Clues

(I'm not sure which blog I'll mainly be using to post art on...)

These are a several of the clues I made for Adam's return home (see last post). Unfortunately, both our plans got very turned around by the time he got back, so it didn't go exactly how I wanted, but it all worked out in the end.

The original picture for one clue, which I made out of magazine cut-outs, tape, and the like.


This is what it looks like now. The middle piece on the top row is darker because I had it in the oven and my sister happened to make cookies without seeing it there. I had been sleeping so I was unable to save it, but it seemed to be okay anyways. Woot!

These are some of the other clues, not in any particular order.


This one you actually have to read in a mirror.

Re-Creative

(Yes, I posted this entry on my other blog, but it's such exciting news for me that I decided to post it on both blogs!)


(It didn't scan as well as I would have liked...but here it is!)

Just when I thought I lacked any creativity whatsoever anymore, or the modivation to stick to anything I start, I had this spark, an immediate urge to create. It came yesterday and so I took out some old carpet samples, and scrap materials from a sculpture piece I did last year, in an attempt to make something with them. I started working outside on the picnic table until the weather forced me to move indoors. There isn't much of a place for me to work at my house, as far as art projects go. No one comes home and sees my stuff as work in progress; they see it as a mess. So I spread my stuff on the island in the kitchen, a surface my dad really dislikes being cluttered with stuff. He wasn't home, which I took advantage of. When I reached the point of just not knowing what else to do with the little door piece I had created, I moved onto something else.

I had typed up some clues for a quest-like thing for Adam earilier in the evening, and so I went back to print and cut them out. I've made those... "quests," I guess I'll call them... before and always have so much fun thinking up clever ways to get from one clue to the next, even having some clues hidden online or with a friend or family member. The clues theselves can get quite involved, or at least I think they so (Adam's pretty good at figuring that stuff out). Typically, the clues are typed out or hand-written and most of the thought goes into where and how I am going to hide them. Last night, however, I thought it would be fun if I gave the appearance of the clues a little more attention. With this newly rekindled drive to create something, anything, I was willing to do it.

The very first clue I made was really what inspired me to make all of the clues specially. It started out slow as I tried to figure out what to do with it. Instead of leaving it in it's very straight forward, typed document look, I decided to cut out the lines of type and tape them onto calligraphy paper. Then I just started adding stuff, experimenting. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

Of course, the intriguing idea to do all this did not come until around nine or ten o' clock. So I ended up pulling an all-nighter, not wanting to lose the counter space, which I surely would by morning when my dad came home. But also because I was afraid that if I didn't keep going while I was in the zone, I would lose interest the next day. And I didn't want to lose the ideas that I had at only that moment, ideas I did not know how to write on paper because half of them were experimental on an as-I-went basis.

My favorite experiment was sort of an accidental discovery. Glue had not been working too well and was taking a lot of time. Normally, I would take the time to make it work if I had to, but as much as I was on a creative spree, I lacked the energy and, in turn, the patience. I grew achingly exhausted as the late hours of the night turned into the chilly, early morning hours. Anyways, the discovery I made happened when I had laid out the computer paper stips of text on top of the calligraphy paper how I wanted. I then attempted to apply the tape, but the static of the tape caused the strips to "jump" off the paper and cling to the tape before I had put it down. I was quite annoyed when it did that because I had to carefully pulled the strips off, which made them curly and harder to work with, and reposition them.

I think it was the second clue I worked on that the discovery happened. I found that when the text-covered, little strips were pulled away from the tape, they left behind a layer of ink, allowing the tape to act as a transparency, like the ones used for overhead projectors. And all I had to do was stick it to something, the text being visible, the tape not so much. I ended up using more tape than I thought I would when I started. The nice thing about it is that the original text was being removed from the paper completely, provided I was careful not to rip the tape away.

I'll try to get some images of the clues while I have the scanner available. But for now they are still hidden as Adam has not don't the quest yet. I'm just hoping he doesn't read this before then. These images, on the other hand, are the envelopes to the cards my dad got for my cousins' graduation party today. He asked me to write the names down and have everyone sign them, everyone being me and my two sisters. Eventually, I found myself doodling little designs in the corners. Then I broke out and just had fun with them, creating little scenes and characters.

Although I wasn't aiming to make masterpieces out of them, I felt the simple creativity of it was enough to be meditative or theraputic for me. I don't know how long I worked on them, but by the end, I had worked it out so that each envelope would match up with the other two. I thought it a shame to let them go without saving them in some way, so I used our scanner for the first time. I'm not sure it picked up the blue ink all that well, but you can still get the idea.





