The Stars Are Not Made of Fire

wisdom and peace through creativity

Creativity

Finishing Something, Starting Something New

Art, Creativity, Uncategorized, Writing

Finishing Something. This is a painting of an owl that needs to be finished.

Finishing Something, Starting Something New

Finishing a work in progress and starting something new can be a bit intimidating. The painting of the owl is an acrylic painting that I have worked on in dribs and drabs over the last year. It still needs a little bit of work before I move on and I find myself making excuses to not finish the piece.

I am still working on another painting of an eight armed woman. I was able to finish her face, but I still need to work on her arms. Also, I have been musing about the items she should carry in her hands for almost two years.

Between these two paintings, I did a handful of practice paintings where I copied another artist’s work and scads of watercolor doodles and sketches, but I have not decided what I should work on next.

Starting Something New Can Be Hard

I frequently have ideas for paintings, drawings, stained glass, fabric items, poems, short stories, and longer written works. I collect the ideas. They don’t go away. Sometimes I discover that another writer or artist has pulled an idea similar to one of mine out of the ether and used it. Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the ether of ideas in her book titled “Big Magic.” If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. I find that starting something new can be very difficult for me.

Because initiating a new project can be so difficult, I spent some time this morning thinking about why I haven’t finished the owl painting. None of my work at this point in time goes outside of my house and I do get attached to various pieces. However, I don’t think this is why I don’t start new projects. I think I delay because working on a new project takes a huge commitment of time and energy.

Journeying off into a new project can be loads of fun, a great learning experience, and a chance to exercise my creativity, but it means prioritizing one project over all the other ideas and that project will just take a big chunk of time. For instance, I once painted a painting of Green Tara that took me months. Sections were painted several times until I was happy with the painting. It is now one of my favorite paintings, but I struggled with it.

And the eight armed woman is still a work in progress. I don’t like to have too many projects going at the same time. If I have too many projects going at once, then nothing gets done. Having a couple projects going gives me options.

Options

Currently, I am working on the following projects:

  1. The owl painting
  2. A garden design
  3. The witches battling the president in an “Operation Cone of Power” sort of way
  4. A cookbook of family recipes
  5. Readers for the students that I teach reading to.

The Owl Painting

The owl painting can be finished in an afternoon. I need to just get on this. Honestly, if I post the finished product, you probably won’t notice the difference. It is time for me to go through my “Source Material” collection on Pinterest and find something that sparks my interest. I also need to research different goddesses and decide what the eight armed woman should be holding. A watch? The scales of justice? The world? A flower? A grenade?

A Garden Design

I moved a couple years ago and I miss my perennial gardens. I spent yesterday going through seed and garden catalogs. There are so many beautiful things to grow! This morning I drew out a garden design to put into our fenced in paddock. I am hoping I can find the money to create the raised beds, put in paths, and place a picnic table with an umbrella in a fenced in area to enjoy the summer.

The Witch novel

Truthfully, I have not worked on this this week. I started back to work and every night I came home and did very little. Hopefully, next week I can post progress. I want to get beyond my one paragraph description and work on the character sketches.

Cookbook

More than a decade ago, I started writing a vegetarian cookbook. Then I was told by a physician I had to eat chicken and fish and avoid gluten and dairy. I have many recipes saved and most of those recipes have versions with and without meat and with and without gluten and dairy. I have been organizing that recipes and my aim is to self-publish this cookbook before next November.

Readers for Students

I am a special education teacher for my day job. Many of my students have difficulty learning to read and need more individualized attention. Reading needs to be taught very systematically. Often the mini reading books that are available to teach phonics skills are dreadful. The language is dull. The plot of the book is just dumb. The phonics readers are typically as inspiring as paste. There are some very good phonics series, but they don’t usually have enough books in the series for the students to practice using a particular reading skill and who wants to read the same bland, boring book over and over. Books should be fun, beautiful, meaningful, and transporting! I started working on some phonics readers using the long e vowel teams this week. Maybe I will illustrate my own books?

Finishing

As I am writing this post, it occurs to me I have a lot to do! I will figure out a new painting to work on over the week. What are you working on?

