Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™ | Innovation Keynote Speaker & Consultant
Empower your team to innovate on demand. Melissa Dinwiddie helps tech leaders Create the Impossible™ through playful, interactive workshops and keynotes. Unlock breakthrough creativity today.
Finishing Blitz is working miracles. Not only am I writing every day (except Tuesdays — my “day off”), not only am I making progress on the book, but Project Studio Makeover continues, too! Today I’m happydancing about my new Ikea hack standing desk / treadmill desk.
Thanks to the Great ClutterBust, my studio has gone from horrifyingly cramped and cluttered, to [Read more…]
Back in 2011, in an attempt to get back to making art after over a decade of perfectionist paralysis, I set out quite intentionally to do the opposite of what I used to do.
Instead of aiming at perfection (or at least awesomeness), I embraced the motto, “Think process, not product.” And where before I would plan a piece out to an inch of its life, now I embraced randomness and spontaneity.
There was nothing inherently wrong with the meticulous, nitpicky style I’d always used. Working that way had resulted in countless pieces that I’m still proud of to this day.
But my working style had exacerbated my perfectionist tendencies, and I was determined to change that pattern. Now when I approached my art table, I made the conscious effort to be mindfully messy.
I’ve found this way of working exhilarating.
I allowed myself to play, to explore, to make messes and then find the order waiting inside them, rather than always trying to impose order in the hopeless attempt to match the perfect image in my head. I started using chaos as an intentional element in my work, rather than something I did my best to avoid.
Let me be quick to state that when I’m at my art table I still want to come out with something that pleases me — of course I do! And I still bump up against the internal critic, especially as I got further into a piece. But a good chunk of the time nowadays when I’m working at my art table, I’m in a pretty blissful state of freefall and discovery.
“Hmm…” I’ll think, “I wonder what would happen if I tried…”
This is absolutely my favorite part of the creative process!
I can feel my heart start to race, my skin tingle, my head feels almost as if I’m floating. It’s scary and thrilling and fun all at the same time — the biggest high ever!
In his book, Uncertainty, Jonathan Fields talks about the creative process as having two distinct phases:
1) The insight, or dot-connecting phase, when the idea or vision comes to light.
2) The REP phase, which stands for refinement, expansion and production, when the creation is taken from an idea to concrete reality.
Whatever the creation — a painting, a book, a business — it has to go through both phases in order to come into existence. Most people feel more comfortable in one phase over the other, though as solo creators, we usually have to do both ourselves.
Me, I’m an insight/dot-connection gal. REP makes me want to pull out my fingernails. I can do it, but it’s often unpleasant, and I need all the help I can get.
Whichever phase you gravitate toward, the key to creative productivity is to set up support structures to help get you through the other one. That, or team up with other people with the opposite affinity and get them to do it!
My late book arts teacher did just that with grace. She made handmade artist’s books in editions of 300 or more, but she knew herself well enough to know that cranking out 300 identical copies would send her around the bend. So she wisely kept her role to developing and designing the prototypes, and hired binders to do the tedious work she had no interest in.
I designed my Little Star Book (below) in on of her classes, back in 1998, and in the process learned that edition binding was not for me. These tiny books sold well, but I never finished assembling the entire edition. BO-RING!
Lately I’ve been most interested in working on canvas, and usually I start a new piece with no agenda in mind, beyond what colors or medium I might like to use. As the piece evolves, it “tells me” what it whats to be.
Sometimes, though, I have a more fleshed-out vision for something I’d like to try, like a few weeks ago, when I got the idea to sew a small canvas onto a larger one, and then collage over the threads. I was curious to see what that would look like.
I also wanted to try incorporating typed text, from my vintage typewriter, and had recently discovered an old pad of airmail paper in a drawer, so decided to start using it up in my artwork!
I started typing:
Then tore the sheet into strips:
Then tore the strips into scraps:
Once I had a good-sized pile of scraps, I started collaging onto a 6×6 canvas using Golden Soft Gel (Gloss):
The finished 6×6 canvas:
I then collaged more blank airmail paper onto a 12×12 canvas (I love the way the paper wrinkles!), to act as the support for the smaller canvas:
Now, time to start the stitching!
