As I breathe deeply, I can smell the clear Cumbrian air.

It’s been’s perhaps 6 months or even longer since I sat down to explore drawing. I have moved and feel inspired to try again to recapture my creative practice. I am going to work through ‘ Drawing space, form and expression’ by Wayne Enstice to get my hand moving again. There’s a lot of good grounding for the practice to take root in again and help grow my skills to where they used to be.

I will be documenting my experiments on this site under the appropriately titled page ‘Experiments’.

To begin, I will be exploring the basics of mark-making and the tensions they create within the picture frame. I’ll be using charcoal to begin with as it’s easy to vary the tone and texture, allowing me to freely play and explore.

I’m taking inspiration from the following artists:

Gerhard Richter
Claude Monets drawing
Georges Seurat
Norman Ackroyd

Illustrators:

Ways of starting: Stop overthinking your art process

December 5, 2016January 8, 2017Leave a comment

I’m currently struggling to begin my art process and to stay focused until the end, as you saw in my previous post here. My knee jerk reaction is to always get more information on the situation i’m having difficulties with, seeing if others have had the same experience and how they solved this. This does help in some respects but it can also allow me to procrastinate and not actually take action to resolve the situation.

It has however allowed me to gather a large amount of knowledge of different ways of stopping yourself from over thinking. When I was younger and enjoyed drawing and painting without self imposed restrictions and limits placed on what I was creating, I didn’t have art block as much. It was still there and I still overcomplicated my thought process, but my fear of starting was normally from not having a clue of how to do perspective or anatomy properly, not trying to combined 5 different half thought ideas as I go along creating.

The fear has since evolved into not even being able to paint basic layers, which sucks to be honest. Now, after doing my reading, I came across a very useful piece of text that looked at how dancers and writers tackle this problem. By allowing yourself not to have all the steps planned out ahead of time and simple respond to the marks you are making ( very similar to how I was working when I was younger) you build up your piece, one thought leads to another and another. If you’re familiar with the improv. technique of asking ‘and then…’ after every action to lead your thoughts into the next choice, it’s very similar to that.

You can sit and stay in your head, theorising how you will create a piece all day and have only a blank piece of paper by the end. But if you theorise as you go, it stops the analysis paralysis from taking hold. The art work you create may not be what you had initially wanted to create, as when it evolves on the page many new options will occur that your brain had never considered. When you have a block, there can be a feeling of fear that comes with it, of not choosing the right option ( for me anyway) and failing to make it the best it could possibly be. This fear can come from lack of properly planning ahead of time and solidifying the idea you want to create before you start. If can also hinder you from giving yourself a starting point and allowing the image to develop organically as you create the marks ( I wrote a bit about my thoughts on that process here).

So, now i’m trying this process: taking a deep breath to calm the thoughts and anxiety, writing a small list of bullet points of what my idea is, with specific details ( landscape with an oak tree in a field, 2 people, they’re talking, it’s cold, it’s late afternoon, overall feeling of friendship) to keep me on track. I draw a line under these notes before I begin sketching and if I have any furhter thoughts that spring up for my attention, I jot them down on a seperate piece of paper to come back to ONLY when I have covered my initial idea. This keeps me focused and stops my anxiety that I will forget a good idea. Below is my first trial with this idea and it certainly help with this sketch!

Let me know what you think to this idea and if it might help you too in the comments section!

Starting Running

December 3, 2016Leave a comment

It is a crisp cold day outside and i’ve delayered myself into a hoodie and running trousers to get out there and run. Everyone I pass has layers and wooly hats and gloves and i’m bizzarely happy that I look so different. I see the smiles that play on their faces, wondering that someones actually going running in the cold like this and I remember my own thoughts when I saw people doing what i’m planning, something along the lines of “I could never do that!”

I met up with my friend and we managed a simple run around the park. I want to share this with you readers, as I want to explore it in more detail; namely the ways how it helps other aspects of my life like the drawing and mindfulness i’m trying to cultivate into my routine.

