Before and After
Ten weeks ago, I walked into Art 131—Introduction to Drawing, one of the first college classes I’d taken in 25 years. I was nervous, both about being in a classroom again, and also because for all of my very vocal enjoyment of art and a general sense that I was somewhat creative, I have never been very confident in my drawing ability. I do fairly well at Pictionary, and can create a reasonable likeness of most cartoon characters, but to draw something real from observation? This is the primary reason that most of my artistic endeavors tend toward collage or abstract designs.
No more. I was finally committed.
The first day of class was spent learning about supplies—the difference between vine charcoal and compressed, what erasers and paper to buy, what kind of portfolio we’d need—so we didn’t have to face our skills, or lack of them, that day. But that changed quickly. When we walked in the second day, the teacher (a wonderful guide named Vicki Lynn Wilson) had filled the center of the room with a giant still life: a mannequin in roller skates, boxes and vases, an umbrella, a large wicker headboard and piles of other . . . stuff. We set up our easels, opened up our shiny, new drawing supplies, and Vicki gave us the entire class period to do an uninstructed drawing. No rules, no help. Just an hour and a half in a quiet room to draw what we saw. She wasn’t being mean; she wanted to gauge the skills we brought to her class.
It was absolutely nerve-wracking. I fussed with my supplies and readjusted my easel for a full five minutes just to delay putting pencil to paper. And it got worse from there. I didn’t know where to start, how to start, which tool to use. I stared at the still life and sketched. Stared some more and erased what I had drawn. Lurching, fumbling, I somehow got through the time until Vicki asked us to stop. When I looked at my drawing, here’s what I saw.
I was miserable. The drawing confirmed what I already believed: that I didn’t know how to draw. Mercifully, Vicki collected our drawings to keep until the end of the term. I’m sure she knew we’d be tempted to destroy them. I sure wanted to.
Fortunately, things got better. Over the next ten weeks, we learned how to do observational drawing in stages. We worked through each of the elements of design, learning about line and composition before moving on to perspective, shading and value. We worked in white charcoal on black paper, black charcoal on brown paper. Eventually we learned color. Week by week we built on previous skills, bringing in our drawings for the class to critique. I became familiar with the tattoo artist who worked with detailed precision, the grandmother and high school teacher who drew images from her home, the young man who asked intriguing questions and was uniquely drawn to color. I felt connected to them somehow because I saw so much of their art. It felt like I’d seen something of their soul.
Which I had. And week after week, they’d seen mine.
For our final project, we were given free reign. We were to draw objects that were meaningful to us and said something about who were were. We could use any color paper or any techniques. We could work in black and white or in color. I decided to do a drawing about living my life as an explorer. I picked my favorite traveling boots, the leather satchel I found at a market in Italy and which I now use as my school bag, and the journals I kept on a study abroad trip in college. I threw in my favorite fountain pen and and amethyst crystal I’ve kept on my desk for ages. I set up my still life on a table in my laundry room and worked on it for about twelve hours over the course of ten days.
Today, we hung our artwork for the final class critique. This is what I pinned to the wall:
So what did I learn?
I don’t have to figure everything out by myself.
I suppose, in theory, I could have learned much of this on my own from reading books or watching countless YouTube videos. But then again, I got to be 50 years old without ever actually learning how to draw, so there you go. I’m sure it is possible to learn through trial and error, but having someone else share their expertise with you, provide you with structure and ideas, and give you feedback in real time is priceless. It takes a certain amount of courage, energy and resources to expose yourself and your work to a teacher, and even to other students, but as it turns out, this commitment is amply rewarded. Resources abound. There are people out there who want nothing more than to help me.
Break big ideas into smaller ideas.
I figured out pretty quickly that my problem with my first, uninstructed drawing was that I was trying to do too much at the same time. It was like having a pile of building materials—bricks and cement and 2×4′s and nails—and mixing them all together to build a house instead of focusing on them one at a time. Start first with overall composition. What do I want in the picture and where? Then add the shading and the detail. You don’t have to do everything at once.
Take the time.
This was, far and away, the most important lesson. It takes time to learn how to do something. I spent four to ten hours on my drawing homework each week, and at the beginning of each drawing, it looked like crap. In fact, it looked like crap for about the first two hours I worked. If I weren’t willing to spend at least two and a half hours when I sat down to work on a project, I would never know what I could do. Yet if I sat with it long enough, working with patience and trust, I was inevitably surprised by the objects that began to appear beneath my pencil. Honestly, it began to feel like magic. There I would be, sitting in my laundry room with my hands covered in charcoal, James Taylor crooning on my iPod, and suddenly beautiful things emerged from my paper. A jug of tulips, a drinking glass, the weave of a basket. I’d check my watch and hours had passed in what felt like twenty minutes. This was the payoff.
