Calling the cops at 4:30 a.m.

That's what I had to do this morning. There was a huge fight next door. I lost a lot of sleep and now I do not want to do much.

But artists make art, even (maybe especially) when we don't wanna.

This is often called DISCIPLINE. I hate that word. It's a trip to the principal's office. It means running laps, driving yourself hard, everything soul-sucking and miserable about working. Also I've never been able to maintain it for more than a few days.

Then I would feel like a failure.

Yet here I am, working on Queen Ruby when I don't feel like it. If this isn't discipline, what is it?

I'm calling it MOTIVATION. When I thought I needed discipline, the underlying feeling was, "I suck. I have to work harder and be better because I'm lazy."

Motivation is deciding I'm good, that I deserve to have the life I want, that I'm worth my own effort. It is one big decision followed by thousands of smaller ones, from "Do I bother entering this show?" to "Do I take the trash out before it gets rancid?" And since I deserve to have my work get seen, and to live in a place that smells nice, I do both those things. I'm no longer "lazy." Maybe I never was.

Dreams that Stick With You

Years ago, I dreamed of crossing a bridge and watching two moons rise in the sky above the Gulf of Mexico.

Sky over Ford Parkway. What if there'd been two moons rising?

I mean, this was 20+ years ago. I still remember it vividly. It's going to show up in my art, as I'm becoming more and more free to be as odd as I really am.

Do you have any of these? Dreams you woke up from and have never forgotten? Even if it was just one image that stayed.

What was it?

Did Not Go as Planned

When you make art, it's common for the thing to miss that left turn at Albuquerque -- and take you somewhere you didn't know you were going.

Sometimes, that's a disaster. Sometimes it's not. It's what happened here ...

Kings of the Goldenrod City, set of three oil paintings on canvas, each 20 x 20"

First of all, these were supposed to be abstract, and they were supposed to be a continuation of my Cracked Concrete series, and there were supposed to be four of them.

If you look closely, you'll see the cracked concrete pattern in the lower parts, peeking through. It also gave me the basic division of space that I used between the lighter "ground" and the red "sky" areas. But once I got those lines and divisions in place, it all just stalled. Totally. These canvases sulked on the wall of my studio for something like six months, and might be there still if I hadn't had a DEADLINE OMG DEADLINE looming.

The first thing I did was recognize that the red paint I had already applied -- which up until then was a diseased patchwork of blotches -- had been a real mistake. I decided, if I was going to make a mistake, I ought to make a BIG MISTAKE, and I put a ton more red in.

Those odd, gourd-like "houses" are based on dry goldenrod stems I'd collected a while back. Something makes homes in these things while they grow, and then drills out, leaving neat little doors behind in the fall. I loved them, but the paintings needed something alive and in motion, and then I was playing around online and found a documentary about crows. I paused it repeatedly, took screen shots, and off I went.

By then I was running out of time, so I pulled the fourth canvas, the one I had the least idea what to do with. It'll reappear soon enough, not as part of this set but as its own thing. Not what I'd planned, but what happens.

"Now is a good time."

That's the sentence I often use when I need to do anything from the dishes to the next huge painting.

Insomnia, about 6 x 6", mixed media on paper, $30. 

"Why not now?" I ask myself. "Now is good." I almost never feel like it, but now is good.

On that note, I'm off to do some grocery shopping, because today is warmish and tomorrow will be "Dante's 9th Circle of Hell" type cold, and I don't paint well when hungry, so, yeah. Now is good. In grocery shopping as in art, waiting for inspiration basically never works.

I'll have to say it all over again when I get home in an hour and have paintings to make. I wish I could say there was a point at which I no longer needed to push myself to start things, but it's looking as if the best I can do is get better at pushing. I'll report back if that begins to change.

Morning Coffee, Goldfish, & a Friend

Creative people stick together a lot.

Years ago, a guy I was dating asked me why that was. Why, he wanted to know, did artists "hang out with other artists who also don't live in the real world?"

That moment was the first time I ever bluntly told someone to f*** off. But once I was done telling him what he could do with that notion that there is a "real world" and that I didn't live there, I answered the other part of that question.

First, it isn't because (as my ex assumed) we don't value the opinions of people who are educated in things other than art. That's most of our audience and market! We want to hear from them.

But they can only tell us so much. If I take my car to the mechanic, I can tell him it isn't running right, that it's making a weird noise, but I might not have the faintest clue what the problem really is.

An average person might see a painting of mine and know that something looks weird. Another artist could immediately say, "Oh, you've got the proportions wrong on the upper arms," or, "The shadow on the face doesn't match the one on the body, so your directional lighting is borked." (We artistes use lots of highbrow technical jargon such as "borked"). Another artist can also tell you what's right, and that it's done, stop messing with it before you kill it dead.

The photo above was taken a few hours ago at breakfast with one of my artist friends. We were both out of half & half for our coffee this morning, we both needed to clarify our plans about upcoming projects, and I had new goldfish art and wanted to know if it looked good to someone other than me.

So we get each other out of the house on days like these. We critique and challenge each other, keep each other focused, and often spark new ideas for each other. I don't think this is at all unique to people in creative fields -- maybe because there are few fields that don't actually need creativity. This is why we have mastermind groups, and Facebook groups, and professional associations.

