FlowArte

Some projects have been in my head for most of my life. They have never even set foot outside my skull. Other projects happened without intention or reason, they just took off.

Some of the projects that came to life indeed were big, others very tiny, so tiny that I don’t even recognize the effort or fact that they were completed. Others began and stopped by accident.

For some there was serious commitment on my part, for example: I had a podcast way before podcasts were a thing. It was a DJ set where I played my most snobbish music discoveries to a live audience of… very few. But I was there, every weekend, with my MP3’s, my headphones and my intro.

Another project was my personal blog in Spanish that ran for eight years.

I completed two novels, completed as in: I typed 50,000 words for each and then never looked at the manuscript again. Then I wrote a few stories that got published in a couple of literary journals.

In the category of mini-projects, I complete a portrait now and then. I complete a collection of leggings, I complete a surface pattern design. I complete a tote bag. All these should count as finished projects but why can I only focus on the huge projects that I really, truly want to do and I just don’t?

It’s baffling. When I take a walk these are the projects that roam my thoughts, I see them clearly: what I want them to be, why I want them to be but then when I get to my desk, I do something completely different.

Of course I’ve heard all the mantras before:

Just start

Better done than perfect

Progress not perfection

etc. etc. etc.

But mantras don’t change a thing. When we have a project  in mind that is too important for us, the biggest fear is usually that it will not turn out like it exists in our minds due to lack of skills or an unclear roadmap. In my case: I will lose steam and leave it unfinished. And it’s the unfinished project that stresses and depresses me to no end. So, as my anthem song says:

“Finish nothing you start,
and start nothing
you think you’d continue”

-Piano Magic

The trap is you want to build the skills before taking the plunge but then you never feel ready. We then have two options:  start or abandon. If you start, chances are the project will not look like in your mind and you will be discouraged thus abandon. If you abandon immediately without even trying, the project will nag you FOR YEARS.

So what to do?

I want suggestions! Do you have a huge project in your project box that you are afraid of tackling? What is your project management style?

Do you just dive in? Do you shuffle your workspace? Do you consult with others?

Can you help me think outside the box?

An artist I follow asked on Instagram if when drawing digitally (on iPad or other) if it feels like cheating. I just had to comment but then the thought continued all day.

To me it does feel like cheating and it shouldn’t.

The thing is, I enjoy digital drawing and painting a lot. I remember when I first took a drawing class the instructors encouraged us to use pen and not pencil to commit to our marks, to not second guess everything and not strive for perfection. It made sense to me. But this anchored me to a pesky belief that I should always commit to what I draw and the undo is a sin.

So the question: Is analogue art more valid, authentic… better than digital?

Well, as Alfred Eisenstaedt said, it’s the eye, not the camera. In my very personal opinion, one has to have the skills to draw and paint, the tool shouldn’t matter that much.

A good photographer will shoot great pictures with a disposable Kodak camera. Probably not under extreme conditions but the composition and the story will get told. If you can draw something on paper with just pencil, chances are that you’ll be able to draw very well on iPad. Even with the undo button at our fingertips.

One of the few mediums that are hard to correct is in fact, watercolor. Acrylic, oil and gouache can be painted over and cover a mistake or a change of heart, you can use liquid paper to cover up ink. Of course you can use an eraser for pencil. But digitally you can change things as much as you want until you achieve “perfection”.

Sometimes I wonder why we strive so much to try to get that “traditional media” texture digitally. The market for digital brushes is booming. I guess it all comes down to “productivity”. It’s definitely faster, easier to export, easier to deliver.

It’s simply part of the unstoppable tech revolution whether we like it or not.

Learning online has become an addiction for me, however in the beginning I was constantly striving to try to recreate the same thing that the teacher did.

Quickly I realized that this wasn’t how I liked to learn. I am not a project based learner. I need to understand the thinking and creative process as I struggle a lot with coming up with new ideas. Technique aside, you can become the worlds most capable watercolorist but if you want to illustrate things, it takes more than drawing skills.

These teachers are a class a part and set the bar for other Skillshare teachers. I personally don’t like “tutorial” style classes. I watch those on YouTube, but a teacher’s thinking process is what makes these valuable.