I’ll say it again: learning something new takes time. Mastering something takes a lot of time. They say that it takes about 10,000 hours of deep, concentrated practice to gain mastery, and I think being willing to spend this kind of time trumps talent any day. The trick is to pick something that you don’t mind spending 10,000 hours doing so that the time spent is, in itself, the reward. I’m thinking that being able to make art is worth a 10,000 hour investment in my life. I’ve already started. Between my three classes this term, I’ve probably spent 300 hours on art since January.
Only 9,700 hours to go.
I can’t wait.
A Still Life of a Still Life
I’m so excited about the assignment in my painting class this week. We are supposed to paint a still life of objects that somehow represent our lives. There weren’t many “rules” other than that there needed to be three or more items, one of which was some sort of photograph of ourselves.
I’ve always liked and admired still life paintings. In college, while on an overseas study abroad program in England and The Nederlands, I visited world-class museums for the first time–the National Gallery and the Tate in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I was overwhelmed and in awe as I wandered in front of art by all the masters, but I developed a special place in my heart for still life paintings. I still have, hanging on my living room wall, the framed print of a Dutch still life I carted home in my suitcase thirty years ago. The artist was not well-known, and I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know his name. I do, however, see his still life almost every day of my life. I included a photograph of it at the start of this post, so now you’ve seen it too.
Traditionally, a still life, as you probably know, was an artistic depiction of commonplace items, either natural—such as flowers, fruit, shells, food, stones—or crafted—such as books, musical instruments, jewelry, vases, pipes or dishes. Many of the items carried symbolic meaning and and the paintings themselves often served as a source of enrichment or focus of meditation. One particular subset of still lifes, called vanitas, included items that focused the viewer on the transitoriness of life. Images of human skulls, overripe fruit, wilting flowers, insects, hourglasses, and candles (sometimes with their flames extinguished) would serve as a meditation on the fact that, well, life is short.
There are many wonderful examples of still life paintings.. Here are a few:
One by Paul Cezanne. He called it Black Marble Clock, but I also see a coffee cup and the remains of a meal.
This one an example of a vanitas still life by Pieter Claesz. Notice the skull and timepiece.
Another one by Picasso. I see a violin, a journal and some fruit.
When I set out to create a still life for my own painting, I went to my journal to think about what I wanted to create. In doing so, I had my answer.
Most mornings, I crawl out of bed in the dark. I stumble downstairs and nearly blind myself with the kitchen light so I can see to start the coffee maker. While it brews, I feed our dog, Abby, and take her for a brief walk down the street. She is almost as bleary-eyed as I am. By the time I return, my coffee is ready and I head for my favorite chair in the living room, a comfy wingback by the fireplace with an ottoman and everything. I light the fireplace, light a candle, and drop into my chair. I sip my coffee and pull out my black Moleskine journal and my favorite Waterman fountain pen. For the next half hour to 40 minutes, I write or sketch in my journal. Sometimes I’ll meditate, and sometimes, I’ll just sit quietly and listen to the whirr of the furnace, notice the smell of my coffee, or watch as the world outside my window lights up with pink sun. I am still. This is my still life.
It seems like such a little thing, really, a short time spent quieting my mind and my pace long enough to listen for the voice that tells me where I should go, what I should do. But this still life of mine is crucial for my sanity, my sense of contentment, and my confidence. Plus, I think my family notices that I’m less crabby after I’ve taken this time to breathe.
It was, therefore, a no-brainer to decide to paint a still life of my still life. I pulled together the necessary elements: coffee in a cup, a candle, my journal and fountain pen. I grabbed a couple of other objects that are also meaningful to me (see my blog post “The Symbols We Live”). I also included the picture of myself as my instructor requested. I draped a couple of table cloths over a box on my kitchen table and set up my little tableau. Doug was gracious enough to use his photographic skills to take a picture of my collection. Here is the result.
I love how this turned out and am excited to paint it. One of the most enjoyable parts of the whole project, however, was assembling the objects. A still life provides so much room for symbolism and metaphor, which makes it a perfect exercise for art journaling. Creating a personal still life and taking a photograph of it, even with a simple camera like the one in most cell phones, is an illuminating art journaling exercise. It’s creative, playful, and usually requires items that you already have around your house.
