Thus, going forward, I am going to take a hiatus from posting and focus on working and I’ll post when I really have something to share.

It’s better for everyone that way, isn’t it?

I said a teeny bit in my post on artistic doppelgangers about the rush I get from “creative discovery”–when you’re messing around with your medium, maybe things aren’t really seeming like they’re going anywhere interesting, and then all of a sudden something changes and things start to sort themselves out in a weird way. It’s those little moments of discovery that really keep me going and inspire me to keep making things, because I always want to see what else might come up. Sometimes that “creative well” seems like it’s running pretty dry and sometimes it feels completely bottomless. I hope it doesn’t make me sound like an asshole to say that for me, lately, the well has seemed pretty bottomless and overflowing with the juices of whatever the well is dipping down into, and I feel like a lazy schmuck if I don’t try to take advantage of it while it’s like that. Because I know from my years of past experience (I’m getting old enough that I can honestly claim that now) that the situation will absolutely change. I will become disenchanted with my work. I will question everything and feel worthless. I will struggle to find some new direction that feels interesting and relevant. But right now I’m in a phase of open acceptance and exploration. It’s mostly because of these hex dancers. Drawing these little figures has really opened up something for me–even when I’m not making an image with one of them in it, I feel like the colored-pencils-on-colored-paper thing is just so damn fun right now. It’s like every piece of paper is a stage and the little figures are magic actors and they can do ANYTHING. ANY MOVIE CAN APPEAR ON THE SCREEN! And I can figure out what those movies are about and how crazy they can get. Maybe they are very quiet little movies. Maybe they are dark and scary. Wait, is this really stupid, to be talking about little drawings as movies? Maybe I should just be using a word like “storytelling.” Because that’s what movies are about, too, so maybe that’s more direct–this artwork is about discovering stories! Blarrrrg.

Anyways, the point of all this is to say that the point of my daily project was to try to push myself into new places, sometimes with big steps, sometimes with small steps, knowing that there will be missteps (like messing with clay). And I just don’t want this project to become, “oh, it’s 11pm, I better throw an image up on my blog.” No! It’s about really trying to “engage with the creative process” (argh, dumb phrase, right?) on a daily basis so that daily life becomes a vehicle for this kind of visual/intellectual exploration. Because it leads to fun!! Right!?! Right! And there’s a certain feeling of pushing against an edge, which is hard to explain, but you know it when you feel it, and making art can be fun regardless of whether or not you’re pushing, but I want to feel that edge, and lately I haven’t been pushing.

So today I made a humble little drawing that I’m actually really happy with. It is a simple drawing, but nevertheless I felt that pushing while making it, because it was digging into the innerworkings of hex dancer psycho-spirituality/lifestyle.

It seems related (slightly) to this piece from November which was in my show at White Square last month:

I think the hex dancer in the God Machine drawing is trying to assemble a giant boogeyman-god like the character in the second drawing (yeah, I know, it just looks like it’s playing with a dollhouse), which will go out in the world and do things…mysterious things…that I want to figure out…

So obviously I had to make a picture of Santa Claus today. I scanned this twice and both times the scans came out crappy. Ugh. I don’t know what’s wrong, but if this keeps up, it will feed my unhealthy desire for a large-format scanner.

But because I need to post a picture to go with this post, here’s an older painting, prints of which I added to my Etsy shop yesterday:

Back to drawing again today. I missed drawing, having taken a break from it for a few days. I feel better when I draw. This new one is in my shop now.

My right eye hurt today. Maybe I’m allergic to something. I think it’s just random, though. “Idiopathic.” It makes using the computer difficult (the glowing screen) but I don’t really notice it much otherwise. In August or September, I forget, I went through a phase for a few weeks where my eyes hurt a lot. I thought it might be an allergy to a cosmetic powder but it hung around for a while after I stopped using it. I went to the eye doctor expecting for them to maybe find something wrong (eye problems run in the family), but no. So, that’s good.

Then, not wanting to make another drawing, I struggled with some Sculpey while watching Watership Down. You probably know this about me already (sorry) but the floating black rabbit head from Watership Down was one of the things which scared me the most as a little kid, and I like to revisit the movie every so often. I don’t even know how much I like the movie…it’s got a lot of problems…but the black rabbit head is fantastic. But maybe I just think that because of how it affected me as a kid; for most of my childhood I was petrified to look out my bedroom window after dusk because I thought I might see it appear there.

Anyways, I learned that I pretty much hate Sculpey. Ugh. It was so difficult and unsatisfying to use. Maybe the problem is more that I just can’t figure out anything good to make with it. So I just made some little black animal-figures. I don’t think you’ll see any more clay stuff from me this year. It really just wasn’t any fun.

I added another new little painting to my Etsy shop:

For making-technique, I followed a mix of these two videos:

I learned that my hands have apparently lost a lot of strength. Sawing and sanding the wood has made my left hand all weak. I don’t think that would happen to me when I was a young farm lass, hauling around saddles and hay-bales. Noooo!

Shop-wise, I added this little painting today. “This is a sunrise that no human has ever seen. The dawn of a replacement sun.”