In my original vision, the stitches would go in and out of the edges of the top canvas, but even with a curved needle this proved beyond my abilities. So I let go of that vision, and went with “second best” — having the stitches go in and out of the top canvas a couple of inches in from the edge.
Here’s how it looked with the stitching all done, and starting to collage the remaining scraps on top of the stitching:
At about this point is where I stalled.
All I had to do to manifest my original vision (granted, with the stitching not where I’d originally planned it) was to keep collaging around the top canvas. The problem was, I was bored.
For me, the joy is in the discovery, and I could see exactly what this piece was going to look like already in my head.
I was now firmly in the REP phase of the creative process. If the end vision had been exciting enough, I would have trudged through the tedium to bring it to life. But that end vision bored me, and the thought of spending hours to collage more scraps onto thread in order to make a boring piece made me want to run screaming in the other direction.
I confess, I had a mini Dark Night of the Soul here. What do I do? The sewing I’d done so far on this piece had been so tedious, and now I was bored with the piece altogether. I wanted to move on to something else, but the piece clearly wasn’t finished, and I did not want to start a pattern of leaving UFOs* all over my studio.**
Then suddenly I had a thought: What if I don’t follow the original plan to the end? What if, instead, I were to treat the piece in its existing, partially done state, as a blank canvas?
This is, in fact, how I work with my ArtSparks and improvisational canvases: I make a mark, then respond to it. In effect, I treat whatever greets me from my art table as if it were a blank canvas. The only difference here was that instead of starting with no agenda, I dropped the agenda in the middle.
Guess what — it worked! Brilliantly.
For the rest of the time I worked on this piece, I was in discovery mode, improvising, asking, “What if..?”
What if I weave linen thread in irregular patterns into the stitches?
What if I weave paper strips through the stitches?
What if I type on the paper strips first?
I had a blast finishing this piece, and to add icing to the cake, it sold! Someone who saw all these process pics as I was making the piece fell in love with it and purchased it. 🙂
Here’s the finished art, titled “Positively Entwined,” after varnishing (thank you to Carrie Lee for offering the winning title suggestion over on Facebook):
Selling this piece so quickly was a wonderful bonus, of course, but perhaps the best part of this whole process is the discovery of a really simple way to get back to joy when I find myself bored with what I’m making:
Abandon the plan.
Let go of the vision in my head and treat what I have in front of me as a blank canvas.
It’s funny: I used to fear the blank canvas. “Ack! What do I do?!”
But when you’re a practicing imperfectionist, the blank canvas is not something to fear; instead of a scary wall, it becomes an invitation. On its own, it’s still overwhelming — nothing shuts us down like limitless possibility. But that’s easily solved: just make a mark!
Then react to that mark. Add to it. Cover it. It doesn’t matter what you do, because whatever it is, you can then react to that!
This is the essence of the Creative Sandbox mentality, where there is no wrong. Everything you do becomes something to build on, explore, and discover.
Now I’m off to do just that with my next canvas…
* UFO = UnFinished Object
** Correction: I already have countless UFOs, so it would be more accurate to say I didn’t want to perpetuate the pattern of leaving UFOs all over my studio.
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
I have a new goodie for you! Over the past week I’ve been hard at work on artwork for my Imperfectionist Manifesto. I just made it available as a poster in different color options over at my Zazzle shop (and I’ll soon send my subscribers a link to get a free, printable PDF, along with the PDF of my Keys to Creative Flow).
There’s a story behind this artwork, though, both the creation of it, and the sharing of it — a story that includes being bashed on my own Facebook page. I learned a lot from this experience, and it felt important for me to share what I learned, so you can benefit from it, too. [Read more…]
It seems everyone is writing their New Year’s posts, declaring their alternatives to New Year’s resolutions, announcing their Theme Word For The Year, etc, but it’s going to take awhile for me to do my usual end-of-year/start-of-year processing.
Let’s face it, New Year’s Eve was pretty much eclipsed for me by the fact that I got married on Saturday, three days before.
No last night of the year partying for me. Miracle Man and I spent a quiet evening at home on the 31st, curled up in bed watching a movie.
In fact, the movie we watched was the video of our wedding ceremony. And we laughed and got all choked up for the nth time.