Try it for yourself. Make a still life of any aspect of your life. Maybe it’s how you like to cook, or your passion for golf or water polo, or your role as a parent. Or, like me, you can do something to represent your own “still life.” Take a picture and print it out if you can. Paste it in your journal. You can spend a few minutes writing about the objects that appear in your arrangement. How do these objects speak to you? What are they saying?
Listen.
The Things That Matter
Neawanaka is a fictional town on the Oregon coast, and the setting of Brian Doyle’s novel, Mink River. Doyle is a local Oregon writer and his book has been getting a lot of attention around town lately, including being assigned to my daughter’s high school English class. However, the book deserves notice from anyone, even those living outside of Oregon’s borders. Doyle’s prose is . . . . luscious. Earthy and evocative, layered and lyrical. Plus, much to the surprise and consternation of my daughter and her high school English class, Doyle breaks all sorts of rules of writing. He makes up words. He plays fast and loose with punctuation and traditional sentence structure. And he makes it work brilliantly.
One of the best sections of the whole book is a passage at the beginning of Chapter 30, in which “the man with six days to live” talks with a young boy, Daniel. They are sitting on the porch at night and he tells Daniel,
These things matter to me, son. The way hawks huddle their shoulders angrily against hissing snow. Wrens whirring in the bare bones of bushes in winter. The way swallows and swifts veer and whirl and swim and slice and carve and curve and swerve. The way that frozen dew outlines every blade of grass. Salmonberries thimbleberries cloudberries snowberries elderberries salalberries gooseberries. My children learning to read. My wife’s voice velvet in my ear at night in the dark under the covers.
The passage goes on for over a page, just one long paragraph. It is delicious to read and to savor, bringing with it tactile, spicy memories of things we all know and love, but often overlook: folding laundry warm from the dryer, fresh mown lawns, or the sound of ice shaken in drinks. I could happily copy out the whole section for you but I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the joy of searching it out and reading it for yourself. Heck, read the whole book.
What I will do is encourage you to spend a few quiet moments and start your own list. What are the things that matter to you? Of course, when pressed, we will all quite accurately mention that our families are important, as are our friends, good health and peaceful nations. No arguments here. But what specific things make a difference to you. What small moments jolt you to joy. These are treasures. These are worth recording.
I decided to write a list for myself, a la Doyle. I’m sure, given time, I will be able to refine it, or add to it. There are so many things that matter. However, here’s my first attempt, brushed down in about an hour.
These things matter to me.
The way a single maple leaf transfers its russet imprint on wet concrete. The thick ink of my fountain pen rolled over the page of my Moleskine journal. The flutter of a chickadee darting at the feeder, it’s black cap and puffed out white chest. Being stunned by a poem. Wood smoke. A great blue heron stilted on a dock, so still I don’t see it until I row past. Creamy thick oil paint brushed on white canvas. My mother’s potato soup on the day of the first snow of my childhood winters. Starfish. The curve of a warm coffee cup in my hand. Kissing the salty foreheads of my children when they were small. Kissing their foreheads now. 
The poetic names of flowers–plumeria, delphinium, gardenia, clematis, wisteria. Leaning over to tuck my daughter Kate into bed when she was a toddler, and the way she would gently roll strands of hair at the nape of my neck between her small fingers. The way it would keep me an extra twenty minutes, the stalling successful. Hedgehogs. The way the fingers of my husband Doug interlace mine. Floating on my back, held up by a warm ocean. Pearls. Quail running from brush to wood pile, their crests bobbing. My sisters’ faces, mirroring my own. Sea turtle ballet in green water. The pleasure of towels folded properly. My son Sam, age 8, hugging me like he won’t ever let go. Sam, taller than I am now, hugging me the same way still. Rain on a tin roof. The laughter of women. The barn smell of horses and leather. The smell of chlorine on Doug’s skin when he hugs me after swimming. Candles. The pop and crack of a wood fire on a cold day. Pugs. Driving my daughter Katherine to ballet in high school, a half hour each way in traffic, listening to pop songs, listening to her think out loud. The quiet of snow. The way September sunlight angles and burnishes autumn trees. Sliding into clean sheets. The way my daughter Sarah used to say “callapitter” for caterpillar, and “nay-naise” for mayonnaise, which was so adorable I never corrected her. The way Kate taught her to say it properly. The soulfulness of dogs’ eyes. The bittersweet taste of dark chocolate on my tongue. The birthstones of my children–sapphire, amethyst, ruby, sapphire–set in platinum, circling my finger. The curve of Doug’s shoulders. The silver starfish hung on a chain around my neck. The sound of the word grace when I say it softly, whispered as a prayer, floating past my teeth. Grace.
