With mayo and mustard

I once commented that this blog is actually about procrastination. Or maybe about starting lots of things that eventually go unfinished. There's an excited rush I get, thinking of all the possibilities –  all of them –  gathering up the supplies and just daydreaming about them being done.
I know I'm not alone in this.

So, I'm doing two things right now, to get more athletic activity into my days. Yes, two. How impulsive, huh? Somewhat paradoxically, these are meant to get me to settle into a more committed routine and to train for longer term events.

I'm doing Marianne Elliott's '30 Days of Yoga'. You answer questions in a survey about what you want from a yoga practice, what your body and soul need, and Marianne creates a video sequence for you to practice, yes, during the next 30 days. I'd been doing a very gentle form of yoga up to now, and the sequence I received has been a nice challenge. Marianne is supportive, in her videos and messages.
Sadly, I've only done the sequence twice, and another, from another instructor, once. My 30 Days of Yoga has been spotty, at best.
Marianne wrote in one of her weekly messages:
Bindu Wiles once said:

Often, beginnings and endings are easy. They are filled with a natural enthusiasm and volition where we move into things with lots of energy and ease, and complete things with a certain flare and celebration for what we’ve accomplished or gotten through.
Middles, not so much. Middles tend to be difficult and our enthusiasm naturally wanes. It’s easy to lose focus and make excuses and even completely drop the ball.

---

One of the things I do at school is prepare our graduates for on-campus interviews. The interviews are in a speed-dating format. The idea is to allow the students to meet as many recruiters as possible and they're given about 10 –  15 minutes with each company that participates in on-campus recruiting. I spend a good deal of time having the students present their projects in shorter, more abbreviated chunks to be better able to highlight their skills and accomplishments in that time. It's not about talking faster; it's about hitting all your key points while still showing your personality and your passion for design. You have about 10 minutes, then the recruiters all rotate one person over, and you do this over and over, until you've finally talked to everyone that's there. If there's a potential for a good match, a company will schedule a longer, more traditional interview with the student.

Before all the interviewing gets started, the students introduce themselves to the group. I find it interesting that many of the students are very confident talking about their work, but a bit flustered when they have to talk about themselves. So, in the weeks before graduation and interviews, we talk, one on one, and talk, and eventually very meaningful stories from their backgrounds emerge. One of the introductions from this term used this nice analogy about this particular student's interests:

I really like the end and the beginning: the inspiration and research and ideation, as well as the execution of an idea –  –  making it real and tangible. But, I think about the process as a sandwich. The beginning and end are like pieces of bread. It's all good, but the inside is also the meaty part; it's what makes the sandwich. So, while I love the start and end, I also enjoy working through the middle part of the process, because otherwise, really, I'm just eating two pieces of bread.

I thought:
“Wow, that's really thoughtful and almost poetic”, and then,
“Hey, wait a minute! I'd be good with just two pieces of bread!”

I find this idea of following through recurring through my week.

It's about trying to create new habits, shoehorning them in to an existing schedule of habits, or just replacing some of the old with the new. A Dagwood sandwich sounds great – you could have everything. But is that what we really need? The way I see it, I often create open-face sandwiches, one piece of bread with lots of ham and cheese, lettuce and tomato; Lots of starting but a struggle to finish.

Oh, for the want of that second slice of bread…
I'm just going to say this: I'm working on it.

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The other thing I'm getting back into is running. I tried to find previous posts on running my 5k's and didn't find much. I have to say I've had spotty support for my running; but this time, I have even better motivation and a plan to share in my training and get a bit more encouragment. Stay tuned.

Thankful Friday

Thankful for...

-Great guest speakers for my class, Spencer Nikosey and Kevin Ou, who are doing incredibly fantastic things. We had a great time listening to Spencer and Kevin's stories and all my students got involved, asking questions. It's one thing for them to understand it's important to network and to not be afraid to ask for advice, but it's another thing for them to be excited about their own ideas and actually bounce them off guests and each other. The class was bubbling with excitement; lots of chatter even after class ended at 10pm.

– Taking a class, myself. I got to take Jane LaFazio's Quiltlet class at the Long Beach quilt show. Jane and I met at a sketchcrawl and I've been following her adventures ever since. She does fantastic work with the kids at Mundo Lindo, too. Do you see all that she does?! Jane's my hero. She also wins big points for referring to my guy as 'Hunky Jan', of course. We got to catch up over lunch; it was so good to see you, Jane! xox!



– starting and finishing a quiltlet (a small quilt):



It's so good to be able to start and finish things. Me and my ever-decreasing attention span. [sigh]
This was painted then quilted and embellished, about 5-1/2" square on uncoated artist canvas.

- Learning new, dangerous things. Jane goes, "Wendee! Have you seen Spoonflower fabric?!" and I'm thinking, "OMG! Yes! I know of it. I think it would be dangerous for me to actually see real samples... Noooo, don't pull out yours! Aaaaaack!".

I tried to hide my eyes, but Jane, she was just too fast.

Did I really need to know you can control the scale and repeat pattern of your own custom-printed fabric? Noooo. Did I really need to see Jane's fabulously cute apron with fabric printed with her own watercolor brush painting? I think not.