January 3, 2025 and I am working on…

Creativity, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing Fiction

What am I working on ? This is the first post in a long time! Before I get into what I am working on, let me say it’s a Friday. Not only is it Friday, it’s the first Friday of the new year. It also happens to be the last Friday before I must go back to work. I am feeling this rather keenly. Being creative takes a certain amount of “composting” thought—just sitting or lying around and thinking. I think one of my challenges for this year will be to turn over my stress and make it fertile ground. Creativity is transformative. Perhaps I can transform the day-to-day events into loam.


Anyway, continuing on. Right now, I am working on three divergent pursuits: resurrecting the long-lost vegetarian cookbook that I began to write 15 years ago, working on a garden plan for the current house, and working on a new novel.

Vegetarian Cookbook

When I first became a vegetarian, there weren’t many vegetarian cookbooks. Katzen’s Enchanted Broccoli Forest and The Moosewood Cookbook sat alongside Diet for a Small Planet on my shelf for many years. Over time, I collected cookbooks from different cuisines. I love Japanese, Thai, Indian, and Mexican food. My three children were nourished on creative adaptations of recipes that I made. I decided to work on the cookbook again because otherwise the food of their childhoods would be lost. I wanted them to have the recipes for my canned salsa and blueberry lime jam, the Brazilian Black Bean stew, our version of vegetable lasagna, etc. So, I am working on the cookbook.

Garden Plan


A couple years ago, I sold my beloved house and moved to a different part of Michigan. Daily, I regret doing this and miss my house. I miss the beautiful hardwood floors, my old walk-in closet, my bedroom with enough room for an extra couch, and more. A big portion of what I miss is my perennial and vegetable gardens. I am hoping I can create a garden that helps to make this current house feel more like home.

Fantasy Novel

I have been thinking of writing more for a while. Writing can just be fun if not taken too seriously. I am thinking of writing a fantasy novel to deal with the current dreadful state of politics in the US.

Last week, while drinking tea, I was remembering an old story I once heard about how the witches of Britain turned back the Blitzkrieg and helped end World War II. This spurred my thinking about how here in the US we just elected an absolutely unfit for office politician/real estate developer. While elected by a narrow margin, he thinks he has a mandate to do horrible things. For example, he wants to pull in his billionaire buddies and plunder the US. He is the worst of people—someone who selfishly wants more and more and will only do things that will benefit him, even if other people suffer significantly.

I was thinking about this and wondering if the witches of the US could work spells of protection to care for the poor and vulnerable, to care for our natural landscape, and to shield the general population from whatever evil this politician and his cronies may inflict on the rest of us. In addition, I was thinking that the witches could send out spells of abundance to encourage everyone’s home gardens to grow so that no one goes hungry. Further, maybe the witches could work spells to dissipate the illusions around this politician so everyone would see him as he really is and see clearly how dangerous he is.

While these ideas are just the first green shoots of a plan, I have a basic idea. I was chuckling about the idea that the witches could send a monstrous snowstorm to disrupt his inauguration—that may have to go into the book. No one else may ever read this book, but I am going to see if I can have some fun with it!

Always Much Going On

Don’t worry. There will be other pursuits sprinkled in with these three. This semester I am taking a figure drawing class, and I was given supplies to continue creating stained glass. Cleaning the craft room created space to work on stained glass, painting, and printmaking. As I expand my gardens, I am hoping to make some decorative garden elements such as printed flags and stained glass garden stakes. Depending on everything I get up to, I may have to expand the categories on this blog. We’ll see.


I hope your day brings you peace and prosperity.

Persistence

Art, Drawing and Painting, Fostering and Developing a Creative Practice

Persistence. Continuing to work on my painting of an eight armed goddess
I continue to work on my painting of an eight armed goddess

Persistence. Painting skin tones is a difficult skill I could spend years perfecting. Getting a face to look right is hard because we spend so much time looking at faces. Most people instantly can look at a face and feel if it is “off”, even if they can’t tell why it is off.

