Banishing Those Seeds of Doubt
And it doesn"t help when some idiot of a woman (that would be me) tells you to workҠat your art.Ҡ Now you can see why successful writers and artists cut out a portion of EVERY day that is your time alone with your Muses.If you are a young mother that time may be just before bed or very early in the morning. If you have a crazy social life or you have a long commute to and from work, carry your sketch book with you and use that time to add to your body of work.
Make notes about things needing to be done so your mind is clear to focus on the loosening up exercises. If the thoughts of your busy persona intrude, write them down for later.
You"ve heard of "writer"s block?"ҠIt may be that noҠidea comes to them worthy of effort. But if they don"t write something they remain in that "writer"s block." A writer will keep a journal of some sort of ideas, snippets of conversation, descriptions of places, people, and things. This journal will be returned to often to break that writer"s block. If you read the biographies of famous writers, you will see that every one of them sets aside an undisturbed period of time EVERY day during which they write. That all important opening sentence is often leftҠunwritten untilҠthey finishҠthe work when they can better focus on it.
Artists are no different: they can"t just sit down and make a masterpiece: they make drawings and notes about colour and composition. They draw anything; still lifes, their hand, the stool over there, whatever. They make colour renderings. Often times they will start a painting just to leave it leaning somewhere, unfinished. Ҡ
Have you seen the sketch books of Michelangelo? He knew people would be peeking over his shoulder so he wrote backwards. But he couldnt draw ˜backwards so we see his helicopter, his anatomy studies and so on. You need to do the same: fill your sketch book with quick drawings that have no other purpose than to keep you drawing. Carry your sketch book with you so it will be handy when you see an interesting shape of a funny saying (one seen many years ago along Hwy 11 in Ontario Canada ˜We buy junk and sell antiques. Finally, one day, you will be in a state of mind where a complete design will fall into place.
If you want to add a bit of pop philosophy to the thing: everything happens in its own good time. Or, God never gives you something you cannot handle. How about, genius is 95% perspiration and 5% inspiration.
The biggest stumbling block is that ugly lesson we learned when we were very young. Right in the middle of some great work of art done in crayon on the wall we are pulled away, the crayon is snatched from our hand, and we hear the words ˜NO, BAD, DONT. We get caught with our indelible marker making art in Mummies good coffee table book and what do we hear? ˜NO, BAD, DONT. In school we make a drawing only to be told, ˜thats not the way you draw a fill in the blanks. ˜ ҠIn no time we learn to tell ourselves we cannot do ˜it and you do not do ˜it.
Im here to say you can do it. Being an embroiderer gives you such an embarrassment of talents; just as long as you are willing to experiment, keep notes about the experiments, keep the test pieces and the doodle cloths. And use what you have learned in every piece of embroidery you stitch.
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