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Deep breath. Drawing again.

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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:

Illustrators:

 

Ways of starting: Stop overthinking your art process

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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

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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

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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.
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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

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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!

 

 

 

 

 

Explore: Visiting the multi faith centre

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My thoughts before the visit… It’s Wednesday and I’m pretty tired from work and its politics and processes. A chance email alerted me to the opportunity to visit the Multi-faith centre at the local University to watch ‘In the footsteps of Francis and the Sultan‘ a story from the crusade war about a Christian Monk and a Muslim Sultan accepting each other’s faith.

My current routine doesn’t have many links to religion, I don’t practice a particular faith but I was curious about what the story was and how it would be presented. I like random, serendipitous events but I think you have to accept the nudge when it happens to experience them. This week has been a hard one, the past months have been difficult in the world. Faith in politics is feeling thin to a lot of people right now. I’m watching from my new spot in the blog world and seeing other bloggers upset and confused about where to go now with Trump as president. He’s not my president, it’s not my country but I feel an echo of their horror and helplessness. The world feels overwhelming and terribly small at the same time, with these massive changes taking place and yet my life continues with its usual routine.

It was on a whim that I decided to go to a film that looked at harmony between different viewpoints instead of the fight between them.

So, I get changed and eat a quick dinner before heading out to the Centre. I hope to meet interesting, insightful people, be uplifted by the film and find something to share relating to this current world situation. A way through the confusion or at least some happier thoughts. Selfishly, I also want to find a story from this event that I could create into a comic strip to practice my skills. Finding inspiration from real life events causes the stories and feelings to be richer and more relatable than something I try to concoct just in my head.

The dark grey of winter is already pressing in and I hurry through the cold night, feeling excited to break my routine a little.

 

After the event…

So, you know when you make a decision and it just rings true? You feel super happy, you make connections with people that are the same as you, there’s just a great positive vibe around everything involved..?

So I turn up at the centre and there’s a sign on the door saying there’s a Board meeting taking place. Bit intimidating but there’s a reception and leaflets and anyone’s allowed to go and look at leaflets right? So I wander over and get my bearings and a friendly voice asks me if I’m ok and my standard response of “Yes, thankyou, I’m fine.” just jumps automatically out of my mouth. I’m clearly feeling awkward as I’m staring at some leaflets, late at night, in a multi-faith centre…damn automatic politeness!

Anyway, I manage to walk my body into the room and there’s bookcases (instantly puts me at ease), 2 tables full of cake and a big water kettle for tea. Friendly faces welcome me in and I find a seat with them. It’s not as busy as I expected and we’re watching it on a pull up screen and projector but I like it. It’s not intimidating and I happily chat with the people there as we take tea and cake. I later learn that one of the cakes is made by someone’s 4 year old granddaughter. It all feels very human.

We watch the film with a break in the middle for a refresher of more tea and cake (priorities). I don’t watch many religious documentaries, as I can’t get away from the feeling of propaganda with them, but it was interesting to learn about the different history. How over the generations the stories have changed and how images have warped peoples view of it, depending upon their historical context. The core of the story was that each man saw the complete faith the other had in their own religion and understood they could not change to follow their own. Instead they looked for the similarities the religions had with each other and built on these, taking the good ideas they saw and bringing them into their own faith.

I watched it and kinda thought “well d’uh, that’s how problem solving work to get progress”. I get the feeling that with feelings of faith and religion, people don’t like progress. Change means becoming something different and what most people want is for others to be more like them, without them changing to be more like the other. Once you’ve changed by adding something new to your faith, you’re no longer part of the community that hasn’t moved along with you. You become an outsider from your own faith and that is a scary place to find yourself. Apparently Francis didn’t care though, which is why he still has a strong following going through the world and is considered a friendly badass (well, the film certainly showed him as such anyway.)

After the film we had an interesting discussion about the history of the crusades (there were 5 wars apparently…I really suck at history…) from a religious historian and about the difficulties communities are facing in the current climate of change and peoples response to it. This discussion was interesting as we had a range of faith backgrounds and levels of knowledge (from the University Chaplain to mindfulness workshop leader to a random illustrator). It would have been nicer to have had the opportunity for more Muslim input but we were a group of 8 and the majority were Christians.

One of the key ideas from the discussion that I thought summed it nicely, was that people are valuable as they are. The idea that people’s own faith and experience is valuable and needs to be respected by others. That it doesn’t need to be changed and treated like something sub-human and so not worthy of human rights if it’s not the same at your own. Fear of change is a powerful motivator to destroy anything that looks to rock your life’s status quo; but progress is only really achieved when people step outside their rational thoughts that have been formed by their current ideas and accept a few new ones. It’s rational to be scared of the new and the unknown, especially when the news outlets are making it appear like there’s no other choice. It’s irrational to welcome with open arms something that everyone has labelled as different and scary, when you don’t know what to expect from it.

I just googled the definition of ‘irrational’ to ensure this was the correct word to use here (I had Inigo Montoya’s voice in my head whispering ” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”) and the definition I got was the following “without or deprived of normal mental clarity or sound judgment.” Sounds about right to me. If you base your judgement on Facebook news or scaremongering tactics of the tabloids though, it’s not a sound judgement.

The best way to make a rational judgement is to go out and explore the new for yourself and make up your own mind from the experiences you have. You may not like it, it may confirm everything you were scared of, but you are making the judgement. Not the press. And that is so important when you are figuring out somethings value and how you want to act.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s it all about then?

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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.

 

Overview of walking Dovedale to Milldale in Derbyshire Part 1

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I think this walk is a classic! This is the one that me and my partner always go to when we want to get out into the fresh air, it’s ridiculously popular at certain points of the year and almost everyone I know in Derbyshire has done it.

Part 1 : Facilities

Let’s talk the basics guys, with regards to car parking we got there early at about 10am and the car park was pretty empty, by the time we had made it back at 2pm it was completely full with cars backed up all the way to the main road, about a quarter of a mile back. Brutal if you have a car full of kids and really need to pee….

There is a small cabin in the car park that sells ice creams and some drinks but no proper food. The toilets are well looked after and your standard public toilets to be honest, nothing fancy but exactly what you want when your desperate for a pee!

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The walk is relatively flat with a couple of hills half way through, although there’s always a path to follow and steps to help you climb them. I will say that initially the walk on the left hand side of the river can get muddy and a bit awkward with loose stones and on the right hand side there is a proper path. You can cross the river at the stepping stones later on and the path stays clear from there but if you have a buggy or wheelchair I don’t recommend trying to cross the stones. The rivers not that deep but it’s fast and not worth the risk!

Once you get to Milldale there is a small village there that has a small tuckshop that sells hot food and snacks, i don’t think it’s open all year, thought it was open in February when we went.

I’ve created some sketches from my photos of the day, i’m still pretty new to landscape painting so have much to learn but i’m hoping with this practice i’ll get to a stage I can be proud of. All pictures were done with watercolours on cartridge paper. I hope you like them and if you have any sketches of your own, please share a link in the comment section below!

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