I’ve read before that many runners go into a meditative state, where they’re only mindful of their run and their body. It’s just them and the road. It always reminded me of the artist, it’s just them and their canvas. Both have to focus their mind and energies into achieving something that takes skill, patience, and focus.

As we start to run and my lungs begin to feel uncomfortable, it feels the same as when I get to the first stage of drawing when i’m not sure what to do next. It’s an uncomfortable tight feeling for me and my instinct is to stop what i’m doing to releave it. When you’re running, your mind has to stay focused to keep yourself moving, to look at the bigger picture and see that this will pass, you will get to the next stage which becomes easier once you’re warmed up. Breath, move, don’t over think things. Breath some more. Keep your focus. Keep your running pattern going. Breath.

For me, the artists actions would be something like breath, relax your thoughts, step back and look, breath and close your eyes, breath and take a look, breath and make a mark, breath and carry that mark forward, breath and look again. For me it doesn’t have to be a flurry of movement and energy although that is fun as well if you’re not feeling stuck and inspiration is racing through you. Trying to stay focused and allow your minds instinct to have the room to direct your vision and marks is something i’m struggling with allowing myself at the moment. I will continue to try different techniques to help quieten my over-thinking when i’m creating. I’ll keep you all posted with how it goes!

Watercolour : Learning to be a beginner again

November 24, 2016November 26, 20161 Comment

I want to share with you an experience that might be familiar to you if you’re just starting to painting or coming back to it. I like drawing and painting because of what creatives call ‘the zone’ where their attention is solely focused on what they’re creating, not the outside world. So this may not really be a typical meditation but I think it’s a close relation and it’s something I want much more of in my routine to help combat anxiety.

To help clear my thoughts and calm myself after a day of work I wanted to do a simple exercise that would relax me.

Painting negative shapes with watercolour by tracing a photo of leaves I took, with a cup of tea, some fruit and nut dairy milk and listening to the sounds of a thunderstorm as my background music.

By calming my breathing, I lit my favourite smelling candle and just allowed myself to be, trying not to think about what needed doing in the house or other work I could be doing, figuring out ways I could possible multitask to get the maximum efficiency from the moment. Giving myself permission for the next 2 hours to experience something I really enjoyed felt really liberating, like I was treating myself. It reminded me of the feeling I go when I visited a city with no plans other then to be and just taking in the sights around me.

It was a really nice feeling to have on a Thursday evening.
————-
So now it’s been about an hour and I’m feeling very frustrated. My brain won’t take each step slowly, so I keep messing up the watercolour washes as I rush to get it finished. I’m trying to have that feeling of satisfaction when it’s all completed and looks awesome before it’s been finished. Currently it just looks like random splotches on some paper and i can’t see where I need to go next with it. I haven’t used watercolour like this for about 2 months and normally it’s just simple washes over pencil. I used to do complicated pieces but it looks like I’m no longer at that level…

It’s uncomfortable to see where my skills currently are with watercolour, it’s not what I had planned for this evening to be about but I will still accept it. If I want to improve, I need to see where I’m currently standing to know what needs improving!

So, my times up, it’s Thursday so I need to get a decent amount of sleep before work tomorrow. Inorder to ease my frustration I have gotten my watercolour books out and found one that focuses on layering washes. Tomorrow night I will work through the beginning exercises. I will breath, calm down and allow myself to be a beginner again.

Trying to learn Mindfulness: My beginning

November 21, 2016Leave a comment

Stop the bandwagon, I want to get on!

One of the reasons I wanted to start this blog was I needed a space to record what I was doing. I am increasingly aware that what I enjoy the most about drawing, is the way it lets me experience my own life in a more focused way; really looking at my surroundings, ways of responding to what I see and feel and a way to capture my feelings. For a long long time I have been bogged down by getting it perfect. If I’m doing a life drawing, it has to be exact. I have to capture everything in front of my exactly as I see it or it’s a failure. The pressure of being this perfect has caused me to not want to even start. I know that art is a process, the final images is built up of layers the artist creates through many different decisions, following what their own instinct/ experience is guiding them to choose as they go through their process. I KNOW this and yet…my mind cannot start for fear of being lost and getting it ‘wrong’.

