Compulsive Creation

Getting to Know New Paints

This week I received my first paints from Greenleaf & Blueberry, an amazing duo that handcrafts their own line of watercolors right here in Colorado. This is only my second brand of paints I’ve purchased (my first being a set from Sennelier) and playing around with my three new paints from G&B showed me how diverse in character each paint truly is. They have “personalities” that I don’t really have the language for yet, but I can see the differences as I work with them.

To try to get to know my new paints (Mayan Red, Azurite, and Mayan Blue #2), and I did a variety of experiments:

Greenleaf & Blueberry Paints 1

Above are all three colors on hot press paper showing the effects of a wash, blooming, and salt techniques.

I noticed immediately that salt doesn’t interact with these G&B paints the same way it does with my other brand. The salt just bleaches the precise spot that it lands on and the effect doesn’t spread out to create the same marbling effect I was used to.

Greenleaf & Blueberry Paints 2

Here’s the same experiment but done on a very textured paper (this level of texture is too much for my taste).

Unlike my Sennelier paints, the G&B ones are far more texturally “gritty,” often leaving a grainy pigment behind as they dry. I actually LOVE this look. I’m sure that with more practice I could get a more diverse range of effects as well. Either way, I’m so happy to have some paints with grit in my arsenal.

Greenleaf & Blueberry Paints 3

The Azurite is my absolute favorite, and it creates a texture that reminds me of the ocean’s surface, all foam and flux. The Mayan Blue is the most smooth of the paints, and looks almost wet to me even when dry (I could see using this to create some beautiful skies). Mayan Red also has a beautiful earthy grit to it when dried. Greenleaf & Blueberry Paints 4

I went and bought a tin of Altoids to use as a holding case for my magnetized paints. G&B actually sells traveling paint sets in these Altoid tins, so kudos to them for the clever idea.

Greenleaf & Blueberry Paints 5

Competition is stiff to get your hands on G&B paints, and they sell out almost immediately after updating their shop. Signing up for their newsletter let’s you know when the next paint shop update will be coming out, but even then you need to be ready, card in hand. But trust me, it’s so worth the wait and I’m already itching to get my hands on some more colors. Truly, these paints are made with love, the highest quality pigments, and a unique handmade style. I’m a fan for life!

Full Disclosure: I’m not receiving anything from G&B for writing this post. This is genuine love, people!

Must Read: Art and Fear

THIS BOOK, y’all. Read immediately if:

You have ever been in your feelings about your art.
You ever questioned whether what you are making is art.
You have struggled with finding your artistic voice.
You believe that you should be the next Mozart (spoiler alert: You won’t be but you can still make dope work!)
Your creations are way better in your head than they are in real life.
You feel like there are no new ideas.

I’m just gonna leave this right here:

“We stand heir to an unstatably large set of meanings. Most of what we inherit is so clearly correct it goes unseen. It fits the world seamlessly. It is the world. But despite its richness and variability, the well-defined world we inherit doesn’t quite fit each one of us, individually. Most of us spend our time in other peoples’ worlds — working at predetermined jobs, relaxing to pre-packaged entertainment—and no matter how benign this ready-made world may be, there will always be times when something is missing or doesn’t quite ring true. And so you make your place in the world by making part of it — by contributing some new part to the set. And surely one of the more astonishing rewards of artmaking comes when people make time to visit the world you have created. Some, indeed, may even purchase a piece of your world to carry back and adopt as their own. Each new piece of your art enlarges our reality. The world is not yet done.”

CRAYONS

I’m in New Jersey this week visiting my fabulous friend Nicki and her family. Since both her boys are youngsters, crayons have reigned supreme in my creative life since arriving. I hadn’t dabbled with crayons since I was a kid, but I quickly appreciated the utter lack of seriousness of the medium. They cost next to nothing. Precision is tricky. Doodling is irresistible.

Also, we melted crayons with a hair dryer. And it was awesome.

