Life as an Artist: update 3

Hello there! I’m just rounding my third full week as a full-time artist, and I thought I’d give you an update on how it’s going. If you’ve been following my blog, you will have noticed some new projects popping up, and when I was first thinking of a photo to take for this post, I thought of scattering my desk with various said projects, but instead, I settled on a calmer idea:

This is a “to-do” list for my upcoming weekend. I have learned quickly that I still look forward to and need weekends, even when I’m doing something I love for work. While I do not spend the hours of the week counting down until Friday anymore, the weekend is still a much needed mental break.

Other than the reality of having many new projects going, how is it really going over here at Blue Bicicletta? Well, if I had to choose a word to sum up my Life as an Artist right now (at least the more business-y part), it would be choices. I find myself constantly faced with choosing—which projects to work on, which projects to let go, and which projects to plan on doing in the future.

While I love that I have no shortage of ideas, it is my current challenge to learn how not to drive myself crazy about making each little choice of how to spend my work day, and bigger choices of how to structure my career.

I’m often reminding myself that it’s also a choice to relax, be calm, go with the flow, and trust yourself to get the job done. I am trying to make that choice as often as possible.

On the flip side, I am so excited about all of the new art ideas that keep coming into my head, and I’m so grateful to have the time to pursue a number of them. The creativity keeps coming, and it really fills me up.

Happy weekend to you, and I wish you days full of inspiration and calm!

Oh, and for those of you new to this blog, you can see previous artist life updates here

Something New: a monthly art club!

Have you ever wished that a little pocket of creative inspiration showed up at your door every month to excite and delight you? Look no further because I have just started a monthly art club! I call it the Little Bits of Art Monthly Club, and I just unveiled it over at my shop.

You might now be wondering, “what is the Little Bits of Art Monthly Club? Well, let me take you on a tour.

If you become a member of the Blue Bicicletta monthly art club, you will receive a neat little packet like the one above, each month of your subscription.

Here’s a look at the contents of the very first month, December 2009. The contents of the package will vary each month, but they will always include:
-2 greeting cards or postcards
-a set of monthly to-do lists
-a pair of monthly calendar bookmarks
-a unique piece of miniature art in the form of a mini book (as you see here), or a tiny original drawing
-and a little packet of creative odds and ends (like little bits of patterned fabric, handmade paper, buttons, old postage stamps, words, quotes, and anything else I discover).

All of this will be neatly packaged in a handmade envelope (and shipped in a bend-proof mailer), and all illustrations are, of course, completely original and created by me.

Here are some more peeks:

December’s unique piece of tiny art is a little book I made called A Bit on Buttons, with button drawings, little facts on buttons, and even button-related expressions. The odds and ends packet will remain a surprise for each recipient to discover when the get their packets.

For cards in the December package, I will include one each of my new Thankful card and my Winter Poem card. Of course, if you’re from the Southern Hemisphere, you’ll get a less Winter-y card in exchange for the second.

To help you add a little more creativity to your day, I will also include some fanciful to-do lists and a pair calendar bookmarks.

To become a part of my Little Bit of Art Monthly Club, click here. I’m currently offering memberships of 1 month and 3 months, and if you get a 3 month membership starting this December (2009), you’ll get a fourth month FREE, as a little gift for being a part of my introductory month!

This would be a GREAT and unique holiday gift! If you are buying it as a gift, I will have a certificate of membership available soon that I can email or send to you or the recipient in advance, just let me know that you would like this when you place your order, or contact me directly.

I will take off my business-y hat now and say, I’m really, really excited about this new item/experience/cool thing and have been excitedly planning it and putting it together (and hinting at it on this blog) for the last couple of weeks. It is the bringing together of many of my interests in art and design (obviously), but it also brings in my hope to help people sneak a little more creativity and inspiration into their everyday lives. Thanks so much for sharing this view into this new project of mine!

One more thing: Monthly packets will be sent out at the beginning of each month, so you must purchase your membership by the 22nd of the month to receive your packet at the beginning of the next month, or else your membership will start the month after. Here’s an example: If you purchase a membership between now and November 22, you will receive your first packet at the beginning of December, if you purchase a membership between November 23 and December 22, you will receive your first packet at the beginning of January.

The Last Letter of my Alphabet

Here it is, the last letter of my Natural Patterns Alphabet Series . . . can we get a drum roll please . . .