Learning As I Go

Over the last couple weeks I have worked on the skin tones in this painting, repeatedly. Her body went from too flat with even flesh coloring to zombie-like with too much blue and gray to what I have now. Her face I have repeatedly painted over because the skin color was off and the alignment of her features was not correct. At this moment, I am between painting sessions. I use acrylic paint. Acrylic paints begin to get “gummy” as they dry and over-working the paint makes the texture rough. A rough texture is not what I want for her skin.

The Many Colors of Skin

Trying to get this eight armed goddess’ skin correct has been an exercise in learning about skin tones. I am glad that I have persisted. I am learning scads about skin tones and tonal regions of the face. For instance, around the eyes and chin is typically cooler– more blue or greenish in tint. Under the eyes and across the forehead is more yellowish.

I found this graphic on tumblr on art-res:

The other thing I discovered while taking on this challenge is skin is composed of many different colors. I have used cerulean blue, cadmium orange, cadmium red deep, raw and burnt umber, raw sienna, titanium white, and phthalo green. While the face is still being worked on, and I haven’t done much more than rough the arms in, the body is looking better. And if you look close there are blues, greens, warm browns, yellows, pinks– so many colors!

An Idea!

While I am working on this painting, I have also continued working on the exercises in the Draw A Box tutorials. My hand is getting very steady. I still make mistakes. I have filled about half of a sketchbook with lines, ellipses, planes, and boxes in perspective. My hand is getting steadier and my line quality is more confident.

In addition to working on my drafting skills, I have been working on my ability to see basic shapes in forms. I went looking for video tutorials on YouTube. I found a series of tutorials on figure drawing by Richard Smitheman. His approach of looking for where the figure’s center of gravity and their balance lies makes infinite sense. He provides solid information about anatomy as well. Another series of free videos on YouTube I found is The Drawing Database. The Drawing Database is a series of videos created by Associate Professor Marc Leone from Northern Kentucky University. His videos cover art history, basic drawing, and how to prepare to draw.

In my search for information about skin tones, I also purchased a few books. One I am still waiting to arrive in the mail. The other is titled “Why do my Skin Tones Look Lifeless?” by Rachel Shirley. The book covers skin tones and a variety of issues around doing portraiture. My library of art books, books about specific aspects of art, and art processes and techniques is growing!

All of this is causing me to consider creating a DIY Bachelors of Fine Arts program for myself.

Stay tuned for more about this next week!

Making Mistakes

Drawing and Painting, Fostering and Developing a Creative Practice

A first draft of a painting with mistakes
A first draft of one of my paintings– with mistakes

When learning any new skill, making mistakes is inevitable. A couple years ago I started this painting. I saw a really cool image of a statue of a goddess with eight arms. I am not sure if it was Durga or Kali, but I loved the image. After spending time doing pencil studies of the photograph I downloaded from the internet, I pulled my courage around me and I blocked what I wanted to paint onto the canvas.

And then I started to paint. My sons teased me about her , uh, anatomy. I drew and painted and repainted her face, but I couldn’t get it right. Finally, I was feeling embarrassed about the painting and I put it away. A year after I put it away I pulled it out and asked my daughter to help me block in the face. She helped me. And I put it away again for another year.

Yesterday I pulled the painting out and worked on the face. I screwed it up again, her eyes were in the wrong place, her nose looked wrong, the skin tone didn’t match what I had done previously. This was all very frustrating and I was tempted to stash this painting for another year or so. I have an owl painting I want to work on.

This morning I pleaded with my daughter to help with the face again. She looked at it, but didn’t want to help me. She told me to do it myself. Argh. More frustration. So I painted over a portion of what I did yesterday.

I painted over a portion of the work on the face I had done.
I painted over a portion of the work on the face I had done.

Reminding myself I learn with every attempt at painting, I started over on the face. I also went over the rest of the body to even out the skin tones. Am I in love with what I did today? No. I have much more to do. I need to not be so perfectionist. Jumping in, painting over, and starting again is the only way to move forward. And if this painting is horrible? It’s ok, I am still learning.

This is what I ended for today with. Tomorrow I can play with the paint again!

After working on the painting today, this is where I stopped. Still more to do!
After working on the painting today, this is where I stopped. Still more to do!