Here’s some of what I doodled this week: Crayon Doodle 1

Crayon Doodle 2

Crayon Doodle 3

Here’s the GREAT MELTING CRAYON CREATION, beginning with gluing crayons to a big white board:

Beautiful Crayon Creation

Melting the crayons with a blow dryer (this took forever, but we persevered for “ART”):

BeautifulCrayonCreation2Beautiful Crayon Creation 2

Here’s the final creation, viewed two different ways:

BeautifulCrayonCreation2Beautiful Crayon Creation 3

BeautifulCrayonCreation2Beautiful Crayon Creation 4

Added Bonus: Here’s Nicki’s son Eligh explaining how he felt about “murdering” so many crayons:

Painting with Instructions

This past weekend I went to Pinot’s Palette. It is a chill way to spend an evening and you leave with a painting and the knowledge that you have created . . . something. I have gone several times to various iterations of Pinot’s Palette and have always enjoyed myself. However, I have had a love/hate relationship with my paintings. There are some that I like to look at. Others are dumb and truly, actually ugly.

Here is my painting from this weekend!

The most interesting thing about going to places like this is that even though we are all there to paint the same painting, we have the same colors, and are following the same instructions, the paintings come out very different from each other based on the painter. Here is an example from when my husband and I went. Mine is on the left, my husband’s is on the right. They are the same but different.

I have recently started questioning whether these count as ART. Because we are not trying to capture the essence of a real subject, these pictures can come out pretty flat. I enjoy these classes, but I am not inspired by them or inspired by what I create in them. They are not moving in anyway. But does ART necessarily need to be moving to count? Does it require a certain amount of technique, or use of color, or some GRAND IDEA to count? Or can art just be some shit to do on a Saturday night?

I remember after a particularly hellish bout of law school finals, I NEEDED to do something creative. So I went to Pinot’s Palette and here is the result.

I kind of hate this painting. However, I felt better after painting this than I had in weeks. So, maybe these flat, but fun paintings do count as ART. Maybe not good art or bougie art, but art nonetheless.

The World Through Watercolor Lenses

Since taking up watercolor, I’ve begun to see the world with fresh eyes. Textures, light, shapes, colors: they stand out in places where before I was blind. This always happens whenever I begin to explore some fresh ideology or creative endeavor. The world unfolds new possibilities and marvels with the expansion of my own self.

But, lest we get too grandiose here, these marvels that I’m suddenly seeing are not extraordinary. They’re ordinary everyday things that have become magical through the lens of watercolors. Fences, sidewalks, stone walls, bathroom tiles, light reflections, shadows. These everyday, usually invisible backgrounds have filled me with a desire to try to reproduce what I’m seeing on paper.

So, here’s some of the minutiae I’ve come across this week that’s inspired me:

Close up on a brass handrail

Tree shadow on stone

Rock flooring at restaurant

Bathroom tile

Light reflection on cabinet

Fence under planter

Segment of a giant rock cleaved in half

Edges

In his book Making it New, Henry Geldzahler (a big deal), echoing John Szarkowski (another big deal), states that, “The edge is the controlling aesthetic factor [in photography].”

Here are three pictures of the same thing but with different edges.

This first picture most represents what I wanted to take a picture of in that moment: a wilting orange lily in a teacup on my kitchen windowsill. However, this didn’t really give me enough to look at or think about. It is my least favorite picture of the three, even though I initially thought it would be so cool.

In this picture, I still wanted an area of focus to be my orange lily. However, I also wanted to provide slightly more context. This lily is in a teacup that is a part of a row of teacups on my windowsill. In this picture I wanted to provide more of the story, but not the whole story. There is still some mystery. How many teacups are there? Is there another one with a flower in it? Are the teacups identical? What else is there?

This last picture tells the whole of the flower-filled teacup on the window story. That entire portion of the window is in view. We see every part of every teacup. To me, though this picture is the most straightforward, is also the most evocative of the place. I understand more about the room in which this windowsill with teacups and a wilting lily is located. Even though this is the only part of the room I can see. Is that what I was going for originally? No. Is that what is the most interesting to me now? Yes.

The edge can make or break the whole picture in terms of aesthetics, but also in terms of story a picture tells. Though the edges of a picture tell us what is important about what is happening within the picture, they also provide insight into what is left out. Sometimes, what is left out of the picture is the more interesting piece.

Sketchbook Update: September

If you’re new to the site, allow me to explain: I’m learning to draw. These last two months I’ve made an effort to sketch daily, and while some days (ok, even a week here and there) I’ve failed at that commitment, I have been steadily drawing throughout these last two months (you can find my August sketches here)

So here’s some of the pages from my sketchbook for the month of September, ordered from oldest to most recent:

September Sketches 1

September Sketches 2

September Sketches 3

September Sketches 4

September Sketches 5

Towards the end of the month I began to try to draw insects from various books, but for the most part all the sketches were done from life. I still don’t ever feel I’ve adequately drawn my subjects, but I’m getting better at drawing the shapes I see rather than getting lost in the details or worrying about precise lines.