What are the things that matter to you?
If I Wait and Watch
I love crossword puzzles. There is something so satisfying about a quiet hour spent with a cup of coffee, a crisp new crossword puzzle, and a sharpened pencil. I try to finish a puzzle almost every day and have done so for years. As a result, I’ve developed a bit of a reputation for being good at crossword puzzles.
My husband, Doug, thinks I’m a crossword puzzle expert. He credits my ability to a well-known love of words and an entrenched habit of reading. He assumes that a person who works a puzzle quickly is someone who knows the answers to the clues before they begin. The execution of the puzzle is basically writing down what you already know.
As tempting as it is to let him believe that I am just unusually smart, I felt compelled to tell him the truth, which is something that those of you who regularly work the puzzles already know: crossword puzzle solutions are a result of a very specific set of skills which can be learned and practiced. While it helps to be fairly literate and to have a broad scope of interests, you will seldom know the answer to all of the clues. At least I don’t. I’m rocky on my geography and bad at Latin terms. I rarely know the names of famous sports figures or heroes of Norse mythology. The point is, it’s doesn’t really matter. You approach a puzzle without having all the clues, because there are other ways of knowing. And that’s what I love about crossword puzzles, and what keeps me coming back to them day after day. I get regular evidence that I know more than I thought I could know.
Doug asked me recently if I could teach him. For the past couple of months, we’ve sat down with the daily puzzle together. Slowly I’ve shared with him all the “tricks” I know. There are many other techniques, I’m sure, but here are a few for starters:
- Some words are frequently used. They’re words like jai alai, oboe, sro (short for “standing room only” in a theater), or err. If you work puzzles long enough, you will start to recognize these regulars as old friends.
- Just because you don’t know the answer to a clue, doesn’t mean you have to. You can also learn the answer by working all the crossed words. That’s why they call is a crossword puzzle! Don’t know the name of the largest lake in Australia? Filling in the perpendicular clues may tell you that it’s Lake “Eyre.” In this way, I’ve learned many wonderful, esoteric facts, like an etui is an ornamental needle case, or that the Hawaiian state bird is called a nene.
- Understand that sometimes, the clue and the answer will be–how can I put this nicely–just really lame. I once struggled with the clue “a bit of foamy soap” only to learn that the answer was “sud.” Seriously. Never in my life have I encountered a singular sud. But there it is. Crossword puzzle writers have down days, too.
- There is usually a theme to the puzzle–often a quotation, or a common structure, or a witty play on words. Figure out those, and you’ll make a lot of progress.
All of these are just tricks, however. The most important thing I’ve learned is not to spend too much time on any one clue. Trust that if you look away and work on something else your brain is still trying to come up with the answer. Trust your marvelous mind to work on the problem without you consciously directing it. Let it show you what it knows.
This last lesson is the most exciting to me, because it has huge implications, not just for crossword puzzles but for other creative ventures in general. When approaching a creative problem, I’ve learned that there are two basic steps. They are:
One: Show up for the work.
If I don’t pull out the crossword puzzle every day, I won’t learn anything and I won’t get any better. So do a crossword puzzle every day. Write a blog post every Friday. Paint one picture a week.
Two: Wait and watch for the answers.
You don’t have to have all the answers before you approach a creative project. In fact, it’s probably better not to have all the answers. Whether I’m writing a short story about my childhood, sketching a landscape, or figuring out how to arrange furniture in my living room. I will get further if I can find a way to be quiet and listen, and will often observe that my brain knows more than I can rationally explain.
This point was brought home to me this week. I was flipping through an old art journal from 2007, and on a page sandwiched between a smudgy pastel design and a watercolor sketch of a pineapple, I found that I had copied out a passage from a book, taken from a novel by Peter Pouncy, Rules for Old Men Waiting. I remembered the book fondly. It is a lovely story about an aging historian who, struggling with his wife’s recent death, decides to create a set of rules by which to live out the rest of his days, the most important of which is to “tell a story to its end.”
The passage which struck me, both in 2007 and this week, was his description of how to tell his story. It’s all about listening, and it gives as good an explanation as I’ve ever seen for how to solve a problem, finish a crossword puzzle, or record the story of a life. Although written in prose, it is so lyrical, so dense, I’ve copied it out here as a poem.
