You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Art’ category.
My NaNoWriMo novel is underway. I’ve already written 1,717 words. While it is a mere 50 words more than I need to meet my daily quota and I have plenty of time to write, I have to remind myself I am done for the day. I say I won’t let myself write any more but the fact is I can’t write any more because I don’t currently have anything more to write. As usual, I am in the dark about what happens next.
Why is this here? A symbol of inspiration? An allusion to playing God? Actually, because the painting is by Michelangelo.
This morning I followed Hemingway’s advice to stop in the middle by leaving off before I finished the scene I was writing. I only know the next three lines of what is going to happen, and then I’ll be into the Unknown, but at least I have a few lines for getting started again. Between now and then, I need to come up with something more to work with. I can just write whatever pops up, but that usually results in writing I trash later. It’s a lot easier for me to write if I have ideas bouncing around in my head to pull from. They don’t have to be fully formed or even good, but they have to be there.
My greatest pleasure in this morning’s writing was perverse, but a common writer’s joy — I made my character miserable. For reasons I do not understand, I just love heaping coals on the head of my characters. It’s an unexpected perk to playing God. I laugh gleefully when I think of trouble to make for them. In this case, I did something I often do when I’m getting started. I burdened my character with a horrific name, in this case, one so terrible she doesn’t want to tell anyone else what it is.
Her name is M.T. Blue, which isn’t so bad (although M.T. can sound like “empty”). It’s what the M and the T stand for that is the problem. While she dreams of being a writer, her parents wanted her to be a famous painter. So they named her Michelangelo Titian, even after they discovered the little boy they were expecting was actually a little girl.
I adore the fact that M.T.’s parents are so lacking in creativity that they couldn’t come up with a last-minute change for their baby’s name and instead saddled her with this horrific moniker. It’s especially ironic that they dream of having an amazingly creative child. And I reveled in M.T.’s attempts today to wriggle out of telling someone her real name.
Don’t get me wrong; I love my characters. I’m not sure why I enjoy making their lives a misery. At least I can promise them that things will improve eventually, because I know I have a happy ending waiting for them. I intend from the start to improve their lives, even if they don’t always get what they think they need.
But I need to think of more problems to throw M.T.’s way so that I have something to write tomorrow, or she’ll get the last laugh. Time to go make some lists and see what I can come up with.
I belong to a small group of quilters known as the Fyber Gypsies (made up of members of the Rocky Mountain Creative Quilters guild) and this spring we set ourselves a challenge: we picked two crayons from a paper bag and one word from a bunch of slips. The goal was to make a quilt using those colors and to look to the word for further inspiration.
I got pink and black crayons, colors I rarely use, and my word was “embellish”.
As with most quilts, my initial ideas were very different from the final product. At first, I though of making animals that were either pink or black and then adding an embellishment-worthy accessory in the opposite color, such as a pink pig in a black top hat or a penguin in a tutu. The animals would be cute, simplified shapes, and the overall effect would be whimsical. I would make four separate blocks, each with a different animal on it.
Once I started sketching, the plan changed completely. I found some Adélie penguin pictures (a very cute, round penguin species) and made some drawings, thinking that I would like to try using the piecing techniques I learned from Ruth McDowell in a class I took with her over 10 years ago. But I had to enlarge my penguin to about one foot tall so that the smallest pattern pieces wouldn’t be too hard to work with, and I needed the finished quilt to be a manageable size if I was going to meet the deadline we’d set for ourselves. So I went from four animals to one.
My paper pattern for Pink-guin
My pattern has turned the original drawing into straight lines, but you should be able to tell that the drawing I came up with was rather realistic. My tutu idea no longer worked, so I decided to use pink fabrics for the white I would need for the penguin and the snow/ice behind him in order to meet the color requirements of the challenge. I auditioned fabrics and started putting the quilt together.
Fabrics selected and ironed onto my pattern pieces, and construction has begun.
About halfway through the construction
Quilt top is finished (just needs a border)
Once the entire quilt was completed, including the quilting and the binding, I added beads for an eye and then decorated the pink frame with beads in order to include a little more embellishment. Here’s the finished piece:
Pink-guin, an art quilt by Kit Dunsmore
Back in November, I wrote a story that included a prince cursed with a smelly, noisy, socially inappropriate demon named Ig. I loved the idea of this little creature so much that I was inspired to make a doll. The real Ig is about two-feet tall. This facsimile is probably just under a foot tall when standing.
Ig, a funny but disgusting demon from one of my stories
I love doll making, because there are no rules and there are lots of surprises. For example, it was actually much harder to make the body for this figure than I expected. My initial tries used pieces shaped like footballs sewn together, but the results were really strange — almost square no matter how hard I tried to make it round. In the end, I just sewed a tube and then gathered the two ends closed to get an egg-shaped form.
In my story, Ig is a frog-like olive green, but I decided that wasn’t disgusting enough. I picked this pink, orange and brown batik because I didn’t have anything that looked pukier.
For those interested in technicalities: The irises are beads and the teeth and whites of the eyes are made from felt. Everything else is cotton fabric. Its fingers and arms have pipe cleaners in them so it can be posed. Its legs have sticks in them to keep them straight. The horns are fabric cones with pipe cleaner inserted so I could twist them into their funky shapes.
I was in the car listening to an interview on NPR today when I heard words that rang in my head like a bell. I repeated them to myself until I was stopped at a light and could write them down, because I was afraid I would forget them.
“If you love what you do, what’s the hurry?”
Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, was talking about the dangers of being too successful too soon. He said his interest had always been focused on developing artists instead of producing hit songs.
Oh, how I needed to hear these words.
Here was someone who has been successful because he worked with people he believed in and was willing to let them grow slowly over time. He worried that too much success too soon would stunt their growth and trusted that, given enough time to do the work they loved, these people would produce a career’s worth of quality work, instead of one or two flash-in-the-pan hits.
Just last night, I told someone how I choked on my novel because I’d become obsessed with writing something that would sell instead of focusing on writing a story I loved. While I’ve found my way back to writing with joy, I am starting to look ahead to the end of this draft with trepidation. Once it’s done, I plan on pulling out all my novel drafts (I’m up to 6) and going through each one of them before deciding what I will work on next. With luck, I will rediscover my enthusiasm for an old project, have some new ideas about it, and be able to start on a second, better draft.
The trick for me will be not to let my desire to produce something publishable warp my writing into something that isn’t mine. Once I make my choice, I will have to remember that writing a novel is only part of developing as a writer and that both require patience, perseverance, and time.
Rilke likened the life of an artist to that of a ripening tree. It might be a while before my writing bears obvious fruit, but that doesn’t mean the other stages of growth aren’t important, even essential, to making that fruit the best possible. I just need to remember that growth happens over time.
I love what I do.
And there really is no need to hurry.
The last night my parents were here, we went to dinner in Loveland. When we came out of the restaurant, it was a gorgeous evening, so we decided to drive to a nearby park for a little walk before the sun went down. However, we got sidetracked as we were driving past Lake Loveland. We pulled off at Lakeside Park and watched the glorious sunset. It felt like the perfect end to a wonderful visit. There was even a statue for us to enjoy.
Generations, Lake Loveland, Colorado
I was taken with the colors and texture of the lake surface as the sunset went on. I took several reference shots, thinking I might make something to mimic this look.
But the sunset itself was the real treat, and I have pictures that document the entire evolution of the event, from burning to burnt out.
Sunset over Lake Loveland
This is turning into the Summer of Sunsets. I’m grateful to live in Colorado, where we are surrounded by such beauty every single day.
