Because I was working on my Christmas album for the last couple months of 2017, I haven’t learned any new “real” piano pieces in a long time. The last piece I learned was Chopin’s Prelude in A Major (listen), and that was months ago. SO! I am now back on the classical music/official piano repertoire bus and I am going to learn Kuhlau’s Sonatine Op.20 No.1. You can hear a real pianist playing it, here. This piece is SO LIT. I am OBSESSED! However, as excited as I am to learn this piece, I am VERY AFRAID.
Here are my fears, in no particular order:
My fingers can’t move that fast and this piece is FULL of sixteenth notes.
It is a lot to memorize.
I won’t be able to perform it without messing it up.
I won’t have the appropriate dynamic contrast or a steady tempo.
I won’t learn it in time.
I will get so nervous that I will choke.
This piece is completely beyond my ability.
I am too whack to learn this.
A few of these fears come from the fact that I plan on performing this at my music school’s spring recital. I also have a lot of annoying hang-ups about my piano playing and myself. However, I am going to learn this piece anyway. And it is going to be awesome.
Here is a recording of me sight-reading the first theme. The struggle is real. VERY real. However, it is a start.
Over the next few months I will provide updates on my progress! Be prepared for greatness, y’all.
Despite my claim in my last blog (that Christmas for me isn’t about presents but presence), I got quite a haul of creative goodies this year! Brian’s parents, BJ and Mike, were particularly gracious in getting me Arches watercolor paper, two Winsor & Newton Series 7 kolinsky sable brushes, and a Daniel Smith watercolor dot sample chart (which will be blogged about soon, have no fear). I also splurged on some more watercolor paints from Greenleaf and Blueberry and my brother made me an amazing easel. All of this is to say: CHRISTMAS BOOTY!!!
BJ thoughtfully got me one more creative gift: a set of watercolor pencils. Having never tried these before, I experimented with a few sketches this week. The basic premise seemed obvious, you draw with the pencils and then wet a brush to paint over your drawn lines, but I had no idea quite how the pencils would interact with water (would the lines completely diffuse or remain sharp?).
Here’s my first doodle, before and after:
I was surprised that the colors bleed into one another, but also maintained the original lines. It’s a very different look than traditional watercolor, so it adds another style I can play with.
For doodle 2, I tried a quick sketch of my favorite photograph of my cat when he was just a wee kitten, when he rocked absurdly large ears compared to his face:
I had trouble with some of the lines not diffusing as I would have liked, and I’m not sure yet whether I was simply pressing too hard when I was drawing or if this is just a reality of using the pencils. No matter how much water or brushing I did, certain lines simply wouldn’t disappear into a wash.
Doodle 3 was based on a photo of a young osprey, and I struggled (as I always do with watercolor) with getting the white to remain white, but not be just blank paper. How do you create white feathers in watercolor?!
Doodle 4, a simple drawing of a flower:
I think the pencils could be especially helpful in creating detail, as the paint doesn’t just wash away like traditional watercolors often do. I see it fitting into a similar area as a dry brush technique. Also, I think this will be useful as a part of my drawing exercises, where I can go out, draw, return and add water to make the image come more alive.
As promised, here is week two of my past few months of 2017 retrospective. You can read Part I, here.
Here are some photographs from my various travels in 2017. Some of these shots are continuations of experiences that I documented, here. Other shots are essentially color redos of shots I’ve taken before. Still other shots are just brand new drops of dopeness for you to feast your eyes on.
A change I have made since my first venture into film photography is that I have been shooting on expired color film. The man at the camera store said that this would be a cool thing to try since once a roll of color film expires, the colors become unpredictable. He sold me on the idea when he described a roll that came out looking like the Wizard of Oz during the Technicolor scenes.[1] My pictures came out looking less like the Wizard of Oz and more like my grandma’s snapshots from the 70s or some millenial’s Instagram feed (#nofilter) but they are still kinda cool. I was way more satisfied with this batch of photos than I was with my previous ones. Progress!
Here are a few of my favorites! I did very minimal editing on these so you can get a sense of the pure unadulterated glory of expired color film.
[1] Also, expired color film is $1.99 so it makes experimenting with film photography WAY more economical.
Despite completely abandoning my Saturday blog posts (and without even a note saying goodbye, tsk tsk), December was a creative month for me. It was also an insanely-busy-but-don’t-get-caught-in-the-holiday-stress-and-modern-day-grinchyness sort of month. I relied on creativity to keep focused on the real reason for the season, which isn’t Christ for me, or presents, but PRESENCE, the reminder of how abundant life is even at the most barren time of the year, the hope for the sun’s imminent return, the love that is in our hearts! All that good ol’ paganism!
So here’s a brief look at some of my creative endeavors to make the season bright:
My partner and I don’t own hardly any holiday decorations, and so every year we deck our place out with one of the most affordable options: paper snowflakes! Brian does about one or two, and I do about thirty. It’s good fun and definitely adds some pizzaz to our plain walls.
I also taped up Christmas cards over our never-been-used fireplace and decorated our spiral staircase with lights to make it: the CHRISTMAS POLE!