If you’re like me and you want to skip the “how to paint a _____” and more how to create your own _____, these are the best classes and teachers. Plus a couple of classes that are just too useful!

1. Odd Bodies by Tom Froese
   This is a brand new class. I was recovering from surgery and binged watched it, but it was so compelling that I had to get up and do some of the exercises. The result was surprising. I never thought I would be able to ever break free from the “eight head” figure.
2.  Casual Hand Lettering: From Drawing To Digitizing with Linda and David
   I had watched other lettering classes in which being exact with extrema points and pixel-perfect (is that still a term?) rendition were overwhelming to me. I love casual and loose. This class is short and to the point. I loved it!
3.  Radical Typography: Using Hand-Drawn Branding for Expression & More with James Victore
   This is one of Skillshare’s earlier classes, I hadn’t watched it because I was still stuck on the step-by-step thing. James Victore is so direct you have no choice but to go and make a mess in your studio. Result: this mug, which is more an art piece than a simple ceramic thing to drink coffee from.
4.  Expressive Illustration: From Ideas to Execution with Roman Muradov
   I love Roman Muradov’s work. This is a step-by-step class but what makes it more compelling is his initial thought process. The word lists and how he comes up with a concept for an illustration. The result is breathtaking.
5.  Design For Meaning: Creating Effective and Artistic Book Cover Designs with Peter Mendelsund
   Again, a master sharing his thinking process. From reading a text, finding the keywords and coming up with a concept. The stuff jealousy is made of.
6.  Draw Your Life: Intro to Illustrated Journaling with Mimi Chao
   Super fun class if you want to document your life in images and drawings.
7. Leveling Up Your Art Game: The Elements & Principles of Design with Dylan Mierzwinski
   What to do with inspiration? Sometimes we endlessly collect images and then we don’t know what to do with them. How do you use them? And how do you self-critique? Here Dylan shares her process of how she takes her inspiration to finished pieces and how she uses the elements of design to evaluate the work.
8.  Fit Your Pictures to Various Social Media with Minimum Effort with Agnieszka Kobylinska
   Huge time saving process!
9.  10 Quick Tips From A Pro Designer with Lindsay Marsh
   As a non-designer and someone who does not aspire to be one, but requires just the basic tools to create my own promos and marketing material, this super short class gave me excellent tools.
10. Kickstart your Creativity: Introduction to Mood Boards with Nancy Hermann
    Again, as I am someone who curates and collects a lot of stuff: images, quotes, photos, etc. This class helped me distill moodboards into something I can make my own.

The process of finding your style, your voice, your OWN way of doing things is quite difficult today, despite having all the resources available. Having so many choices means being able to see what others are doing and it’s difficult to not be influenced. This is why these classes have made a huge difference in my learning this year.

Thank you to all the teachers who have put their hearts into their teaching!

One of the most intriguing things I’ve come across is how patient Canadians are when it comes to brunch.

On Saturday I went for a walk along Rue Notre-Dame and stopped to borrow a couple of graphic novels at the St-Henri Library, then went for coffee. Right across the street of a (what I assume is) a trendy Montreal brunch/diner place. The line-up was long. They are willing to wait outside under the burning sun (or freezing cold) for breakfast. I don’t think any breakfast is worth it. I remember in Mexico, the line-up was usually that long but there was no option, there are so many of us. You were destined to wait, always.

I snapped a picture and then proceeded to do a practice sketch. It was mostly to test using sumi ink and transferring this into a composition into Photoshop.

I’m happy with the result, despite the perspective being  wonky.

You can see the pencil sketch at the bottom, then using my lightbox I added some washes of ink, lettering and a bit of texture.

I have been using several techniques for transferring inked drawings to Photoshop but the quickest I’ve found is this one. Also Dylan’s class on Skillshare is super helpful.

I’m starting to appreciate more and more the joys of using sumi ink to get interesting washes and textures that I can colorize in any way I want. I will be posting some more experiments soon.

Meanwhile, have you visited my portfolio? You can see a few examples there.