I'm quite happy about these few, recent little projects I've taken on, especially because it's on my own time and not deadline time. I hope this is not merely a passing creative bug.

Non-Meaty

My cat and dog are watching me eat a delicious burger, probably hoping I'll slide some their way. But I don't think they suspect it's veggie.

Losing My Inner Artist

Sometimes I feel like I've gotten this far for reasons that do not include skill or talent. Not even creativity. I used to be so creative when I was little, and I loved to doodle and draw all the time. I think my passion to create started the moment I was able to hold one of those big fat crayons that a little girl can barely wrap her hand around. That little girl, me, used to have a head full of ideas. Not really the kind that had been given deep thought. There were no hidden agendas back then. At least none that I can recall. They were simple things, but I still felt like I knew what I was doing. I had no rules to follow except those of nature, which I tried to the best of my ability to copy based on memory.

In kindergarden, I remember, the first thing we did was draw in our journal-type books. We could draw anything we wanted, but the teacher would call on some of us everyday to share with the class what we had drawn. The boy who sat across from me always scribbled these big blobs of color that, to me, didn't make sense because they didn't look like anything. I don't know if he was really trying or if he just wasn't intersted, but it doesn't really matter. It was kindergarden.

Anyways, I can recall this one time that teacher called on me to share. I had drawn something like a cat tripping over a rock, but explained that he'd be okay because cats land on their feet. I remember I had tried to make it look like a cat, pointed ears and whiskers and all. And there was another time when we were split up into groups to make up a story about three or four dinosaurs. Then we had to illustrate different scenes of the story to put on a long piece of paper. The paper was then rolled around a couple cardboard tubes and put in a box with a square cut in one side, so that when you turned the roll of paper, only one scene would show at a time and could transition to the next scene. I distinctly remember my groupmates' disosaurs looking like scribbley blobs. But I had wanted to do a "long neck" one that eats leaves. So I gave mine a long neck and four legs and drew a tree next to it. Okay, so maybe in my five or six year old mind that's what happened, so that's how I remember it. Maybe mine was a blob like everybody else's. But I was still using my imagination.

In recent years, I find that my imagination just isn't what it used to be. I will get this urge to create, but can't seem to get my modivation going. I don't feel particularly inpired by anything, and when I am, I don't know what to do with it, how to incorporate it into a piece.

When deadlines for classes are set, I force myself to come up with ideas. Those ideas never seem to strike me as anything special or creative. I usually don't start "feeling it" until I've carried out a decent looking piece that derived from the sketch my teacher and I thought would work best. I wish I could get into it from beginning to end. It's like I've lost the passion to do anything on my own anymore.

I started two paintings this summer -which is better than the last couple summers when I didn't do anything- but neither of them got very far. I had the final outcome in my head for each, but once I stopped what I was doing to take a "break," I wouldn't go back to it. Is it that I am too lazy to mix paint and set everything up again? I don't know.

Another thing is that it always seems like everyone else knows what they're doing. They have complete control over their pencil or conte or charcoal stick or whatever. I know my bigest challenge right now is learning to lighten up and not go over my lines so much. I think I've definitely improved the weight of my hand, working from the general to the specific. But I am still unsure of myself when it comes to my lines, my proportions. I see what I'm drawing and I know exactly what I have to do, but when it comes to doing it there is this thing that keeps me from doing it that way. I'm scared to mess up. I can't make distictions between what's a good artistic move and what's not. At least that's what I end up telling myself.

There are certain skills I am trying hard to work up to. Better technique. Smoother values. Texture. Pespective. Straight lines in general. Composition. I don't know specifically what it is that keeps me from being at the level of my fellow classmates, those select few who seem to be masters at everything they put their hand in. I think I am very close, just not quite there. I'm sure not carrying a sketchbook with me all the time has it's negative effects, and going this long without drawing can't be a good thing. I feel like such a fruad as an artist sometimes. Like I'm wasting the professors' time because I'll never be as good as my competition.

I used to look at the world around me with such an artistic eye, making trees look more blue than they really were or pulling out the purple in shadows or studying aerial perspective while on walks or runs. Now it seems I'm just itching to be inspired. But I know that I have to get out and make my own inspiration. I can't just expect it's going to happen in my living room. Not that that's impossible, but I guess that's more of a reactive approach than a proactive one, which I should be aiming for.

I think it's about time I call up the little girl inside me and set up a play date.

Unintended Eating Disorder?