I said to my soul, be still,
and watch the small trickling beginnings ease towards flood.
Let the story declare itself,
and the characters and events take me down among them
and draw the words out of me.
I have tried to possess myself in patience,
I have gathered all the hungers of my past in readiness,
to spell out the missing syllables of my life.
In the morning watch I shall wait,
and the quick, brown, wordy fox will come out of his hole,
sniff the air, and begin his narration.
It is only natural.
Sooner or later, if I watch, it is bound to happen.
Then I shall fill my book with profitable wonders.
I don’t know about you, but I find great comfort in these words. They remind me that I don’t have to be the smartest person, know the most facts, or master Latin conjugations. I just have to be still, to be patient and watch for the wonders that will reveal themselves to me.
What’s Your Word?
Years ago, I worked as a counselor at a community college. One of the great things about working with a bunch of counselors is that we got paid to spend time talking about mental health and personal development. Of course, we tried to use these skills to better the lives of our students and clients. Just as often, however, they were skills we could benefit from ourselves.
Two of the women I worked with, Bernie and Donna, had been in the business of counseling–and of life, for that matter–for 10 or 15 years longer than I had, and served as both mentors and friends. They told me about an interesting strategy: they would often choose a word that represented an area in which they wanted to grow and have that word engraved on an inexpensive ID bracelet which they would wear until the artificial gold or silver finish wore off.
Back when Donna and Bernie first shared their idea, I became obsessed with the idea of carrying an important word around with me, a constant reminder of a quality I aspired to grow in myself. I remembered those ID bracelets from my childhood. I had one myself, a silver bracelet engraved with “Barbara” in fancy script. There was even a little fake green peridot, my birthstone, as an accent. Yet after hearing Bernie and Donna’s great idea, I couldn’t find one. As much as I searched (and these were the days before Amazon and the Internet) I had a hard time locating any bracelet, with or without birthstones. I reluctantly let the bracelet idea go.
I didn’t, however, let go of the idea of finding my word. What quality did I most want to cultivate? What word, if it were readily available to me, would help me make the better decision, the better life? There were so many to choose from: grace, courage, faith, laughter. After a great while–and I’m talking several months–I finally decided on my word:
Attend
I know, I know. It’s kind of a strange word, but hear me out. I realized that most of my regrets were born from a reluctance to become an active participant in my own life. I tended to roll with the inevitable, to allow other people to overly influence the path of my life. The alternative? To attend, as in to show up for my own life. Not to sit this one out. Very quickly, I realized that a variation on this word is “attention,” which has also proved meaningful. The way you show up for your own life is to pay attention to what is happening. Very basic concept, I know, and one which perhaps many people have already figured out. I was in my 30′s by the time it finally made sense to me.
The idea of having a favorite word stayed with me, particularly as I noticed the increasing use of tattoos. Although I haven’t personally felt the need to go there, I have often wondered what word would be meaningful or important enough for me to permanently inscribe on my body. It made me wonder what I’d do if I ever felt the need to change my word. Although “attend” or “attention” may always be important to me, I’ve been wondering lately about the idea of branching out. Am I ready for a new word?
Then, serendipitously, I read a recent blog post by Quinn McDonald (Geez. I’m beginning to sound like a Quinn groupie!) called Choosing Your Word. You can understand why the title caught my attention. In it, she says that she’s never really liked the idea of New Year’s Resolutions, a sentiment I share. Instead, she has for several years chosen a word, or even a short phrase, to capture her intention for the year. One year she chose “light,” the next year it was “step up.”
I love this idea. Instead of picking a resolution to guide my behavior (get to the gym, skip the cookies) it gives an opportunity to guide my thoughts, which are much more fundamental and the foundation to any behavioral change anyway. Plus, it offers me another way to focus my attention. Do you see why I got excited?
So, I’ve had a lot of fun thinking about my word for 2012. It’s an important decision, but much less permanent than one I figured had to be tattoo-worthy. It can be a noun (like “joy” or “play” or “energy”). It can be a verb (like “attend” or “connect” or “step up”). It can be an object (like “light” or “wings” or, say, “chocolate”). Whatever it is, I think it should create a little buzz of energy or joy or peace whenever you think about it. Throughout the year, it should provide opportunities to explore how this word could show up in your life, both in ways expected and totally out of the blue.
My word for 2012? I think I’m going with “breathe.” I’m excited to see what this word can teach me.
What’s your word?
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