Finished coloring everything in Photoshop. If you’ve been to Arthur’s in St-Henri, do you recommend?

Sometimes there is a world of words that want to come out but they don’t. They accumulate at the base of the throat and before you know it you’re choking.

Alejandra used to feel it and with this, she felt the panic of never being able to say exactly what she needed or being misunderstood: Que no se preste a confusiones. How difficult it is to avoid confusion.

I discovered Alejandra very late in my life. And it’s a good thing because I don’t imagine I could have managed reading her in my early 20s. It would have been dangerous.

I’ve read her on and off for the past fifteen years. Her writings are like my own personal oracle. I open Tumblr and search for the tag. The first one that comes up is exactly how I’m feeling.

Last month I took a wonderful writing workshop in Spanish. It wasn’t a workshop per se, it turned out to be a place to write without expectations. It was the most wonderful experience I’ve had in many years. Led by a literature professor and a psychoanalyst, attendees were a diverse group of women who came from different Latin American countries. We read Rosa Montero, Reynaldo Arenas, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Alejandra Pizarnik.

I had not written anything in Spanish in ages. I have a Tumblr somewhere and occasionally I do write there like I did a long time ago in my long lost blog Megara, The Diary. This workshop, opened the floodgates.

I realized that through the years since I changed countries that I have experienced profound loss, yet the loss was voluntary.

I moved here because I wanted to, because I had a safe place to land and because I felt I didn’t fit in my own country.

But I lost my mother tongue. Though I speak it all the time at home (in a somewhat bizarre bilingual dialogue – husband speaks in French, I speak in Spanish) and at work, the daily struggle with French and the fact that I do most of my thinking, writing, reading and learning in English, has left me a little mute.

Drawing and painting has been a way to not feel so drowned in silence.
Alejandra knew that words were treacherous, both when they come out or they stay in. The things I wrote in that workshop emerged without effort, without any expectation or demand. I did not think about “good writing” or impressing anyone, yet they reflected that something is amiss.

As I go through the summer trying to do many things but also trying to do less I wonder if I should even worry where I’m headed. There is so much I want to communicate but as Alejandra Pizarnik, I circle around the creature never looking at it in the eye. Words, images, thoughts, ideas, shoulds, should nots, desires, wanting to stay, wanting to leave, wanting stillness, wanting something to happen, wanting to be in the moment and yet eternally making plans or dreaming of a life beyond.

“Simplemente no soy de este mundo… Yo habito con frenesí la luna. No tengo miedo de morir; tengo miedo de esta tierra ajena, agresiva… No puedo pensar en cosas concretas; no me interesan. Yo no sé hablar como todos. Mis palabras son extrañas y vienen de lejos, de donde no es, de los encuentros con nadie… ¿Qué haré cuando me sumerja en mis fantásticos sueños y no pueda ascender? Porque alguna vez va a tener que suceder. Me iré y no sabré volver. Es más, no sabré siquiera que hay un ‘saber volver’. No lo querré acaso.”

This portrait is my tribute to her. I’ve wanted to paint her for so long. At last, yesterday in a rare moment of not feeling “the shoulds” I did.

You can purchase a Fine Art Archival Print in my shop.

By the middle of June I was done. I looked around my studio and felt such overwhelm despite having fulfilled a lifelong dream: a room of my own.

Walls full of scraps and notes, images and quotes. Piles of artwork, lots of art material. Tons of sketchbooks.

Then I opened my computer and my Trello jumped at me, the sheer number of boards, braindumps, ideas, wishes, etc. And yet, I felt I was doing very little. I finished the day exhausted, my eyes were itchy, my brain swirling around, forcing solutions that would not come.

On top of that, the world.

Oh the world. This relentless insanity, relentless evil, feeling powerless, afraid, worried, anxious all the freaking time.

The guilt of feeling worried about “my art” and trying to go business as usual while waiting for the next wave of bad news.

It was the bottom of the well. Despite feeling like I was working at a maddening pace, I was seeing no results. I felt so scattered. I made bad decisions on where to spend my time.

