Artistic pursuits and creative outlets (110 volts only)

[shalanna]

As I'm sure I've mentioned, I began doing a bit of doodling and some art projects after I realized that I'm going nowhere with my writing (and the piano is too out of tune now to play anything much. By that I mean that the F below the F below middle C and its nearby E-flat are completely sour, and a few other keys are off by quarter tones such that you can't play by ear. I can probably get 'er tuned next month, but I'm waiting until after we turn on the heat, as the changes in ambient house humidity and temp that will result would put 'er back out of tune. This is a baby grand, after all, and an anteeek to boot--a 1920s Schumann.)

I'm not any good at drawing and so forth, but I don't care. It's an outlet. I've always thought I would be a good cartoonist if I could draw even as well as Cathy Guisewite ("Cathy") and Scott Adams ("Dilbert"), but I can't--not even close. I need to draw cars, desks, and people parts, and the only thing I can do is cartoon faces, a little.







(And the beauty of a comic strip is that you can post them online and get a fan club MUCH more easily than you can do with novels--as those have to be .PDFs and are a lot more trouble for people to browse. Among other issues.)

But anyhow I signed up for an Artists' Trading Cards swap, just for fun. What is an ATC, you might ask? It's a trading card the size of a playing card that you decorate yourself. You can paint, draw, collage (ugh! not for me), or stamp the card. I've seen a few that are pretty good.



Mine ain't. Phooey! The ones I did for the Fall Swap are Anarchists' Trading Craps. However, I'm still trying to rescue them. I did a few funny ones for myself while I was at it. Unfortunately, I have to work on the kitchen table, as the room I used to have for crafts (and an office) is now Mama's bedroom and living area . . . so that means it's a portable mess.

MAMA: Oh, God, you're making a mess again.
ME: I'll have it all picked up by dinnertime. We have those TV trays for lunch.
MAMA: *heavy sigh* What IS that?
ME: It's an artists' trading card for a swap.
MAMA: God! *peering* THAT ugly mess? You have no artistic talent. Please throw those away. Don't send them off so they think people in Texas are that stupid.

I'm doing it anyway. She was right about the writing not being the editors' cuppa, though, and of course I'm not a concert artist on the piano. I'm more of a dilettante/dabbler. But what is obvious is that I need a creative outlet. This drawing stuff started after I had refrained from messing with my books for a couple of weeks and had found that I couldn't stand the honky-tonk piano sounds I was making while playing Beethoven. (Beethoven was screaming from the Other Side, anyhow. "Tune that thing! If you can tuna fish, you can tune that piano!") I kind of considered pulling the knitting back out, but nah. Too boring. I thought about sewing and actually flipped through a few patterns at the store (okay, I bought a few--all right, happy now??!), but I don't want to make stuff in my current size. So . . . since I don't cook (that is slave labor, and the cleanup is awful, and it just makes you fatter), the creative drive turned to the pencil. This is what happens when you stuff an artist into a failed engineer's carcass.



A *bad* artist is still, alas, an artist.

# # #
I am great in bed--I can sleep all day!!--SC

Comments

[burningofroissy.livejournal.com]

OMG your mom said that to you? Ugh.

[pameladean]

Your mom is wrong about you, period. For whatever reason, it's necessary for her to have decided that you can't do anything. That she was temporarily right about some of the nasty things she said is meaningless, like a stopped clock's being right twice a day.

As for the drawing, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some kind of elementary drawing tutorial available for free somewhere on the intarwebs.

P.

[dennismhavens.livejournal.com]

In not too many weeks, now that I'm growing my hair out, I should look exactly like the third face down in your "cartoon faces" drawing.

Creative hint: Write a new novel with a character based on my personality as you know it, and physically describe it to match that drawing.

And tell your mother to chill, for crying out loud!

But give her my best wishes, anyway.

[dewabbit.livejournal.com]

Your mother sounds like she is very much like my mother was. I'm sorry.