Today I’ve made myself a little proud and practiced what I’ve preached. Keeping a creative life alive when you’ve got a hectic schedule is difficult, and I’m no different from any other parent who has the full range of grown-up responsibilities. The only difference is I’ve given myself an additional range of creative tasks to potentially get frustrated over!
If you can’t fit in a big project, do something small that’s a step towards it.
I’ve known this for a long time – some weeks there are just too many things in the way to dive in to a time-consuming project. This week was just like that.
I did have a great creative result as an art technician though, designing a minimal sheep’s skull mask template for a dance performance. I’d planned to recreate it and document it for the blog this week, with a pdf to share. I haven’t been able to do that, but I’ll make sure to get on to it as soon as I can.
The main thing I’d wanted to do was to carry on one of my ideas from last week when I worked on a backlit drawing of Ste. I wanted to set up some photographs going 360° around him, then translate these into drawings and maybe paintings.
Next, I wanted to try animating the drawings (William Kentridge is the first influence to come to mind, of course).
With everything we had to manage this week, there just wasn’t time, so I used my studio assistant (which is the entire reason why I bought him in the first place!). I took some quick snaps, but I just couldn’t fit in the drawing stage for the scope I had in mind, so I made a little video and then a gif from my stills.
Small steps can take you in the right direction
So this wasn’t what I wanted to have done by the end of the week, but having a deadline (this post!) and a strong desire to have something – anything – as a visual note meant that I have a step towards the end goal.
I particularly like seeing the answers to some of my questions, such as:
How would it appear – as if the subject is moving, or if the observer is moving?
What effect does the light source have on that – moving around the model instead of moving the model?
Anyway, now I have something that I can look at and show to others to demonstrate the concept I’m thinking of expanding on, and that takes me further along than if I’d done nothing at all.
Not getting distracted…
Of course I’m interested in animation, but I can’t commit to another rabbithole! This is definitely something I’m going to pursue, but I have the money project to get on with as well as a few writing jobs to complete.
If you get stuck with your own creative process, try to tackle a smaller step, and pat yourself on the back for what you have managed to accomplish. It definitely helps!
This week has been full of nostalgia. Memory lane has been more like a highway, with lots of reminders about the things I used to do and the person I used to be. What do I mean?
Echoes of my old studio
On Sunday we went to an Ikea showroom – Ste’s first time ever, and my first time in a very long time. It was strange to see so many of the same things I’d bought for my ceramics studio, like the plastic Trofast storage bins that held my clay slips and glazes.
Of course I was tempted to plonk down the cash to kit out my new studio to get it just the way I want it, but I think I’ll just take the furniture that gets kicked out of the rest of the house and try to work some magic with it.
Mixing glazes
Funnily enough, my first tech job the following day was reconstituting dried glazes and mixing some stoneware glazes from powder. It’s been over a solid decade since I’ve mixed any glazes, and as I stirred and brushed the rough glaze mixture through the sieve, I thought about all of the years I’d spent totally immersed in the world of ceramics.
I don’t do ceramic work these days, but I still love it. I’ve kept all of my glaze recipes and kiln books… knowing me, one day I might well jump back in. Even when you don’t carry on in a particular medium, nothing is entirely wasted – the skills you pick up stay with you, and I’m glad I’m able to keep on using them even if it’s not for my own practice.
Thing is, I’ve spent a lot of the intervening years thinking of that business as something that failed, when it really did a lot for me and helped get me to where I am now. After I went to recover some product images from an old hard drive, I realised just how busy I’d been and how well it had done for me.
When you decide to move on from one phase of your life to another, it can be too easy to write off the past time as a failure or a waste, without recognising what it’s done for you. The truth is, nothing is ever totally wasted.
This week I tumbled unceremoniously back into the world of work – yay for me!
I brought back a sweet little felted mouse made for me by Jenny. How cute is he? I gave her some jumpers that I’d accidentally shrunk, and she made this mouse out of one of them. One of the cats stole him when I wasn’t looking but I managed to get him back unharmed!
Fred and his new friend.
My gentle return saw me cutting up cardboard and cleaning screens – which, of course, made me think about my return to the world of artwork. I’m definitely well enough to start printing again, but my studio is an absolute tip after a month of ignoring it.