The last time I was weighed at the doctor, at the end of June, I was down from 121 to 109. I didn't really know why there was such a decrease. I hadn't consciously changed my diet or anything. Honestly (and sadly), my summer has been spent mostly on the computer. Part of the reason is that I'm taking an online class, which I put a lot of time into. Other than that, I just haven't had much to do. I don't have a job this summer, and I don't usually have a vehicle available to go anywhere with because my sisters and dad all work during the day. And most of my friends have jobs during the week so I don't really see them. When the weekend comes, I am with Adam. That usually means I am in Rocky Hill with him. Even when we stay in Wolcott, there are errands to be done and decisions to be made about where and when to do things together. On occassion, there are family events and such. So weekends are extremely busy while weekdays are extremely uneventful.

I guess the only time I really eat a lot is when I'm Adam or friends or family. When I'm by myself, I get caught up in whatever it is I'm doing without paying much attention to time or what my body needs, unless it is in need of the bathroom. But I actually got really scared the other day. I was at Adam's house on a weekday, but there was no one home during the day. I was working on my online course, and just writing a lot in a notebook, things on my mind that needed to be sorted out.

I did get up to get a cup of yogurt for breakfast, but that was it until Adam came home at about 4:00. Even then we didn't eat right away. We both wanted to take showers before his friends came over to discuss the canoeing trip coming up. We decided I would go first. I felt very light-headed in the shower, with this strange feeling of weakness in my entire body. But I made it out okay. When I weighed myself on the bathroom scale, it read 104. I really wanted to get some food in me.

While Adam was in the shower, I started making tomato soup on the stove. I had a pudding or yogurt or something to eat while I was waiting for the soup to be ready, all the while feeling weaker and weaker as I stirred. His parents came home. They were in the kitchen talking about Desnise's bee sting. I was listening politely. Then the feeling of ligh-headedness and weakness became overwhelming. I felt faint. All I could think of to do was sit down because I could barely stand.

At first Tim thought I was just being silly and asked if I was melting. But when they saw my hanging head weakly shake back and forth, they realized something was wrong. I was slowly gasping for air. I felt so tired. When asked what was wrong, I managed to communicate to them that I felt really light-headed and dizzy. Denise ran to get a cold washcloth for my neck. Tim stayed with his hand on my back. I was reassured I'd be okay and they insisted I just stay sitting for a while. Denise took care of the soup for me.

When Adam came out shortly after and saw me sitting on the floor, he picked me up and brought me to a chair at the kitchen table. He told me I had to eat something. I couldn't even lift my head off the kitchen table, though. It seemed like all of my energy had escaped me. Upon seeing my disposition, Adam carried me to his bed and laid me down to rest. When he brought the soup in for me, I had trouble sitting up by myself, so he lifted me against some pillows and used a plasic drawer kind of thing as a makeshift table for my legs. I was barely able to lift the spoon to my lips, but was finally eating again. I finished two bowls of tomato soup and some of a slice of potato bread.

I couldn't really eat anything solid because I had had my wisdom teeth removed several days prior. I kind of blamed that for my lack of eating more. I had gotten tired of yogurt and pudding and applesauce. But it's really no excuse for not eating. I want to get better about eating more. I have to stop "forgetting" to eat and start remembering to take care of myself.

I think the way I've been spending my summer days has made me very lazy to the point where I'm not doing that. Wow, that's really lazy! How can I not eat? I pee when I have to. Might as well eat, too. I don't consider myself anorexic, but I don't want to become like that, even if I don't mean to.

It's kind of strange. Most girls, I would think, would be happy about weighing less. But I don't care about my weight in the sense of wanting to look a certain way; I just want to be a healthy weight. In this case, I want to get back upto the weight I used to be, around 120. It's kind of funny that I want to gain weight and Adam wants to lose weight.

My Clever Pets

I should be writing the paper and doing the discussion board topic, but I just realized how awesome my pets are.

My dog, Ruby, is so cool! She learned how to open the sliding screen door to the backyard. So she can let herself in or out. She hasn't quite gotten the hang of shutting it behind her, but it's still cool that she can open it. She first started opening it by the giant hole in the bottom of the screen, but now she just nudges the frame with her nose.

My cat, Rumpel, learned how to use the hole to his advantage, too. When he wants to come in or go out, he squeezes through it.

The other cat, Rogue, figured out how to open pretty much any door in the house by clawing at it with her "hand." She used to only be able to do it if the door was cracked ever so slightly, but now she can do it if the door isn't latched all the way. Sometimes I'll think the door is completely shut, so when she tries to open it I don't think she will. But no. She gets it open anyway.

My pets rock!