It’s impossible to measure the number of hours that Instagram steals from you with very little return. This isn’t pontification, this is just my personal assesment. I spent just too much time on it. Every free second of the day I would scroll. Even as I clicked to turn it off, three minutes later I was again looking at it.

I wanted so badly to delete it but that famous FOMO or worse, what will I do without it if I’m trying to promote my work? How will people find me? How will I interact, how will I collaborate?

But… when will I do all the things I want to do if I’m trapped in here?

And then I decided: it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing scenario. What if I delete the app from my phone for the summer. Not for 30 days. For the whole summer. And in September I can install it again and see if I can find a little balance.

We all know how difficult it is to grow your audience. When I uninstalled the app I was still hovering at around 500 followers. There was nothing I could do a part of intensifying the stories, the posting, asking for engament, in short: spending more time in the app itself and there was no guarantee of anything. Plus more followers does not mean more people are going to see your stuff or, that a part from liking, they are going to take any meaningful action. I know because I myself rarely take action on an Instagram post.

I didn’t want to delete my account.

It seemed like a good compromise.
So I did. I wrote the inevitable “explanation post” which was totally unnecessary, but made me feel official and I deleted the app.

So what’s happened since?

It feels like I’m on vacation.

Free.

In This World Again.

But I did observe some interesting phenomena immediately after deleting the app:

1. The impulse to share is quite powerful. As I kept making art, a phantom feeling of needing to share was intense.
2. I started to “forget” my phone for an hour, two hours, an entire morning.
3. I would take my dog for a walk and not bring the phone either.
4. Photos were unnecessary
5. I started to tick some very old to-do’s from my list.
6. I wrote much more in my journal

It’s been two weeks and a half and since I started to wear my watch I also forget my phone in my bag. I don’t need to check it for the time either.

It’s unrealistic to completely delete your accounts, despite the best arguments, but you can use them differently. As an independent creator, you need to have a place where you can refer someone quickly and encourage some sort of communication. For me it was Instagram.

I do use Facebook mostly for the groups, but that also became a problem in the following ways:

1. Under the guise of helping others and finding help I became a little lazy in searching solutions myself. Sure, these are time saving groups but when you see a question like: how do I open an Etsy shop? you realize that by not doing your own homework you are also wasting other people’s time.
2. Groups are for upselling and cross-selling stuff. Unless the group has a very straightforward and honest reason for being, most of them will be helpful to a certain extent. A little beyond that and they will try to sell you another course or e-book. Which is fine, that’s business, but again, there comes a point in which scrolling down looking for an answer and only finding a link to purchase yet another e-book is not a productive use of your time.

Twitter

This is the least problematic for me. I follow very few people and since it’s basically the far-west of the Internet, I can only take a bit at a time. I follow current events and occasionally rant.

Use them on desktop and free yourself from your phone.

If you are a creative person and most of all, a self-taught creative, you will fall into the rabbit hole of learning, researching, looking for inspiration and comparing your work to other’s. At one point this will become unhealthy (speaking from experience).

By removing temporarily the apps from your phone (a week, two weeks, 30 days or more) you will be able to take things at your own pace. I promise. Days will feel longer, your mind will feel more rested, you will start seeing the path (your path) a little clearer.

Allow yourself a few minutes to go check on Instagram on your desktop, if you really like certain companies or people, you can still check them out. I have a few friends whose posts I really love and I can go and peek into what they are doing without getting lost. And since you can’t post you aren’t in the dopamine loop waiting for the hearts and follows.

For additional Social Media detox help

You can install Simple Blocker on Chrome and Block Site on Firefox to stop the impulse to check Social Media when you’re on your desktop more than necessary.

As with every trick, from the Pomodoro Technique to all productivity advice out there, you can only succeed if you start by doing a little at a time until it becomes a habit.

It doesn’t have to be all or nothing

The world works this way. We can’t escape it, as much as I feed my fantasy of relocating to a cabin in the woods. I allow myself a little bit and while I have identified my worse problem which is the time I waste instead of creating or making art.

Hope the idea of temporarily taking a step back and physically removing the apps from your phone, you can really enjoy the summer.