“Honeycomb,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, prints available in my shop

Can you believe it? I made it through all 26 letters of the alphabet!!! If you were here in this room with me, it would be one of those New Year’s Eve effects—the flying balloons, the confetti. Seriously! Actually, I didn’t realize how excited I would be until this moment. I was just looking back, and I drew the first piece in this series, Nido, all the way back in May (May 14 to be exact), and when I drew that first one, I didn’t even intend it to become an alphabet series. Alas, the glimmer of an alphabet series I saw that day has come to fruition, and you can see all of the pieces quite nicely, and in alphabetical order, in this flickr set. Here’s a glimpse of them all together:

There’s something so fulfilling about finishing a series of drawings, especially a pretty large one like this (with very specific parameters)—it feels so complete. While there are things I would change, or perfect, about many of the pieces, I’m happy with how they turned out on the whole, specifically how they hang together.

I am most happy though, about all that I learned in the process—each piece was an exercise in seeing—trying to see the essential identifying part of each subject and somehow convey that to you. I learned a lot about the drawing process. I also learned how a series can give you momentum and push you to go further than you would otherwise. If you want to read more about my process through making this series, check out all of my Natural Patterns Alphabet Blog Posts.

My love for series has not diminished, in fact, I have started to think in books for that very reason. The book is the perfect venue for a series. My brain is cooking up many little ones these days. As for this series, I’m hoping to show the entire alphabet in some venue (if you have any ideas, drop me a comment), and I’m also planning to sell print sets of the entire series so that if someone wanted to decorate a room with words and nature, they could. Stay tuned!

Another Perspective: Inspired Stone

I just wanted to give you all an alternate perspective on yesterday’s post about my hike with Mike (my husband) in Desolation Wilderness this past weekend. My husband started a blog a little while back to chronicle his love for the outdoors (specifically rocks and rock climbing) and photography. His blog is called Inspired Stone, and his most recent post is about our hike.

Although I know there is no way to not be biased, I think he’s a very talented photographer. He is also a scientist (in graduate school right now for Materials Science), so he has this extraordinary combination of scientist and artist (and outdoorsman) that come together quite nicely in photography. Check it out. There is even a very silly picture of me.

Natural November

The first day of November here in northern California, was a beautiful sunny day, and we thought it called for a hike—so we headed up towards Lake Tahoe for some natural inspiration. My husband (who is an outdoor guru) chose the location: we started out at Wrights Lake in the desolation wilderness and hiked up to two nearby lakes called Grouse Lake and Hemlock Lake.

What a gorgeous day—the temperature was just fine—t-shirt and pants weather with open blue and sunny skies. Perfect for lying on a rock and letting the breeze and sun carry you into a nap (one of my favorite outdoor occupations). The thing I noticed most was the expansive amount of quiet. I live in a pretty small city (Davis, CA), so I can’t complain about big city noise, but I must have needed the quiet because I really felt the luxury of it. Here are a few pictures that unfortunately, don’t really capture the feeling of walking outside in the quiet sunny afternoon, but isn’t that always the way.

The Challenge of X

Well, I did not save the hardest letter for last in my Natural Patterns Alphabet series, I saved it for second to last.

“Xylem,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, prints now available in my shop

The letter X is hands-down the hardest letter in the alphabet—have you looked in the dictionary recently under the letter X? There are really only a couple handfuls of words. I wanted all of the pieces in my Natural Patterns Alphabet to be easily recognizable natural elements, but for X, that just wasn’t possible. So, you will only recognize Xylem if you’re up on plant nerdology.

Xylem is one of two types of transport tissue in vascular plants (the other being phloem), says Wikipedia. Essentially, from my basic understanding, it transports water in the plant. You might be wondering, what is a vascular plant? Why, ferns, clubmosses, flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, of course. Since I would need to spend several hours to try to unravel an entire understanding of xylem, I will now open the floor to any plant nerds out there, if they feel like enlightening us further. I think the xylem may actually be only the large shapes in this pattern, and the smaller shapes are the phloem?

Now back to my kind of nerdology—isn’t the word “xylem” a cool word? I do love x words, perhaps because of their rarity. The word “xylem” comes from the Greek “xylon” which essentially means wood, alluding to this best-known xylem tissue (thanks again Wikipedia). I thought the pattern was quite interesting, reminding me of an anatomy-inspired drawing I did quite some time ago.

This drawing is a little bit different from my other natural patterns, as it is microscopic and pretty abstract, but really it gets to the heart of my interest in natural patterns: the actual patterns themselves. There are so many interesting details in the minutiae of nature—you just have to look.

A Tease of Buttons

Here’s a little teaser for something I’m up to and hope to be unveiling next week. For now, it can be a nice little still life from my desk.

Don’t you just love buttons and fancy papers?? I do. I pretty much drool when I go into the art store and see the racks of handmade papers, and I have a little bowl of buttons on my window sill. How will these two elements combine in my art world? In a very sneaky way—a little pocket of inspiration perhaps? Stay tuned!