Overcoming a White Page or Canvas

Art, Drawing and Painting, Fostering and Developing a Creative Practice

Drawing practice creating ellipses
Drawing practice, drawing ellipses

Sometimes overcoming a white page or a white canvas can feel overwhelming. Procrastination is not always about putting off something enjoyable. I love to draw. Painting is one of the activities where I lose myself and enter a “flow” state. Writing can be like awake dreaming. Playing the guitar is another form of meditation. And yet, I will put off doing all of these things I enjoy.

Further, I have come to view procrastination not as a frustrating habit, but rather as a clue. I am not to the point of being grateful when procrastination pops up because it means there are “feels” to sort out or realistic time management issues to deal with or any of a bunch of other issues. But knowing I am procrastinating means there are things to work on.

In addition, “working on things” means making a conscious choice. Do I have time today to pull out the canvas and set up my painting area to get a pass at a painting done? Am I continuing to do studies in pencil because I am avoiding putting paint to canvas? Am I ready to get over myself and risk? Every time I put paint to canvas it is a minor risk.

Risk

But here is the thing, it is a minor risk. No one is going to lose a limb or die today if I mix acrylic paint, put it on a canvas, and decide later that I don’t like it. If I write a scene in a short story and it comes across as “telegraphic”, I can edit it later. No tragedy will occur if I paint a figure or a face and it doesn’t look like I think it should. When I practice the guitar in my room, alone, I am the only one who hears the mistakes. And I need to make the mistakes because no one is good right from the beginning. The only way to get better is to read, write, draw, paint, create, experiment, and play.

Let’s consider an example: Picasso. Picasso created 147, 800 pieces of art in his lifetime. He created his first painting at the age of nine. It’s good for a nine year old who had a father who was an artist and taught painting. And Picasso totally had to make this painting and hundreds of others and not all of them were what he envisioned. I know he had works of art he looked at later and wanted to change. I went to an exhibit in 2018 at the Chicago Institute of Art that featured works Picasso had “altered”. The painting Mother and Child originally included a father dangling a fish over the infant’s head. His most famous painting from his Blue Period, The Old Guitarist, has an image of a woman underneath it. Picasso was very prolific and we don’t see everything he created. He painted over some of it!

Continuing with the idea of “just do it”, I was talking with my daughter and she estimates 90% or more of what she creates she thinks is not very good. However, the other 10% she likes and she reports she could not have done that 10% without the other 90%.

Just Do It

Practice lays the foundation for creating better works. And shooting for more, experimenting pushes one’s skill level. I have been doing the beginning exercises for the Draw A Box online tutorial. The creator of the Draw A Box tutorials instructs people to only do the exercises for 50% of the time they are drawing because otherwise people get stuck doing the tutorials, don’t draw what they want to draw, and burn out.

For me, doing the Draw A Box tutorials are double-edged. I can understand the value of practicing making marks to gain control and confidence. This type of practice also feels like I am “drawing” and working towards my goal of becoming more adept at drawing. Also, I get why it is recommended to stretch beyond drawing lines, ellipses, and boxes. Ghosted lines, ellipses, and boxes can be used to create other shapes, but there is more to drawing and illustrating.

My Goal For This Week

Draw a Box practice drawing of boxes
Draw A Box practice

This last week was the first week back to my job after being off for two weeks. I didn’t write or paint. Only during my lesson did I play guitar. I drew several practice pages to keep working on the Draw A Box exercises. The photos are scans of a couple of my pages. The week was exhausting and there is no use in berating myself for not doing more. Being good to myself and creating space to do things I enjoy is a better mindset.

In the vein of doing things I enjoy and creating time and space do them, the only goal I am going to give myself for the week is to have fun– paint something ugly, draw something/anything other then a box or a line or an ellipse, and write something fanciful. I will check back with you next week.

Beginning, Again

Creativity, Uncategorized

Beginning mixed media painting of a woman looking up at the moon
Mixed media image. @Annette Bowman 1-1-22

Beginning, Again

I am starting over and beginning again.