I do hit points of resistance still, where my lack of ability makes me hesitant to draw (there’s so little emotional reward when you don’t feel that what you create is any good). But, I persist, with the hope that someday my partner Brian will NOT end up looking like a caveman when I draw his portrait…

Join October’s Community Art Project!

Eager for an opportunity to create?! Well, here’s a golden opportunity!

Send us anything you create based on the theme below and on November 3rd we’ll post the artwork we receive!

The Theme: Under Water (view this more as a springboard, not a destination)

What You Need: Creativity

What You DON’T Need: A certain skill level or specific modality (come one, come all!)

Email Your Artwork To: compulsivecreationblog@gmail.com

Submissions Needed By: October 31st

Details: Add a brief blurb letting us know what information you’d like posted with your art piece (your name, title of the piece, modalities used, thoughts, feelings?!). Please send images in a high resolution jpg or png. If you’re sending a piece of writing please limit it to 400 words or less. If it’s a video or music file, please ensure it’s a reasonable size.

Last Point: There’s no wrong or right, no judging, no gold star to win, just creation purely for the sake of creation and the joy that it gives!

Make the Time Or Make Nothing At All

Life this week has been unusually busy. Normally, I have a good amount of time with which I can do whatever I want, follow my fancy wherever it leads, but not this week. And the first thing I sacrificed in the face of this busyness was developing my drawing. I hardly sketched at all, simply didn’t make the time.

I did spend time this week watching tutorial videos created by the fabulous watercolor artist Stephanie Law. Her style really appeals to me and I’ve already learned so much from joining her Patreon account (I pay $2 a month to access videos she creates sharing her process). But I didn’t actually start to make my own art until last night and only because I remembered I had to create a post today.

The bitter truth is this: If I didn’t have this site keeping me on task I’d likely make hardly any time at all for creative pursuits, even when not super busy. Knowing that Claire would sass me if I was late or didn’t post helps compel me to create. I’m hoping this is just a necessary part of developing the creative habit, and that someday it’ll simply be my own strong desire to create that compels me. But for now this blog is doing its job: making creation compulsive. It’s not a choice, it’s not an option. It’s something I committed to, so I make the time, I make the space.

Here’s what I made:

Wash Away Rain. Jessie Huffaker, 2017

I might have overworked this poor paper, using super heavy washes and even a squirt bottle + pouring paint technique. 300 pd paper might be needed for such excessive amounts of water. I’m learning that in watercolor you always start light and build up the darker areas with layer after layer, which was counterintuitive to me at the beginning. I used salt and baking powder, because I can’t stop myself and don’t want to.

Getting out of the Funk by Looking Around

A couple weeks ago, I reflected on my creativity-less funk and created ACTION STEPS. One of my action steps was to use my phone to take pictures everyday. I am pleased to report that I have followed through on that! My phone pictures are mostly taken on my walks throughout the day (Shoutout to my Fitbit!). Though being more consistent is lovely, the most rewarding thing for me has not been the increase in pictures. Rather, I am most excited about the fact that I am paying more attention to the world around me. When I am walking around my neighborhood I am actually looking around. I am beginning to see things I never knew were there. Beautiful things. Interesting things. Mundane things. Ugly things. Regardless of the things, the point is that I see them and try to capture them. Here are some of my capturings! The rest (and much more!) can be found on our BRAND NEW and SUPER DOPE Instagram page.

I like how the world looks at night. I notice vastly different things. For example, what caught my eye in this picture was the water stain on the wall. I thought it looked cool with the shadow. I have walked by that wall many, many times (during the day) and had yet to be intrigued by either that wall or that water stain. However, add a shadow, some gloomy ambiance, and some illuminated green leaves to provide some contrast and I am completely on board.

This is a portion of a lamppost. I have walked by this lamppost about 17 million times. I never noticed that this particular lamppost had a vaguely Rothko vibe. Or how the different colors layer on top of each other. Or bothered to decide whether or not I like this accidental combination of colors (I do). I paid attention to what I have spent four years walking by.

When I pay attention to a thing, I can appreciate it, evaluate it, and create something from it. All things that help eradicate the funk and get me back to creating, experimenting, and enjoying the process!