I is for Ivy

One of those pesky invasive vines creeped its way into my Natural Patterns Alphabet series today:

“Ivy,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, prints available in my shop

Shortly after starting to work on this drawing, I remembered that we have Ivy mobbing a tree and part of the fence in our backyard, so here’s a look at my in-process drawing table:

As I keep saying, I’m pretty excited to be so close to finishing this series—just two more letters left!!! H and the dreaded X. It will be really fun to see them all together once they’re done! If anyone has seen someplace selling a square black frame with a mat with a 5 x 5 inch opening, let me know—it would save me from having to hand-cut mats for all 26 of these drawings.

Life as an Artist: update 2

Why, you may be asking, is there a photo of my ugly, dirty, sneakers at the top of this second post about being a full-time artist? Well, this morning when I was jogging with my dog, I got to thinking, as I often have, how jogging is a metaphor for my new career (and any career for that matter, or life in general).

You see, I don’t really like jogging, so I often find myself thinking while I jog about the nature of my relationship with jogging, and why I find it so hard to get motivated to jog. Don’t get me wrong, I like making art a whole lot more than jogging, I love it in fact, but the elements are the same: some days you wake up and feel great, you go out on a run, and you feel like a well-oiled machine. Other days, you can barely summon the motivation to put your sneakers on. This is life—it will always be like this, there will always be up days and down days, and how do you get through it? You put one foot in front of the other.

It is the importance of “putting one foot in front of the other” that I have been realizing so much about my art career this week. As I mentioned in my last post on this subject, this week was my first full week of being a full-time artist. How did it go? Some great moments, some scary moments, and a lot of in between—just the doing part of the art (the putting one foot in front of the other).

The great moments can be summed up by: “I can’t believe I get to do this all day every day (and not set foot in a boring office job for one second of the week) and “Wow, I’m really doing this!”

The scary moments can be summed up by: “Oh gosh, what will I work on next? I don’t want to do that. But I must, because I’m doing this all day, every day.”

The in between moments can be summed up by lots and lots of little steps and uneventful, but wonderful consistent work that helped me bridge the gap between the great moments and the scary moments and come out feeling successful. I am struck again though, by the jogging metaphor. I think we all focus a lot on big accomplishments, but I realize, especially during this week, that it’s the little accomplishments that are amazing—being able to say, “I finished this small step, now what’s next?” and then actually succeeding at going onto the next part.

It really hit me earlier this week that I am now the master of my own time, for better or worse. I have to face myself head on, every day. It’s completely up to me now, whether or not I get the work done—there are no more excuses like another job getting in the way. This is no surprise to me, but the reality of it is different than just thinking about it before it happens. Your neurosis don’t vanish, they exist, and you have to learn to work with them, or around them, or despite them. This is where “putting one foot in front of the other” really helps: when things get overwhelming, I just remind myself, “all I need to do is take one little step, do one little thing.”

And now I will salute all of you self-employed people—I have so much respect for you, especially now that I’m living this reality.

In summary, this was a wonderful week of learning about myself and creating. Unfortunately, many of the creations I am working on are not bloggable at this point because they’re part of larger projects that I will unveil all together when the time is right, but here are some ideas of what I’ve been up to:

-greeting card designs for a greeting card company that approached me in the summer
-a small book (chapbook/zine size) I’ve been scheming for some time and now actually have the time to work on
-some tiny artworks for the upcoming holidays
-one other new idea percolating about a way to expand Blue Bicicletta in a little bit of a new way

That brings me to one of the things I love about being an artist, and now being a full-time artist: you can build your work around lots of different, wonderful, creative things that you love.

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is fast approaching for all of us in the U.S.—woohoo, I do love this holiday of rejoicing and eating. A while back, I started thinking about that age-old Thanksgiving question “What are you thankful for?” and here is one of my answers, in a card:

I know that we all don’t say this enough, you can never say it enough. I am thankful for all of you reading this blog, and for my amazing friends and family who are always there, no matter what, and for all of the people I see who are making life happen, because they are inspiring me to make my life happen. I mean it! If I ever doubted that people are out there to support me, my recent wedding (see this post about it) proved it to me, big time. I mean people came out of all corners of the country and worked like crazy to make my wedding happen. It was amazing.

I have often been asked about where I get my ideas for art, and I have to say (and have probably said it here before) that most often I make things that say something I need to here. This is one of them. So get off your bum and thank someone. Give them a call, send them a letter, text them for gosh sakes. Or you could send them a card!

These cards are now available in my shop—great for Thanksgiving, the holidays, or any old day of the year!