Yes, we are romantic dorks. 🙂
(Did you see the video of the song I wrote and sang for Miracle Man as part of the ceremony? If not, click here. But then come back to see the rest of the ketubah-making saga. Though you may want to read part 1 and part 2 first.)
There was some doubt in some circles about whether I’d finish the ketubah in time for the wedding. Ahem. Yes. Well, I did finish it, and this post is a documentary of that process.
I want to say first, though, that I’m still really tickled by how much fun I had, and what a difference creating this wedding was from my creating my first wedding.
Twenty years ago, the first time around on the wedding-planning carousel, the theme was perfection.
As in, “if the wedding is perfect, maybe my life will be good.”
As in, “if the wedding is perfect, maybe my marriage will be okay.”
If this had been true, of course, I wouldn’t now refer to that marriage as my “practice marriage,” and there would have been no wedding #2 on Saturday.
When I planned my first wedding, I did not yet think of myself as an artist. The idea that I might make my own ketubah, or heaven forbid write a song for my beloved, those were not even on the radar of “someday” possibilities at that point.
Instead, I hired creative talent. I acted as the curator — which was certainly a creative act, don’t get me wrong — but I was way more concerned about beauty and perfection than about having fun.
Really, much as I hate to admit it, I think my first wedding was about wanting to impress more than anything else.
This time around it was about wanting to have fun.
I’ve already shared my struggles with resistance around making the ketubah, and the first part of the creation process. So let’s pick up where we left off, shall we?
Now that I’d honed in on the English calligraphy style, and mixed my ink to the proper density, it was time to calligraph the text for real. But first, I had to line up the paper. (The “drafting machine” that came with my old, industrial drafting table comes in very handy for this type of thing.)
I squeezed some ink into my favorite inkwell (the bottom of a plastic wine glass — the perfect size and depth for a dip pen, and does not tip over!)…
And started writing:
You may wonder why I started in the middle of the sheet, and not at the top.
Shhh!!! Calligraphers’ secret!
I’ve learned the hard way that it takes time to get into a rhythm, and I’m usually also kinda nervous when I start writing a big project like this. If I start at the top, with the first word of the document, it’s a sure bet that those first few letters are going to look really bad!
So instead, I start somewhere lower down the page. Then by the time I get to the top, I’m in my rhythm, the nerves are mostly worked out, and the start of the document will invariably turn out a whole lot better!
Another calligrapher’s trick: when you take a break — whether to go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, get some sleep for the night, or simply dip your pen into ink again — it’s best to stop not at the end of a line (as you’d think), but rather in the middle of line, ideally in the middle of a word, ideally in the middle of a letter.
Why?
Well, as I’ve mentioned, calligraphy is very much about rhythm. Each time you stop and start again, your rhythm will change just a little bit. If there’s a gap between those stops and starts, the eye will pick it up in a flash.
But if the stop/start is in the middle of a block of text, it’s less noticeable. Plus if you stop in the middle of a letter (as in the E at the end of promise above), you’ll have a stroke or two to get back into rhythm before leaping to the next word or line.
All was going quite smoothly, and I was happy with how the English was coming along, and then… DISASTER!
Somehow, without noticing, I’d managed to smear ink on the bottom of the paper! Oh, noooooooo!!!
If this were a piece for a client, I’d have started all over with a new sheet of paper, but there wasn’t time for that. Plus, the beauty of working in a spontaneous, modern, abstract style is that anything goes. I’d simply have to figure out a way to resolve this problem as I went along.
For now, I’d work on getting the Hebrew text done. I’d solve the ink smear issue later…
First, lettering tests, to determine the size pen to use. The top two rows below were done with a Mitchell 5, the bottom two rows with a Mitchell 6. (And the white paper in the back is the computer printout to that I used as a spacing guide and hand guard, so my hand — with all its skin oils — rested on the white paper, and not on the watercolor paper.)
Next: lining up the paper for the Hebrew text:
And here’s the completed text:
After inking in the signature lines and erasing the pencil lines, the text block was done!
But there was still that *$&#^ smear to deal with… (The key and pen nib on the canvas, btw, were possible design elements that I later nixed.)