I like to go onto a location and sketch what’s around me and I like to go off script when I do manage it, adding my own imaginative details, making it my own. I don’t make time for this often, it’s a habit I’ve been trying to cultivate for years but my comfort zone doesn’t seem to extend into this area and the habits never stick. It’s so much easier to just snap a photo right? Right, which is why I have a ridiculous amount of photos I have rarely used to draw from.

I have to change. Which is where mindfulness comes into play. I’ve been looking into it for a while, and by looking into I mean reading random posts in pinterest…I read the book ‘Flow’ by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi which seemed to cover some principles of it, looking at how our lives are shaped by where our attention is focused. I signed up to a free online course in Mindfulness and got to week 4 before I stopped making time for it and just gently let my hand fall open and allowed it to drift away from me.

So frustrating!

What I want to achieve is to be more aware of when and where my attention drifts, to change my attitude and achieve some more self-management so I can finally achieve those goals I’ve been setting myself. To stop over thinking and analysing everything that passes through my mind. The fear of change I think is one of life’s biggest stumbling block and boy, does it have a hold of me! I’m so comfy just talking about my want of change, sitting at the beginning before the possibility of getting it ‘wrong’ can come to pass. How do I change from being comfortable to being actively curious enough to move? In my head I have decided that NOW is the time I will do it. I go to sleep, I get up and hey presto, my mind wanders away from the uncomfortable and into my same old routine. Any thoughts that do surface get squished into the ‘to do’ list for tomorrow. Tbh, that’s a pretty long list at the minute…

Now don’t get me wrong, I know I have some very good company with me right now, many people have this dilemma and come to the same response as me. It’s why we put up with the boring jobs because we all know that ‘someday soon’ we won’t be there, we’ll be pursuing our dream of ‘whatevertheheckiwasputonthisplanetfor’ and finally our real lives will start…Ugh, it’s so sad to see it in writing because the answer is so obvious. Someday never comes if you don’t move on from what you’re doing today and do something different.

I want some day now. I want to travel and explore the world with my creative practice and share this with everyone and make people’s lives better but I have to start with me. The me right now is standing on page one of the book she wants to write with a whole wheelbarrow full of tools she’s been hoarding but never using.

I had this thought the other day when walking to my work…” If I don’t do it, it won’t exist for me.” If I don’t change my routine, it will never be full of the new things I want to exist in my world. I will never experience them. I will never ever have them. Not a one.

Mindfulness is one of these things. Chapter One: Learn to be Mindful…How do I do this again?

I’m starting with the book ‘Wherever you go there you are.’ by Jon Kabat-Zinn (it was the first one that looked interesting in my library). I need to get some starting pointers and i can’t get it all from pinterest. I also want to follow some blogs that talk about Mindfulness so if anyone that manages to get to the end of this blog post (I realise it’s quite lengthy right now) has any recommendations, please fire away in the comments section below!

Phew, I needed to get that out there! I hopefully won’t emotionally rant too much on this blog but if anyone is feeling the same as me right now, it would be a real comfort to hear from you in the comments section!

What’s it all about then?

November 15, 20163 Comments

Introducing BlogCat! all-about-1-laura-mossop

I now see that a blog is not just for a rainy wednesday afternoon but for life if you let it. I started this blog a few months back and have posted a few times, figured out the template i’d chosen, uploaded some pictures to try and make it look like my kind of home. Somewhere i’d like to hang out if i was wandering the internet. I’m still at the bricks and mortar stages with this blog but my mind keeps spinning ideas of what I want to write about, skills I could learn and experiences to share with you all. It won’t leave me alone but I hadn’t made room in my routine for it. It’s like a cat at the bottom of my garden, staring at me through my kitchen window, waiting for me to add a catflap to the backdoor so it could come in and be part of my life.