Let’s pretend this picture is artistic rather than just blurry… photography is Claire’s area after all.
Brian’s first “snowflake” somehow morphed itself into a creature that is and will now always be hanging on our wall because it’s so cool looking and I think it would be sacrilegious to move:
For the packages I sent out this year, I decided to go super eco-friendly and simple: brown butcher paper and potato stamps. I told everyone about potato stamps like it was a new invention, and everyone told me how yea, they’d made those in kindergarten… still, I loved this project! I used a beet and some metallic paint as the ink (though I failed to document how the metallic stamps came out, trust me, they were beauteous!).
My other big creative project was watercoloring my mother’s Christmas card, but since I failed to take any photos of it before mailing it off, you’ll just have to once again take my word for it: it was pretty dope. And painting tiny red birds is very difficult.
Lastly, since Brian and I don’t have a tree and don’t deal with getting one, some years I don’t get to decorate one at all. But when we went to celebrate with Brian’s parents they were nice enough to leave the decorating honor to me (though it palls in comparison to Claire’s tree-topper):
It was a wonderful, busy, rambunctious family-filled, blissful holiday season, and here’s a cheers to you and the new year!
I did a lot of creating during my blogging hiatus! Over the next few weeks I will show you all what I got into the last few months of 2017! It was LIT! Or, at least lit adjacent . . .
First things first!
My major project over the last few months (i.e. the “secret project” referred to here) was my VERY FIRST CHRISTMAS ALBUM!*
A CHRISTMAS DREAM VOL. I
This project is the most involved and challenging of all my creative endeavors to date.
To make this album I had to do the following:
Choose and learn songs
Record songs
Learn how to edit and then edit songs
Design the cover/CD
Get the CD printed and packaged
Choosing and Learning Songs
Learning the songs was the least stressful and most enjoyable part of this whole process. I found a beautiful arrangement of ‘O Holy Night’ by Julie Lind (you can find the sheet music here) that I am still obsessed with. This is the first piece that I interpreted and learned to play mostly by myself. Usually when I start a piece, my teacher gives me a lot of instruction and direction.This time I got started ON MY OWN, which was a very empowering feeling. Go me!
Here is ‘O Holy Night’ aka my first single:
Another first for me was adapting an arrangement. I found and fell in love with a version of ‘Silent Night’ that was SUPER simple and sweet. I then realized that simple and sweet can also be boring AF so I changed it. I ended up with something that was in keeping with what I liked about the original arrangement, but with more pizzazz (I mean, as much pizzazz as ‘Silent Night’ can have . . .).
Here it is!
Recording and Editing the Songs
Recording is even more stressful than performing live. For me, there was more pressure to be perfect because I had the opportunity to do multiple takes and edit the audio. Unsurprisingly, this mindset did not help me at all. During this recording adventure I did not have a single perfect take. So, for every song on the album I combined the best imperfect takes to create an imperfect final recording. I am mostly okay with this.
Another first for me during this project was using Audacity to edit my tracks. Audacity is software that you can use to record and edit audio. I did A LOT of research to figure out how to effectively use Audacity within the context of my project. Shit was very, very tricky.
Here is what music looks like in Audacity.
Design/Packaging/Etc.
I didn’t do as much with the cover art etc. as I wanted to. However, I was able to get the album printed and packaged, which made me feel hella fancy and like a real musician who makes albums. Also, one friend of mine was very impressed that it was shrink-wrapped, so there’s that.
All in all, I learned a ton from doing this and I am so excited for next year!
* Disclaimer: This album is not for sale. It was a Christmas present for my family, my friends, and myself. I made no money off of these Christmas shenanigans.
By the time y’all read this, I will have had my tree up for nine days. However, I have been solidly in the Christmas spirit since mid-October. CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!! SPARKLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! JOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Last year, I decided to make Christmas my favorite holiday. So, I got FULLY IN THE SPIRIT and put up a Christmas tree! I went to Target, bought many items, and slapped together some Christmas joy! Here is the throwback!
This year, I wanted to reuse at least some of what I bought last year. My favorite part of last year’s tree was the berries, so berries became the focal point of this year’s tree. From there, I came up with my BIG IDEA: red berries in the winter snow. My BIG IDEA helped me to make all of my decisions. I settled on a color scheme (white/silver and red) and determined whether sparkles were necessary (spoiler alert: sparkles are always necessary). Instead of drowning in an ocean of indecision, I was able to get straight to Christmas business . . . mostly. I documented my progress.
Step 1: Add lights.
Step 2: Add ALL THE BERRIES!
Step 3: Add silver sparkly pinecones and silver sparkly ornaments!
Step 4: Figure out a dope tree topper situation.[*]
Step 5: Bask in the CHRISTMAS GLOW!
This Christmas tree process reinforced the some of the lessons I have learned over the course of this blog.
Have a big idea/some sort of direction. It will help you make decisions, which makes the whole creative process WAY less painful.
Opportunities for creativity are EVERYWHERE!
HAVE FUN! Choose projects that you actually like and are excited about!
