who had many other ideas about what I should do with the rest of my morning, and grabbed my cheapo sketchbook.  I went out in the front yard and said 'hi' to the big Caribbean caterpillar on our tree and plucked a blossom from one of the shrubs.  Without any particular goal or censure I just started sketching... 

I started by just drawing one petal - chair-voice was yelling at me to draw the whole thing and draw it well, and simultaneously reminding me that I don't draw flowers and it will probably turn out ugly.  So to combat the self-doubt that was stalling me I decided to just sketch one petal.  As so often happens I became completely engrossed in my blossom - the shapes and curves of the petals, the construction of the stalk, the play of the colours and sure enough I couldn't stop and had to draw the whole thing from a different angle. An hour of art (and some coffee) later and I feel so much better about everything!

I'm not going to commit to doing morning pages every morning, or schedule a specific time or a certain duration of minutes or hours I'll spend doing this - those all sound like suspiciously chair-voice types of things.  Instead I will just remember how good sketching makes me feel, and on those days when chair-voice is particularly strong I may start by just drawing a doodle, or a part of something.  And when I feel myself failing I'll just visit Tina's blog again!

Life Drawing at the Gladstone

I find myself wondering why I feel the need to keep this blog alive.. maybe because closing it seems like it would signify some sort of resignation about Cat-in-a-Box which I'm not prepared to do? It's been a hectic and roller-coaster-ish sort of year and the fact that my art has suffered a backseat through the ride is not shocking or unreasonable given the circumstances. Nor does it mean that my art is dead or without hope. Things are settling down now, and my right brain is quietly asserting it's position again. Fortunately I am better able to hear it than I have been at times in the past.


I am currently living near Toronto. Near enough that I was able to attend life drawing night at the Gladstone Hotel this week. Apparently the Art Bar at the Gladstone has had an ongoing weekly figure drawing meeting since 1957. Going down there took a bit of mental effort on my part. To be perfectly frank, the idea of interjecting myself into a completely new and unknown social situation is nerve-wracking for me. The stress can be alleviated somewhat by knowing exactly what is expected during said situation, however in this case I could find precious little about the life drawing session other than the location, date/time and cover cost (can we say 'stressful' boys and girls?) But life drawing... I LOVE life drawing!



I NEED to sometimes do some structured gesture drawing (is that an oxymoron?). Left to my own devices I know too well what will happen... after a long break in making art I will dive in to a complex scratchboard or something similarly detailed and demanding, I will of course fail miserably because I've been living left-brained for so long, and then I will quail and give up. The left brain will tell me that I have more important things to do anyway, and my right brain will wither and fade. I know this, I know how far this can go, but I also know the solution.



After a hiatus (all the time really, but especially after a hiatus) I need gesture drawing to work the art muscles. I need low expectation, fast paced, right-brain directed activity to loosen up, build confidence, and get the creative juices flowing. The more I do it the less stilted and stiff my work is, and the more I enjoy what I do. My work turns out better and it smooths the pathway for doing the complex and detailed scratchboard. It's like an athlete warming up, in a way.


So armed with the conviction that this was necessary and good for me, I decided that I WAS going to this session. Social anxiety or no. I plotted the location into my iPhone and set off with plenty of time to get there (and a secret plan to scope it out knowing that if it was too much I could always run away and go back home :D). Of course I somehow got the wrong address entered into my phone and spent some confusing minutes wondering if the whole thing was a hoax as I drove around a slightly scary downtown area of Toronto. iPhone to the rescue though, the correct address was found and I arrived... late. Nothing helps the social anxiety of putting oneself into a new situation like showing up late, interrupting the session, and oh... entering through the wrong door.

*sigh*

Yet despite all of that I made myself press on, I went around to the correct door, slid in as quietly as I could, and despite some annoyed looks from a few people the suffering ended there. And what I can say is that the anxiety was well worth it. I arrived in the middle of a pose, quietly took out my art supplies (which were kind of sad since my spectacular organizing skills have resulted in being unable to find most of my dry media stuff since the move) and started sketching. The room was quiet and every five minutes or so the leader would announce the change and the model would reposition herself for the next pose.




I say 'quiet' because there was no talking - there was a background supply of jazz music and the scratching of pencils or occasional swish of a brush in water, but no human speech. There is something about being in a room of a dozen people who are all in right-brain mode. It is out of the ordinary, for my day to day life at least, and it is really, really refreshing. There is no chitchat, almost no interaction, everyone is focused on the model and the page in front of them. Unlike so many other social interactions each person is doing their own thing, being in their own mind, you don't have to measure and weigh what you say, how you look, what the other person is thinking, how they are responding to you. You can sit and enjoy the presence of other humans, sharing an experience, in some ways likely sharing a similar state of mind - and there are no expectations or judgments.





I remember such situations throughout my life fondly - sitting on the periphery of the group, drawing, resting in the right side of my brain where there is no need for speech (indeed, sometimes it's hard to deal with speech when I'm really into the 'right brain'), but also soaking up the energy of people being nearby whether they are engaging each other or, as in the life drawing session, each in their own right-brain world. I wonder if it's an introvert thing, or an art thing. I wonder if other people enjoy that sort of interaction. I have to assume so, but perhaps it's a sign of personal growth that at the end of the day I don't care anymore whether other people do enjoy it - as much as I'd like to know that I share this with someone else, even if I don't it's enough for me to know that I like it.

So one point to the Gladstone, one point to the right brain, and one point to blogging :)

Leftie

Here's the product of my left-handed sketching exercise after the last post, ~85% of it was done with ol' leftie (FYI I am totally right-handed).

Many artists will do this - more often, I think, righties will do this. Whether it 'taps in' to the right brain or whether it just forces you to really slow down and concentrate - either way it is a good exercise for making you really see what you're drawing and pay attention to contour, negative space, etc.


This was my coffee cup, pencil case and tin that I'd brought with me. The only downside was that I couldn't drink my coffee until I finished!!

~ Pam

Wednesday Life Drawing

I started a life drawing class tonight.

As you can imagine, scratchboard tends toward tight, precise, and meticulous, and that is great because it's the kind of thing I like. But to keep loose, to keep in touch with the ol' right brain, and keep balanced this class is the perfect thing.

We started with one minute gestures then short, ten minute poses for the rest of the class. Here is a sampling of what I did:

(Note the sweet ninja clock in the center)

Along the same lines I have started an 18x24" whiteboard done in the technique of Charles Ewing which I will post as soon as it is done. As much as I prefer the tight detail of scratchboard I also love and need the looseness of gestures, charcoal and painting. Since I juggle multiple projects at any given time I can have some tight and some loose on the go, allowing me to move from one to the other as needed to keep invigorated.

Enjoy!

~ Pam