Honestly I don’t feel mentally strong enough to tackle cleaning my room, but it’s got to happen sometime. The banknote project was really on a roll when I had to stop, so I feel as though I’ve lost momentum, and I’m almost wondering whether to start from scratch. (Almost.)
Figure drawing again
To stretch my legs, so to speak, I started some figure drawing. I like being able to switch from one theme to the next when it feels like I need a change, and it’s good to plan something different – and big – later in the year.
I love this pose and I like the challenge of the foreshortening. It’ll be interesting to develop it and work on it in paint.
Let’s end with something totally unrelated to art.
The award for the weirdest phrase I came across on the internet goes to:
“I consume pineapple thrice a week”
I mean, who talks like that? This question almost deserves an interrobang!
Almost.
This kind of thing tickles me somewhat because I spend a lot of time writing for the internet. This personal site is the tip of my blog iceberg; I also receive a lot of submissions from other writers looking to publish posts on my other, vastly more popular site. On top of this, I used to edit for a website where I’d publish interviews with other bloggers.
So I’ve seen a lot of writing cross my desk apart from everything I read for post research, and it’s easy to spot non-native English writers, as well as to tell which part of the world someone comes from… and nothing gives you away like cramming words like “consume” and “thrice” into a sentence. We know you’ve been busting out the thesaurus, it’s ok.
Anyway, it’s stuck with me because of a link scam email I got this week, from someone who was definitely not who they were claiming to be.
It made me think about the ways we represent ourselves online and how we use language to cover up who we truly are, like a mask, or to portray ourselves in the best possible light, like makeup. Artists have a pretty tough job when it comes to figuring out the right tone and content for promoting themselves and their work, so it’s all going into the pot of topics to research for future articles.
I meant to write about it this week but haven’t yet, mostly because of getting stuck in to writing a mammoth article about running a craft business, and a few more about digital marketing. All of these topics are bleeding into another post about why on earth an artist writes about digital marketing in the first place.
Maybe you’re not selling a product, but you’re still selling something: you’re selling yourself and your site.
Your name says a lot about your industry, even in the arts. For example, if you’re an artist, chances are you’ll want to use your own name. If you’re setting up an art business, on the other hand, you’re probably going to be using a brand name to encapsulate what you do or offer.
Now, this isn’t set in stone, but in general fine art revolves around the persona of the artist as an individual. Brand and identity in this case go hand-in-hand, even when artists use pseudonyms or construct alternate identities.
On the other hand, we often see designers and artists who teach online using branding to create a larger system in which to operate. That’s not to say that it has to be this way; it’s just that it’s what we now expect to see.
As an artist, I was always going to use my name as my domain and site name. For my other sites, I’ve had great success with a variation on a common phrase – see “punning” names below.
Think search
If you’re not coming at this from the point of view of an artist/creative, (or even if you are, it doesn’t matter) you might want to take the totally pragmatic view of sticking your search keywords into your domain name.
People are out there searching for answers to their questions, but they don’t know you yet… so as above, think about what you’re selling, and whether your site name could spell it out for people passing by.
Sure, this isn’t always a good idea for everyone, but think about whether it would work for you. Personally, I’ve found that my SEO success has come from optimising individual blog posts rather than relying on my blog names.
Watch out for trends and puns
For ages it seemed as though I only saw blogs that had names made up of something-and-something. Usually the two things that were placed in juxtaposition to illustrate just how different this person was.
Wow, she likes/does/is those two different things? That’s AMAZING! I want to be her friend! Ok, you get my drift.
Anyway, I don’t mean to be horrible if that’s your blog – I’m just being overly salty. Just don’t jump onto the tail end of a trend – any trend.
On another note, puns can be a pretty good way to capitalise on a well-known phrase and make your blog “sticky” in your readers’ minds, but this doesn’t work very well when you’re the tenth person to have that idea. If there are already several websites that are derivatives of the punny phrase you’re after, you should probably look elsewhere.
Basically, if you see too many blogs with names that look the same, don’t bother using that cookie cutter.
Future-proof it.
Of course, you may be writing a blog all about your family… but if you base your blog’s name on the number of kids you have, their ages or your age, you’d better be pretty sure you don’t ever pop any more kids out, and you’ll inevitably have to wrangle with what happens when you all grow up.
If you end up going super-specific in any sense, just be prepared to pick and stick, or you’ll end up with a fair amount of inner turmoil, which you could always blog about, I guess.