What my blogcat keeps meowing at me to write about are fun things that I want to get into the habit if doing or even try once. I want to keep a sketch diary about my life, I want to make notes as I walk through my environments to help my art, I want to experiment with different techniques, find books by other artists and explore their styles and advice. I want to go on long walks with interesting people, explore new cities and capture the feeling it gives me. I want to figure out this UrbanSketching thing and then help others figure it out aswell. I want to help share information I find, as i’m continuously researching into new areas. Basically, I want this blog to be my home with a library full of my stories and my readers to be wandering cats looking for a lovely place to warm up and stay.

I also want to be a wandering cat and visit other blogs and meet new blogcat friends who like to travel, create art and practice mindfulness. I’m just starting to learn how to incorporate this philosophy into my thoughts, so finding others is going to be helpful in keeping me going on track.

So I need to build. I’m currently reading the instructions ( part of my procrastination habit guys, its useful but don’t be fooled. No one needs to read 5 books on blogging before actually starting….). I’ve signed up to WordPress’s University course on the fundamentals to help give me an initial kick start. I’m looking at my normal routine and finding time to protect, time where i can squirrel myself away and just focus on creating something that brings me joy.

I recently read an article about how blogging is dying. Social media is thriving but long blog posts are not as common due to the new platforms available that places higher emphasis on the bitesize pieces for readers to digest. I sat and read my facebook feed the other day and afterwards I had a list of maybe 10 pieces of small sized, random chunks of information that don’t really connect up to much. Half of them I didn’t really care to learn about anyway but had a catchy title that hooked me in. The other half I found vaguely interesting and there was maybe 2 bitesize bits of information that I actually wanted to remember. Bitesize media platforms make you full but not on quality and is a really tiring experience to me.

I’m late getting into the blogging game but I intend to enjoy my experience in creating my home here.

On Being scared to sketch

July 24, 2016July 24, 2016Leave a comment

I think this predicament is common and that it’s something that many professional and hobby artists deal with and that yes, it does get easier in time but not with age (as we know when watching children sketch…They’re so darn carefree!). Something I have been dealing with for a long time is why, even though I love art and get inspired by nature and constantly look at other artworks and read various art books, I don’t draw and paint half as much as I should. Why all the procrastination? Why all the anxiety and fear at the beginning? What’s the deal brain, I thought this was what you wanted to do!

Silly brain…I think it’s just overwhlemed. By inadvertantly putting pressure on what i’m about to produce, my vision and thoughts that i’m going to capture by drawing, by judging it before i’ve even made a mark….I create a dream artwork before the real artwork even has a chance to begin to create itself and it will never match up to all the half formed ideas that are in my head, merging together.

I think the best thing to do when you’re scared to even start to sketch is to stop thinking of it as a finished piece of artwork and think of it as an exploratory journey. What am I looking at? What an interesting leaf! The way there is a rhythm going through all the branches is relaxing to look at, how does it look if I try to capture it with these kind of marks. Hm, not so good, i’ll make a note of that and remember it for the next sketch I do. How big are these leaves compared to the ones in the background? How will my mark-making change? How much space do they take up compared to the foreground leaves?

Knowing different drawing techniques is still a must, but sometimes we forget that they’re just advice to help us, things people have learnt in the past through trial and error and have passed along as a good way of achieving a particular task. As an artist, you’re allowed to have your own trial and errors and to find your own way of capturing things that you’ve discovered on your own exploratory journeys. The creative jumps and experiments that you make based on your own tastes and judgements help to create new processes.

So don’t be scared to start sketching, there isn’t a need for fear or anxiety here, just curiousity and a desire for discovery. Plus, you don’t have to show anyone if you don’t want to but it can fun to chat about your discoveries and errors with other artists. Share the journey you’re both on and laugh at things that didn’t go quite right but look kinda funny now…

Walk Draw Explore

Category: Struggles of creating

Good morning 2018

Deep breath. Drawing again.