(no subject)

One of *those* days.

Wake up at 10:50. Realize that, because you woke up way too early (couldn't get back to sleep) and went to bed way too late (couldn't sleep), you have woken up three hours late-- three hours in which you were supposed to write an important paper that was due in a class today. A class taking place at 11:15. For which the bus that you needed to be on left exactly one minute ago.

Spill water all over your class watercolor.

Spill lemonade all over yourself.

Spill rancid trash all over yourself.

Have a vacuum EXPLODE dust all over you when you try and fix it because it will. not. work.

Kill the printer at the IU library. Take an hour to fix.

Realize it is 12:40, you were supposed to be in bed forty minutes ago, and you have a class at eight AM.

Realize you still have an hour walk home. A *creepy* hour walk home.

Cry.

Drawing 101

I've been having a lot of problems doing art lately, and by lately I mean within the past month. Partially it's because my lack of a readily accessable workspace, what with my computers being dead, but more than that, I realized recently that I'm just not having *fun* doing art right now. I'm spending so much time obsessing over what I need to do to improve, how competitive I have to be in order to make it in a market that I only have *two years* to prepare for (AUGH) that I'm not enjoying what I do anymore. Every picture is an excercise, often failed, and always frustrating.

There's certainly something to be said for stretching my creative muscles, but when everything becomes a chore it's not a good thing. It's just so *painful* right now. I'm at the cusp of actually being *good*, I am so damn close to taking my art to another level, but it's at a stage when all I can do to improve is spend monumental amounts of time working and working and working. Though I can see where I should be, I can't seem to get there. So I have that weird problem, where-in everything I do *should* be something that pushes me hard, should be almost painful to eke out, but it leaves me feeling empty, creatively drained, and angry at myself for not being as good as I could-- as I *should*, in my mind-- be.

Considering that fact that until I got into college I was *entirely* self trained, that from books and patience and, yes, a huge portion of ambition I mananged to make myself decent, if a little stagnant, where I am now *is* good. But it's not good enough.

Maybe it's a case of needing to go back to the basics. Maybe I just need to get a sketch book and make sure everyday I'm doing life drawing, and then take what I learned that day and try to integrate it. I read a fabulous rant recently about the process of art and the process of creation, and came to the conclusion that I am, essentially, back where I started-- that to move on, I have to once more spend my days filling blank page after blank page with straight lines, with circles, with the most basic foundations of my craft. I think it is sinking in at long last that this is what art IS, that it is *always* a circular return to the old in order to strengthen the new. That creativity is, in essence, taking that which is mundane, static and logical, and *doing* something with it.

My position of frustration comes from the fact that I am good enough now that I can *see*. I can see the beauty in the world around me, I can see the themes I want to work with, I can see the muscles underneath skin, the subtle pinks and golds and blues that are in everything from a leaf to limestone, and I want *so badly* to be able to communicate that I rush forward too fast and trip, or I find myself stalling and tangled up because I don't have the patience yet to go through the motions of laying down the mortar and stone essential for good art.

So really, I suppose it's a matter of refocusing. All of that, all of that I can now see, will still be there when I get to it. But for now, I have to trust the artistic rebirth I'm going through, and return to filling countless pages with practice.

And try not gnaw my own fingers off in the mean time.