My first thought was to add some more random-looking marks at the bottom of the text block. I even opened up a snapshot in Photoshop and played around to see how additional marks might look.
I didn’t like them. At. All.
Miracle Man suggested collaging over the marks, which I thought was a good idea. So I pulled out some silk fabric left over from when I created a Torah mantle for my synagogue, and started playing:
Missing something… How about this?
Hmm… Or this?
Or..?
What was especially fun about this part was the reading the reactions from my followers when I posted these pics to Instagram & Facebook. (There were some strong opinions out there!)
I kind of liked what was happening with this gold silk… But I kind of didn’t. It really changed the color scheme I had going on.
So… What about collaging on some additional paper..?
Again, VERY strong opinions on Facebook and Instagram. In both directions!
Then one more idea: adding some quilt swatches more in the color scheme of the ketubah:
Or..
Ultimately, I wasn’t thrilled with any of these solutions. So while I let all these ideas stew, I decided to get on with attaching the text block to the canvas.
After consulting with a conservator I know, I decided to use a heat-activated adhesive film, Beva 371, to collage the paper down, before doing the stitching. (Note: I now wonder if perhaps I would have been better off just stitching the paper, without using any adhesive at all… Ah, well. It’s done.)
Here I am applying the film to the back of the text paper, using a tacking iron:
Then peeling off the silicone release Mylar off the film…
And now using the tacking iron to apply the text block to the canvas (covered with a piece of nonwoven material made for just this purpose, protecting the text block paper from being burnished by the iron):
I then turned the canvas face down, and did a whole lot more ironing to get the adhesive to fully adhere, using a bone folder to smooth out any bubbles.
Here’s a badly squared-up snapshot of the collaged ketubah hanging on the wall (next to a small piece I finished earlier this year — yes, I seem to like blues and greens!):
Now for the stitching! This was the one thing I knew for sure I wanted to incorporate into this ketubah. I’ve wanted to sew a ketubah text onto a background for years, but have never had a client who liked this idea. Finally, I got to do it for myself!
There’s something so meditative about hand stitching. But this was also hard work: I used a thimble to push the needle into the paper and canvas, and a pair of needle nose pliers to pull the needle through the back side. (And I had fun making the stitches intentionally uneven, but not wildly so.)
Here’s another shot of the ketubah with the first long side of stitching completed. At this point I also decided to apply clear granular gel over some of the darker squares around the perimeter. Those white spots will dry clear, just like Elmer’s Glue.
Stitching is fun, but can also get tedious. I needed a break. So I tore up the leftover background paper and calligraphed place cards for the post-wedding dinner, using a spontaneous lettering style I developed years ago, a sort of spiky, modern, informal Italic:
These I then pasted onto menus printed onto half sheets of card stock:
Did I mention this was mostly taking place from 4:00am to 8:00 two nights before the wedding, while I was horribly insomniac? Ahem. At least it was a productive night!
Here’s the back of the ketubah, more stitching done:
And the completed stitching! All that’s left to do is resolve that $*#@& smear…
And add some “Yesses” into the artwork (which felt entirely appropriate, don’t you think?):
Don’t forget the sides of the canvas!
And here’s a peek at my ink smear solution:
And the finished, signed ketubah!
And my favorite photo from the signing ceremony on Saturday morning: my nephew “helping” his mom sign his name!
Our ketubah now hangs proudly just inside the door to our bedroom. I haven’t sealed it yet, but plan to do so with Golden acrylic matte spray varnish (and gloss varnish over the clear granular gel sections). But I’ll run tests on some smaller canvases before doing so. Always test and re-test before trying a new technique on a valuable piece!!!
Tomorrow morning we leave on a brief, “mini-honeymoon” (called so in hopes that a longer, more exotic destination may come later). Then it’s back to work, and back to creating!
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
A deadline like a wedding will get me creating like nobody’s business! But what happens when there is no deadline?
It’s all too easy to let life intervene, isn’t it?
It doesn’t have to be that way!
The solution? A safe, supportive tribe, reminding you that you are not alone. Gentle structure. Encouragement and reminders that yes, you deserve this! Yes, you need this!
Click here to join me for the next session of Get Sparked! starting on January 9th. It could change your life.