A decade or more ago I wrote snippets of characterizations, a few short stories, 2 dreadful novels, many poems, essays, and more. I wrote almost daily. Creating a vegetarian cookbook, trying to build this blog, and working on my creative fiction writing consumed my free time. In addition, I frequently carried my camera with me. I watched the world. Blessed with opportunity, I went on adventures and captured moments of beauty. Infrequently, I still sketched and created pencil drawings– I did go to art school once upon a time ago. I dyed yarn and collected fabrics that caught my eye. Once in awhile, I painted when the inspiration caught me. Collecting paint samples and unique images, I glued together collages. Fascinated by color, I made designs for quilts.

And then it all felt very meaningless.

Where did I lose the thread of meaning? A handful of my creative endeavors got tied up in painful relationships. Some I looked at in disgust because they were not as beautiful as I wanted them to be. Perfection is always a distant destination. Walking the line between creator and editor/critic became impossible. Creating anything was mixed with disappointment, expectation, pain, a sense of futility, sadness, regrets, fear, and inadequacy. Did I just burn out? No, not entirely. It’s more complicated than that.

Let me pull out a few of those emotions for a moment

Disappointment and Expectation

Disappointment comes to life in many different ways, but at its core it needs expectations. Expectations on yourself, on your ability to write or create art, on how others will perceive your writing or your art, on what being a writer or an artist will do for you, etc. tangle energy and drives. Expectations can imbue creating art or writing with meaning beyond the act or writing or creating art.

For instance, I give you the example of the grand expectation that creating art, writing, or music will cause any of us to be loved. Will anyone love you because you are a writer or an artist? Maybe, but honestly, this is not a good thing. At best, it is confused. No artist, writer, singer, or musician on the planet is their work. Each is a person. No one needs to perform or create to be loved. Further, I know from experience it is important to be able to walk away from your work and over-identifying with it is unhealthy.

Another example: expecting that you will be able to create masterpieces. Masterpieces are masterpieces and people disagree about who or what is the best. It is a good thing to want to create exemplary art or writing. It also takes a great deal of practice, making mistakes, reworking what you have done, and it is always a destination you cannot determine you have reached. This expectation is its own zen koan. Useful to consider.

Fear

Fear kills creativity. Procrastination is fear. Fear is important to consider. I was always timid about sending my writing out to various publishers and procrastinated sending my work anywhere. And I craved validation while fearing rejection. I could live in my own assessment of my work…

Here’s the thing. This is another koan wrapped up with expectations. It boils down to knowing what you really want.

Fear also keeps us from trying to write really difficult scenes. Anyone ever try to capture how quick bar fights happen? Fear keeps us from putting a mark on a blank page or canvas and can suck the joy out of being creative. When every single word or mark needs to be perfect or else… holy smokes creativity becomes fraught. And certainly not joyful or experimental.

My painting of Green Tara
My painting of Green Tara, @Annette Bowman 10-31-21

Speaking of joy

This last fall, I completed a spiritual painting meditation to paint an image of Tara. I have a long history with Tara and when I saw that Whitney Freya was offering a 22 day painting meditation to create an image of Tara, I signed up. I read Rachel Wooten’s book, Tara: The Liberating Power of the Female Buddha as I worked on my painting. The experience was powerful and healing. It helped me to begin looking at why I stopped writing, drawing, painting, and creating in general. I am still working though past hurts, my own expectations, and getting in touch with my center between the creator and the critic.

This process has involved a good deal of “letting go”. Letting go of the past, letting go of my assumptions of my own skills and abilities, and more. I am starting fresh and beginning again. Becoming a beginner again is hard. I started an online tutorial called Draw A Box. It is to help me beef up my drawing skills. I am working on setting reasonable goals for my writing and art, considering I do have to work for a living.

I am posting to this blog to document my process and for my own accountability. It’s public. Anyone can read this. This blog and another one, Walk On This Earth, will be my online diaries as I change up what I am doing. I am getting older and it is time to do things a bit different, wring a little more out of this existence. This assessing the past, letting it go, facing the future, getting out of comfort zones, — it is very scary stuff. I hope by being as real as I can maybe someone else will find something that helps them.

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