“You find the story by discovering what the story is not.”
Mary Robinette Kowal, Writing Excuses (Season 19, Episode 1)
Cross Pollination
“The summer sessions permitted an extraordinary form of cross-pollination.”
“Almost none of the summer faculty was paid a salary but received instead room and board and some relaxing time in the country.”
Helen Molesworth (Leap Before You Look, p. 42)
“The summer sessions modeled a form of artistic community, one that de Kooning took with him to New York in 1950, when he helped to found the Artists' Club, a gathering dedicated to the presentation of avant-garde ideas.“
“Black Mountain helped to establish the idea that an art school is a place of competing and diverse ideas, where the task of the faculty is to commit to a sense of rigor instead of personal taste, and the job of the students is to navigate the complexity of the options, in the hope of finding their own paths through what John Cage called "the big question," namely, "What are you going to do with your time?"
Helen Molesworth (Leap Before You Look, p. 45)
“the relation is not so much of teacher to student as of one member of the community to another.”
Black Mountain College Catalogue, (Leap Before You Look, p. 80)
“In essence there exists the utmost freedom for people to be what they please. There is simply no pattern of behavior, no criteria to live up to. People study what they please, as long as they want to, idle if they want to, graduate whenever they are willing to stand on examination, even after only a month here, or a year, or whatever, or they can waive all examinations, and graduations. They can attend classes, or stay away. They can work entirely by themselves, or they need not work whatever. They can be male, female, or fairy, married, single, or live in illicit love.”
Jack Tworkov (Leap Before You Look, p. 42)
*John Cage question from interview with Richard Kostelanetz (1968) in John Cage: An Anthology (1991) on pg 28
Moving the Action Figures
Davy has reached the storytelling age.
Mix and match scripts from Zelda and Room on the Broom and Daniel Tiger.
John Hodgman reminding fiction writers that we're just playing make believe.
And that's where the magic is. 💫
"Then suddenly, when you're writing, a character will say something that you didn't think of.
Of course you did think of it, unconsciously. It's from your brain.
But only from a part of your brain that would never have been activated until you sat there and moved the action figures around enough."
John Hodgeman, This is a Secret Society
Early Proofing
Ordering my first proof of Entwined. Something I’ve learned is that you don’t need a completed manuscript to get important information from the proofing process.
This proof will test black and white illustrated elements and be a preliminary test of the cover art before diving into cover design and book formatting.
Oozing Forms
More art experiments. Spray foam didn’t work to create oozing forms spilling out of this shape sorter. So I’m trying another material. I popped it in the freezer to set more quickly and turned it every few minutes to control the shape somewhat.
Chronic Illness & Art
“The functioning of our bodies affects what is possible for each of us in physical and temporal spaces. During active illness, the limitation that comes from the mismatch between the rest of the world and the universe of sickness increases. You think and plan around the ways you don’t fit into the world.”
“Artists often see possibility and opportunity where others may not, so our role is to lead others into new ideas or ways of doing things.”
Jocelyn Mathewes
You’re Allowed to Be Everchanging
Podcast Notes
“I forgot it was an experiment. If I stay in the experiment… it stays fun, it stays curious, and it stays open to shifting.”
“You’re allowed to be everchanging.”
“We have to make the space for the thing to come through.”
Marlee Grace (source)
Reframing "scattered."
“At some point in adult hood this shifts for many of us, we think we should just have one thing we love to do and be good at. The pain of “being pulled in many directions” fragments our attention and we are left feeling scattered and unfocused.
This is not a bad thing and I truly believe in reframing “scattered”. If it was a bad thing I wouldn’t have the career and life I have today that I love very much.”
Marlee Grace reflects on shapeshifting and reframing "scattered."
Organisms as Mentors & Everyday Mystery
The On Being podcast is BACK and I am loving it!
These two episodes were amazing.
Janine Benyus Biomimicry, an Operating Manual for Earthlings on natural organisms as mentors and peers… learning from them rather than about them.
And Rick Rubin Magic, Everyday Mystery, and Getting Creative. I have SO MANY quotes from this one because I listened while parked in the car while Davy napped:
“The real practice of the artist is a way of being in the world.”
“It’s hard for me to finish projects because I always see the possibilities of what else we could try and I want to try everything…”
“What I came to realize is that there is a time for this open play. And it’s in those first two parts of the process, the seed phase… and experimenting.”
“By working with sensitive artists, we resonate together in that we’re feeling things that not everybody else is feeling.”
“There is no connection between the amount of time invested and how good something is.”
“The sustainable part of the practice is: start with things that are easy to do.”
Faces are just lines.
It’s pretty amazing isn’t it?
If you stop to look at an illustrated face (particularly a stylized one like those below) each of the individual lines are actually pretty simple.
It’s the way they’re all arranged that give the faces expression and character.
A few weeks ago I woke up and started writing a children's book. Just typing lines into my Notes app. We read picture books all the time so perhaps this was inevitable. 😂
I've decided to tackle my fear of drawing faces to see if I could perhaps illustrate it too.
I pulled down a stack of children’s books off our shelf and copying faces in lots of different styles. (See above.)
I obviously wouldn’t copy these in my own work, but I did this to study the lines used and see if I “could” draw stylized faces. For a first go I think I’ve done pretty well so now it’s down to practicing and developing my own style.
I started two courses for drawing people by Bardot Brush (it’s free!) and Lila Rogers (which I caught on half price.) They are both great at breaking the face down and make it all feel do-able.
Then I had another go using a minimalist approach with dots for eyes and simple mouths.
Then I added skin tones and white to the eyes.
This wasn’t an assignment, just me playing. I noticed a lot of Davy’s books illustrated the white of eyes in this way, which is very different than outlining.
I’m still not sure if I will end up illustrating this book, but it’s fun to learn something new.