Dangerous, dangerous ideas that threaten the whole "Use it Up" campaign.

- Speaking of UIUtGIA, finding out that some of the UIUtGIA artwork has arrived where it was going.



This one went to my quilting buddy, Donna.

– One of my former students brought me stuff! You'd think that in an industry of people who design and manufacture stuff, that eventually someone would bring by stuff that they'd designed that was finally being sold, in real life, huh? I mean, I'd be excited to see my stuff in the stores ...

So I harrassed erm, relayed my dismay about this, in particular to the students who interned at Vans, because the shoe companies make loads of samples, and, heck, who wouldn't like a spiffy pair of new Vans shoes?

So after teaching for 4 years, one of my students delivered! Cool new shoes! Woot!



[I'm having issues with embedding Flickr images. Bear with me, people]

What a fun week. Have a great weekend all! :)

All the colors of the rainbow

So, where was I?

I spent some time over the last few weeks thinking about my art supplies. I enjoy reading other artists' comments about materials, and particularly, the colors they use in their palettes. Since I recently taught a course that included color theory, I thought I'd try simplifying my backpack and carry a paint kit outfitted with just the three primaries. So I did test swatches of my reds, blues and yellows and came up with a combination that I carried with me for a few weeks. I kept a muted set in a smaller Altoids tin (on the left side of the painting below):

20100528_SketchStuff Click to see this photo's flickr page

This is what I learned:
–  I'm too impatient to mix up my greens and purples from these primaries. For the painting above, I didn't mix the greens. Oh, heck, no.
–  I like my colors; I really love the cool and warm and neutral versions of my primaries, and I like the different versions of secondary and tertiary colors too. Why did I ever think I could be happy with just three, muted primary colors?
–  I don't paint with orange. Like, ever.

Another thing I realized is that I don't squeeze enough paint out of the tubes, trying to not waste any of it. I end up having to squeegee out pigment from my barely-loaded brushes onto my pages, or end up with washed out colors after the paint has dried on my notebook pages. Lots of water, but just a little bit of pigment. Ugh.

So after not-too-much thinking, I decided to give those tubes all a good squeeze and go on a 'Use it up' campaign. Paint isn't going to do much good being conserved, languishing and drying out unused in tubes sitting in a bin next to the dryer. Squeeze as much life and color out of what you have!

Sounds good, huh?

I ran into a hiccup in this plan, when I finally realized that my honey-based paints were too goopy for me. I'm messy to begin with, yes?, and although I love how soft and buttery the M Graham watercolor paints are, I started to realize that many of them stayed moist enough to be a bit of a challenge for me just to store. I’d try to squeeze out a sample size from a tube and end up with stringy threads of paint (think: honey) leading from my palette, across my table and smeared on my fingers. The kicker, though, was when I realized that some colors actually absorb moisture from the air in humid environments and then they get even MORE runny. I discovered this over Christmas in Hawaii, a big puddle of cobalt green dripping from my paint kit. Egh.

I read through a few blogs of artists and read carefully the part that would have alerted me to this problem and tried a few more brands.

You're thinking, “Hey! Buying new paints?! How is that 'Using it Up'?!”

[I'm ignoring you]

So, I looked at color charts on my computer for a few more weeks, peered at other artists’ suggestions and loitered in front of the paint rack in the student store as if it were the frozen entrée aisle at the market, and slowly filled in my collection with Daniel Smith and Schmincke tubes that dry nicely in my travel paint kits so I can toss them into my backpack, and they re-wet nicely.

Yeesh, what an ordeal.

The good thing is that I'm set to go and have plenty of paint to go there with.

20100616_palette Click to see this photo's flickr page

I’m going to use up the honey-based paints, and the not-so lightfast paints as well. I was a little concerned about this – paints that will fade unusually quickly. The only nonpermanent expression of art that I could think of that seemed worthwhile was, well, food, but in this case, I figure: What the heck: Use it up.

I have papers and paints and want to go ahead and use them. If you’ve gotten this far, here’s the deal. I was going to post the ‘Use It Up’ (UIU) series and have people let me know if/which ones they wanted and send them (the little paintings, not the people) off to new, good homes. But, lying up late at night, I thought, what if people have stopped reading my blog to the point where no one will be watching for my UIU art? The horror!

[Do I over-think things much? Give me a sec to mull over that.]

So, whatever. This is what I’m going to do: I’m going to make art and send it off to people whose mailing addresses I have, that I owe some art to. And ask for people to let me know if they're interested. If I have a list, I figure I’ll feel more obligated to stick with this whole ‘Use It Up’ campaign, which, in my head, was more like ‘Use It Up, then Give it Away’, anyway. If you (you, in Canada and Scotland and Germany. Yes, you) want to help encourage this, email me your mailing address. wendeedesign [at] yahoo [dot] com.

I’m planning to give life and those tubes a nice healthy squeeze. Anyone game?

Dusty boots

After a few days of early morning fog, we got a nice clear morning that lured us out early. I went further uphill than normal, but still got to sit a bit to capture a few more trees... A nice break from all the driving and technology; and an excellent excuse to pig out on Chinese food afterwards.
Mmmm.



Here's a photo of the scene.