It's easy to fall into being more or less a hermit, when you work on your own most of the time. It's just not a whole lot of fun for most of us to live and work that way.

Easter

With my family all over 1,000 miles away, I'm not doing anything official for Easter. I'm going to the barn, even though last night's session was a mess: an over-emotional, fearful horse and myself feeling less than competent to help her. I probably screwed up. But if I want to be better today, I have to be okay with that, and okay with the chance that I'll screw up again.

Acceptance and forgiveness are what it takes to try anything again, I think -- no matter what faith we have or don't have. Strangely, most of us will forgive other people's blunders, while we hold grudges against ourselves for every woulda, coulda, shoulda. But those scorecards against myself have never done me any good, only kept me paralyzed and stuck.

Which is why, when I found this graffiti on a Minneapolis mail slot, I took a photo. I need the reminder sometimes.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Lessons from the Christmas Pony project

First: I am loving this thing and so glad I decided to take the plunge. For those just joining us, here's the link to the Christmas Ponies -- what they are and why I'm doing them.

Me and my "Pony," Twilight, who is kind of large for a pony, but appropriately rounded. 

And since I've never done anything like this before, I am taking notes for myself for next year. Some highlights:

1. Start the project not later than Nov. 1 next year. Christmas animal portrait rush means that not everything will fit on schedule.

2. Remember that when you get inventive and do what each character seems to need? It WORKS.

3. Stock up on coffee. Very good coffee.

4. Did I mention starting early? And coffee? Coffee is vital.

So, yes -- for various reasons involving an unexpected last-minute rush of PLEASE I NEED IT FOR CHRISTMAS and a day job and a blizzard, not to mention my own need to get each portrait Really Really Right, I am behind schedule. That doesn't mean anyone gets bumped off the list. It just means I will be taking submissions next year beginning on Nov. 1 instead of Dec. 1. :-)

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying this so much that I am planning to do other series projects throughout the year. Maybe not one-a-day, since that would leave no time to create other work I need to make, but perhaps a series of ten [insert subject here] every month or two.  Goldfish, birds, trains (now that'd be fun), flowers, I don't even know yet. But I really love how many people have been following this project, talking to me, and having a good time; and I love how productive I am when all that is going on.

If you're enjoying this, then, I hope you'll stay tuned. There'll be more.

More seeds, abstracted

Seed Flight, 12 x 12" oil paint and wax medium on panel

This panel was originally ... a dog portrait. Or rather, about half of one; I got that far before deciding I had irretrievably screwed up the composition.  I put it aside, grabbed a fresh panel, and started over.

Dog Portrait 2.0 turned out beautifully, but then I was stuck looking at the 1.0 version that didn't work. Eventually I mixed up some mostly-white paint and blotted it out, noticing as I did that there were some fun abstract patterns in the brush strokes over the background. A few weeks later, I used the panel to demonstrate abstract composition ideas to a student.

It's been through numerous changes and layers since then, and a few days ago I figured out how to finish it, at last. I hope to have a companion piece for it soon.

Mini Minnehaha Sketches (or: What's the Worst that Could Happen?)

Okay, so I have this fantastic little Moleskine sketch book, and I mean little -- about 3.5 x 5.5", fits in my purse or the pocket of my coat.

Yesterday evening I took it and a little set of watercolors to Minnehaha Falls, just two miles from home.

I had one brush, one little pen with waterproof ink (a couple bucks at Wet Paint), and about a half cup of water I carried in one of those plastic honey-bear squeeze bottles. So this was a low-tech operation, to say the least.

I'd never attempted a waterfall drawing or painting, outside of doing them occasionally in acrylic as part of the distant landscape in various mural projects. Therefore, this little thing felt like a risk. I hesitated, then asked, what was the worst that could happen?

Answer: It might suck.

This time, it didn't -- you never see it when it does, because I don't post those -- but there is always the chance, and I always fear it at least a little, and I always have to remind myself that if it does suck, that will not in fact kill me.

It may be time to start applying that as a motto to other things in my life, things I've been afraid to try: The Worst It Can Do Is Suck. And really, how bad is that?

"... but I don't know a thing about art."

Trail Drive-In, mixed media on paper, 5.5 x 7.5", by Tracie Thompson.

The other day I happened upon something I'd never expected from Roger Ebert (yes, that Roger Ebert):

You can draw, and probably better than I can

I didn't know Ebert drew, but it turns out that he does, and I have so much love for the way he presents this as something to be done for the joy of it, for the process more than the product.

If you've ever thought, "Oh, I wish," and gazed longingly at a store shelf with sketch books, pencils, watercolors ... well, why not? It costs very little. Nobody else has to see or judge. And you might spark something in yourself that you didn't even know you possessed -- a sense of immediate wonder, a sharpness of memory, an awareness that's worth a lot more than the drawings themselves.

For those who've wondered how professional artists feel about people who draw, paint, etc. for their own pleasure, this is the best take on it I've seen, and you'll note several pro artists in agreement, in the comments.  My experience is that we pros do not want the sandbox all to ourselves, not at all. It's so much more fun when the other kids come and play, too.