Read the URL!
It might sound great, or describe your company perfectly, but what happens when you mash the words together into your web address?
Hint: if you can’t figure out what I’m on about, just write it down and do a quick word-search game when you see all the words pressed together. If there’s nothing rude or lewd, it’s a start.
Oh, and think about what happens when people try to spell it – are they unlikely to get it right because you’re spelling a common word in a weird way? Not helpful.
Get your dictionary out and check your spelling.
Say it out loud.
If this blogging lark works for you, you’ll be hacking away at this business for a long time to come – you don’t want to be stuck with something awkward that you can’t even pronounce… or worse, say to someone else without getting embarrassed.
But because you already know what you’re getting at, you might not notice if your chosen name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Get a friend to listen to you and give honest feedback on how your chosen name sounds to an uninitiated ear.
The domain game
Really, the general consensus is that you’ll be safest with .com – that’s just the way it is. It’s like wearing blue jeans: the blue’s become virtually invisible.
Everyone will naturally assume your domain will end with .com, but there are good reasons to go with others if it fits.
I’ve seen wildly successful blogs using domain extensions that I’d consider very unusual, and in some cases, an unusual extension is a plus point for a site. There are now all sorts of fun extensions available (yes, even .fun) and this means that you can often pick up the name you want even if the .com is already taken, or incorporate the extension into your site name.
As an artist, some of their extensions that I’m drawn to include:
.art (of course)
.design
.graphics
.ink
.media
.photo
.photography
.press
.video
Also, I’ve already written about how you can get a free .co.uk domain name and site, so check that out here.
Not happy? You can always change it!
Hey, no-one can get it right all the time. Sometimes you just need to do a full rebrand. If this happens, don’t just scrap your site; set up redirects to point your traffic to your new pages.
Can you come up with better ideas for blog naming? Feel free to put me right in the comments!
Having shiny object syndrome has its pros and cons. On the plus side, I’m always fizzing with ideas. On the downside, when one of my ideas takes off and people start to want a piece of it, it starts to smell a bit like work!
My plans for getting down to some figure drawing were totally derailed by – no, not someone else – by my own writing.
What I did produce was, at long last, the outline of an article about running a craft business, and what I learned from the business that I gave up. It made me think about how much has changed for me in the last 10 years, and how little has changed about me fundamentally. I’m still trying to do all the things, mostly on my own; but now, instead of sewing all the things, I’m drawing and writing and publishing and promoting all the things.
Back to life, back to reality
Six weeks ago I had surgery. In the first week, nothing much seemed to change, but every day after that, I could see incremental improvements. The biggest changes happened about 4-5 weeks on, when I could stand up straight again.
When usually able-bodied people get ill, we can go from taking our daily lives for granted to taking nothing for granted, and then slowly ramp up to forgetting again. It’s easy to forget about it when you get better, but some people never do. I am getting better, and before long I expect I will fully recover, but this experience has made me think about those of us for whom diminished ability isn’t a couple-of-months-long blip.
I had this many years ago, where I was temporarily disabled whilst I was pregnant. I knew that in all likelihood it would go away, but at the time it was an all-consuming blot that not only overshadowed the way I felt about myself, but obviously changed the way that others viewed me. At the time I didn’t know how long it would last, and was actually quite afraid that I’d never be the same. A year later, I was fine.
That experience has never really left me, which is partly why I was dreading this fresh experience… but it hasn’t been as bad. Yes, I’m impatient with myself, but the fact is, there is an end in sight.
Even now, I’ve passed through the realm of invisibility that the disabled are pushed into by our reluctance or inability to engage with them.
A friend of mine, a fellow artist, suffered a stroke last October, and despite having been dealt a hand of truly outrageous fortune, he’s been a real inspiration to me and I expect, to everyone who knows him. It puts my passage through this state into sharp perspective.
The less able figure
Representational art can’t help but find itself sticking to the decorative, the beautiful, the perfect. We want it so badly because frankly, we need it. Static on a page or as a sculpture, we want to immortalise the image of the body so we can forget about the body’s propensity to go wrong.
It’s all just made me think about the purpose of my own figure drawing, pursuing an image of a body that is itself relentlessly in pursuit of perfection…
But we’re all being transformed, no matter how able or less able we are right now.
