Tiny Steps

Last week I mentioned that I’d hit a mid-year/mid-summer slump in my creative life. It’s not an unusual thing on my creative journey, but my goal this year has been to be proactive in the face of all challenges. Once I’d faced the issue, I had to find ways to get started.

And that’s a challenge, indeed.

“How do I get started?” is one of the greatest obstacles I’ve had over my many years of working creatively. In my theater roots, it’s easier in some ways. New play, here’s your script, those are your lines, we’ll work on your blocking. The starting point is obvious and doesn’t require much thought. When I’m working on new media, or if I find myself in a new rut, the answer is rarely obvious. Where to begin this time?

My choice was on two fronts, one old and one new. I’m kind of excited about both.

Here’s the “new”, a choice to be methodical about taking on new chances. I want to improve my drawing/sketching skills to assist in my development as a watercolor painter. Meeting with a group of folks who are also looking to exercise their drawing muscles has been a good start. But I need to be “intentional” about that work. Which means drawing between meetings. But where do I start? By following up with ideas for practice from the infinite (or close enough) selection online. I wish I could remember whose video inspired this but it’s gone. You start with a circle or oval, place a second circle off center inside the larger circle and then draw. The small circle is the center of the flower and the larger shows the size limit for the petals. Yes, this is INCREDIBLY simple, but that’s what I need. A task that I can succeed at quickly. I experimented with some color using watercolor pencils. My first assessment was to be unhappy, but then I tried adding a few things and they got better.

The next step is to keep looking for new drawing prompts/videos.

I’m really proud of this next bit. Won’t even try to hide that. This is the oldest, extant piece of my creative life. It is between 53 and 54 years old. I was 13 or 14 when I took Wood Shop in junior high school. You did wood shop and metal shop one year, and mechanical drawing, and electricity the following year. Most of what I did was painfully basic. I can’t imagine what my father the mechanical engineer must have thought of my drawings, lol! This is what survived, a shopping list…holder? It’s the “shopping list thing” in my house today. I didn’t take a picture of it before I started. It was covered in five decades plus of grease and grime. The ends of the copper strips will give you an idea. I washed it carefully but it still shows sign of its age. That followed by a disassembly, and scraping the bottom clean. The original treatment was a layer of glue followed by a layer of felt dust. Most of it had long ago worn off. Cleaned, re-glued, new brass screws on the sides, and a piece of rubber foam material as the new bottom. I modified each of the side pieces to include slots running from the top to the spindle holes. It makes the whole thing work better. It gives me a smile now when I see it on the counter.

I thought about stripping it down, re-sanding and “upgrading” the whole thing. But it felt like a betrayal of the “young Jay”. It was the best he could do at the time, and fifty years, five freaking DECADES later, it’s still perfectly functional. I’ll probably wax it at some point.

So, no brilliant pieces of creativity to report. It still feels like I’m slogging through deep mud creatively. But at least I’ve broken my boots free.

It’s a tiny step or two, each step puts us back on the journey.

Peace.