I was in Seattle last week and spent an afternoon in the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). This was the first time I’d visited an art museum in at least a decade. Let me be upfront: the art world often confuses and intimidates me. While I can ruminate forever on definitions of creativity, the word “art” is even more mysterious. What makes something “art”? What makes it worth a place in the prestigious halls of a museum? What is this desire as a viewer to judge what I’m seeing as good or bad?
Josef Albers, Study for “Homage to the Square: Accordant,” 1957, oil on masonite
The modern art area of the museum brought up the most value judgements for me. I seem to have this idea that if I could possibly replicate something I’m seeing it’s somewhat less worthy of being on the wall. But of course that takes away from the story behind the piece: was it done at a time when no one was creating in that particular way? Does it seem obvious only because it’s been done? Would I have thought of it? Even if I had, why does my skill level or creativity get to be the arbiter of worth in art?
Sam Gilliam, “Untitled,” 1973, acrylic on polypropylene
These judgy thoughts aside, I was impressed with SAM. The building was beautiful and the main collection was donation based, so it’s super accessible to the community. There was a great mix of different art forms from a wide swath of cultures and times. And I was inspired by what I saw.
Susan Point, “The First People,” 2008, red and yellow cedar
There was a temporary exhibit featuring the work of Andrew Wyeth, and I was in awe. I’d never seen his work before and since he was a painter and often used drybrush watercolor techniques I was able to more greatly appreciate the skill his paintings required. When you’ve never tried something yourself, it’s a lot more difficult to understand what went into the work, to grasp the real genius and talent before your eyes. In full view of the original paintings I just kept muttering “how did he do that?!” His paintings were so realistic, even down to the wrinkles around someone’s eyes or the fluctuating shadows on a wall. There is such a gap between a beginner and a master, and it’s both intimidating and inspiring.
Andrew Wyeth, “Night Hauling,” 1944, tempera on hardboard panel
So, in the shenanigan that is my life, work has taken over completely. Though the next couple months will provide me with ample opportunity to grow professionally (e.g. my first trial . . . in front of a judge . . . in an actual courtroom . . . with an actual client . . . and actual opposing counsel), I won’t have so much time to continue developing creatively. As a result I will be taking a step back from weekly posting for the next several weeks. Jessie will, of course, be holding it down and continuing to inspire. In the meantime you can still find me on Instagram. And, I may be popping in periodically with updates, epiphanies, and general art-making dopeness (including my secret project!) so stay tuned!
Below you will find the creations we received for our inaugural Community Art Project! Projects are shown in the order we received them to ensure absolute 100% unbiased presenting, so congratulations to Mike for being our earliest contributor and thus getting the not-previously-coveted-but-perhaps-now-coveted cover spot on the front page.
We loved seeing how each of you interpreted the theme, Under Water, and so appreciate you playing along with us! In a perfect moment of serendipity, our first two contributors’ titles perfectly mirrored one another: Rise Up and Dive Down.
Way to be creative people!
Mike: Rise Up
We all live in our own Personal Bubbles
Formed by our cultures, neighborhoods and personal beliefs
It’s only when we Rise Up
and Join Hands to
Escape those Bubbles
That we free ourselves
from the feelings of
Constantly Struggling
Under Water
Ella M: Dive Down
I see this woman as having plunged into the water in a relaxed way … she’s still slowly moving downward and is experiencing a darkening, a buoyancy, a dreamy place far away from the harsh, bright, loud world. And she’s completely naked and vulnerable. Nothing between her and the world touching her—water, seaweed, fish. She’s completely wrapped up in the experience and in the moment. Another woman’s arm is reaching down. Is she on her way following her friend?
BJ: Apple Tree Under “Water”
Claire: deep underwater, but not so deep that there is no light
Jessie: Jellyfish Gazing
I was trying to evoke the sense of looking up at the ocean’s surface from below.
Right now I am working on a secret project.* I am on draft 17,000,000 of a part of my project (not even the whole project!) because I can’t decide how I want to move forward. I am continually tweaking and then changing my opinions on the tweaks. I am a pretty indecisive person generally (I am working on this but . . .), so committing to a creative decision causes me A TON of stress. However, more and more I have been finding that wrestling with indecision is often more stressful than actually making a wrong decision. To get myself out of this spiral of indecision, I have been trying to decide things based on what other people might like. This is obviously not good either.
Clearly, I am lacking a fully-baked vision for my project. If I had a strong vision for each aspect of my project, I would be able to make focused decisions about how to move forward artistically. It wouldn’t be so difficult to make a cohesive piece. Additionally, I would not be so worried about what other people may or may not like. To be honest, using someone else’s likes and dislikes as a basis for deciding MY creative work has been foolish and unhelpful so far. How am I supposed to know what someone else will or will not respond positively to in any given moment? I can make a guess or prediction, but why would I want MY creative work to be based on conjecture about someone else, when I can make something that I love that is based on MY vision?
So with all this said, I need to pause, reconnect to my ideas, and cultivate my vision. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Compulsive Creation 