Tag Archives: illustration

And Now For Something Completely Different

January 23, 2013 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You only get that title if you remember Monty Python.

It is Book Review Wednesday at the Nolen house. Today’s totally different book review is on a non-fiction book. I read a lot of non-fiction books but I don’t usually review them here.

I started this book thinking it would be a quick read. I mean, look at it! Well, you can’t see it here. It is tiny. STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST or “10 Things Nobody Told You about Being Creative” by Austin Kleon. Who, by the way, lives in Austin, Texas and so does my fellow book-writer and friend Nikki Loftin (more on her fabulous book later). Nikki encouraged me to read this book. Thank you, Nikki! Should have been a quick read. This book is not a quick read for the simple reason that it is stuffed with good ideas that need to be mulled like spiced apple cider. Mulled apple cider is always better the day after. Yes, I said “mulled”. Or steeped inside that steamy caldron of a creative brain you carry on your shoulders. This is a fantastic book.

Also, I can’t believe I read a NYT’s best seller while it was still on the best seller list. That’s a first.

I don’t want to leave you wondering if I’ve lost it. Here are a few tips from the creative master Mr. Kleon: Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started. In other words, waiting for inspiration to hit you may see you old and gray before anything happens. I love his scribbles and multimedia artwork he uses to illustrate his points. He says “Fake it ’til you make it.” Great advice. You have to make some ugly art before the good stuff. If you’ve been to art school as I have and seen what you start with and then see what you end with on your “forced” projects you understand what this means. With writing it translates into the same thing. Some days what I have written is horrible. But Mr. Kleon says over and over – don’t ever throw anything away. He’s right. You never know when that “horrible” will spark something ingenious. All my work comes from ugly.

He quotes from Francis Ford Coppola — “We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that’s how you will find your voice. And that’s how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you.”

Another tip from the book: Write the book you want to read. I’ve always heard – write what you know. But I’ve always believed that you must write what you love AND what you want to read. If you write, you spend a LOT of time at it. You better love it.

One more tip from the book: Side projects and hobbies are important. How well I adhere to this! I can’t help it. I can’t help writing. Even if the writing is only in my head. I can’t help seeing the world around me with an artist’s “eye” although I haven’t touched a canvas in nine months. But life goes on and my projects may look to everyone else as though I’m sitting on my hands. They aren’t – my projects are brewing.

I don’t begin to do this book justice in a short review. I’m going to leave the other seven tips for you to read when you pick up a copy of “Steal Like An Artist”. You won’t be unchallenged, and unchanged if you do. I promise.

The stuff in the book may even be a sort of Holy Grail for writerly types.

Creative advice from Austin Kleon’s “Steal Like An Artist” (holykaw.alltop.com)
Sketchnotes are Fantastic (jenniferhartnetthenderson.wordpress.com)
From the SAY blog: How to Be Creative? Steal a Little (everything.typepad.com)

The Writing Life

The Artful Dodger

April 5, 2011 Rebecca Nolen 1 Comment

There is no place like home. My home at this moment is no place to work on art projects right now. It is the art project. The yellow bathroom is still yellow. I’ve got the paint for it and hope I can start the transformation tomorrow. The person I would hire to do the job – and he is such an expert he would be finished in an hour or so – is taking some time off because his father just passed away. So I keep thinking I will just open the can of paint and begin.

The most daunting part of any project is the beginning. The act of opening up the can of paint, ripping open the box of window blinds, or taking the electric saw out of the shed feels like slogging through deep mud. Suddenly all the other undone or unfinished projects silently scream for attention. I still haven’t finished mending the shelf in the kitchen. I haven’t painted over the daubs of putty I put on the siding months ago. I haven’t replaced the cracked board on the deck.

At the same time I think of other projects waiting for me. My art projects. They are in careful packets or thick files, or even stacked in my art room under the boxed ceiling fan. I continue to take photos of careful compositions that would translate into artwork eventually. My files have become volumes on the computer’s photo organizer.

Art is not difficult for me. It excites me. Sometimes there is nothing I would rather do in the world than draw or paint a picture. Some pictures take many hours, some don’t take long at all. I do not stop until I know that it is done. I can’t explain how I know a picture is done. I just know when it is. Sometimes I have to do pictures over and over again because they aren’t what I saw in the beginning, in my mind. Art is visual for me and so the picture comes to mind and then I create it. Although my art is often very tactile, even using my hands to push the paint around on the canvas, I use many techniques and resources to produce the picture that I visualized.

At this moment in time my artful pursuits have taken on a larger canvas – the house(s). I’ve reached back in time on the arts and crafts home to try to visualize what the house looked like in 1910. My smaller canvasses sit quietly on their easel. It isn’t that I couldn’t reach the paint wherever it is. I could do it. It wouldn’t be that difficult. But the larger project has taken me out for a while. I feel guilty though. I feel as if I’m betraying my little pastels and colored pencils.

I wonder if I’m delaying the great projects for the good ones. I read a book long ago about the “urgent” and the “important”. There is a fine distinction because in the midst of busy-ness making a clear decision between what is truly important within all the terribly urgent – makes all the difference.

The Writing Life

Goya’s Cats: a Sketchbook Project 2011

January 6, 2011 Rebecca Nolen Leave a comment

"The sleep of Reason creates monsters&quo... — Image via Wikipedia

So two months ago I signed up to do a Sketchbook Project. I didn’t start it until nine days ago and it has to be postmarked and in the mail by January 15th. I work well with deadlines. Yikes!

It is finished.

What is the Sketchbook Project 2011? It is a group project (put on by Art House Co-op) whereby artists all over the world sign up and receive a tiny sketchbook in which to draw, paste, paint, sketch, etc. anything according to the assigned topic. Then the sketchbook is mailed back (on time or else it doesn’t get in!) and then put on tour across the US. Each individual sketchbook is assigned a bar code on its back. That bar code will allow anyone to look up the sketchbook online and look at it, if the tour doesn’t come to your city. Cool, huh?

So I signed up. The topic I chose is Nightmares.

I had lots of ideas in the beginning. My ideas didn’t make any sense when I worked them out. So I was stumped for a while.

Until I came across something in a murder mystery I was reading at that time. It is the title of one of Goya‘s paintings: The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters.

I wanted to practice drawing cats and kittens for another project so I blended the two and came up with Goya’s Cats. It starts out with Goya writing: “There is but one nightmare that haunts the creative spirit, the nightmare of imminent failure.”

I’ve got two more pictures to go before I’m finished with what amounts to a picture book dummy. There aren’t any finished paintings or drawings, more like really rough sketches. Because the paper is like newsprint. But mainly because I’m scrambling to make the deadline.

So I picture Goya, surrounded by his cats (I don’t actually know if he had cats but float along with me here). Next picture is the same only this time Goya has his head on his desk as if he has given up. The next few pictures are all of his paintings and sketches with cats here and there. The ending shows Goya watching one of his cats sleep and wondering what cats dream about.

Who doesn’t wonder what cats dream about? So Goya wondered, would they dream of things they eat? Perhaps things they would like to eat? Then he comes up with a wild thought that maybe “The Dream of Cats produces Mice”. This leads him to a brilliant idea for another painting, which he accomplishes. It becomes, of course, his most famous painting.

All because of the cats. Which is all fictional. But you knew that.

my barcode number is 46027