Yes, I know much of the world is wrapped up in Christmas right now (no pun intended), but I’m getting married on Saturday (!), so naturally it’s All Wedding All The Time around here.
Except when it’s not…
As I’m sure you’ve discovered, life doesn’t conveniently pause to accommodate life events. Every day for at least a week my intention has been to work for several hours on the ketubah. And every day for at least a week I’ve been re-learning the truth of my mantra:
The thing I do first is the thing that gets done.
In other words, if I don’t get to work on the ketubah (or whatever my big goal is) first thing (okay, after meditating and journaling, but..)
…before checking email
…before whatever appointment is on the calendar
…before laundry
…before baking cranberry bread for the pre- and post-wedding brunches
…before driving a carload of stuff to Goodwill (finally!)…
I may never get to it!
But deadlines are magical things, and with seventeen years under my belt as a professional ketubah artist, I’m used to completing artwork in time for someone’s wedding! It always takes longer than I think it will, but it always gets done.
I’ve been documenting my process (mostly using Instagram, which I’m kinda falling in love with), and thought it would be fun to share it here.
I should say that I did the heavy lifting (designing and copyfitting the layout of the text) a week or so ago. In radically reduced shorthand, the next steps are as follows:
1) Paint the canvas onto which the text will be collaged/sewn
2) Paint the paper on which the text will be calligraphed
3) Calligraph the text (which involves a lot of lettering trials, to see what looks best, what density the ink should be, etc.)
4) Collage/sew the calligraphed text paper onto the canvas
5) Add any final elements to the piece
With the layout done and printed onto plain old computer paper as a spacing guide for my calligraphy, it was time to paint the canvas. And oh, boy, “white page syndrome” was hitting me hard!
But I was determined to treat this as a Creative Sandbox project, and not get all precious and perfectionisty, dammit! So after priming the canvas with Daniel Smith watercolor ground (so I could use water media like ink and watercolor paint in addition to acrylic mediums), I broke the ice by “scribbling” all over the canvas using a ruling pen:
I kinda liked that, but knew I wanted a more layered, textural final effect, and that this was just the start. It served an important purpose, though: kinda like the first door ding on a brand new car, it let me relax and just start “making messes,” my preferred way to work.
Next I added a wash of Ziller blue ink, muted with a bit of walnut ink. And when a accidentally splashed a drop of water on the wet canvas, I intentionally added a bunch more water splats for texture:
Then while the paint was still drying, I smeared some random smears of watercolor ground, using an old credit card:
Then added some all-over pastel scribbles (very pale — hard to see here) and three pink pastel spirals (you can see evidence of my testing out different pastel colors on the paper underneath the canvas, at the bottom right):
I sprayed SpectraFix over this (my favorite pastel fixative — no solvents!!!), and while that was still wet, I smeared the pink spirals with my finger:
I felt the canvas was crying out for some spring green, so added some pastel scribbles around the borders:
And when the watercolor ground smears got mushy from all that media, I refreshed them, again using a credit card:
I liked what was happening here, but felt the borders needed stronger emphasis, so went around with a large flat brush and blue Ziller ink (again, somewhat “contaminated” with walnut ink, and perhaps a drop or two of green Ziller — I can’t remember now…). This pic shows the printed template for the text and signature lines on top of the canvas:
As you can see, I was getting my hands dirty for real!
And here’s a pic of the canvas, sans text template (the moiré effect at the bottom is courtesy of my phone and the lights, and not part of the actual canvas):
At this point, although I knew I’d probably add more layers to the canvas, I decided to turn my attention to the paper on which I’d be doing the calligraphy. I wanted it to be a blue-green that complemented the canvas. So I stretched a full sheet of Arches 140# hot press watercolor paper, and went to town (sorry, no process pics here — I forgot to shoot them! This pic shows after several layers of paint already.)
Now I ran into my first big technical glitch: this batch of Arches creates a splotchy effect when wetted. Certain spots in the paper absorb more pigment, making it appear as if the paper is mildewed or something!
I was very unhappy about this splotchiness, plus the color was turning too green/brown for my taste, so I decided to stretch a half sheet of a new sheet of paper, this time on my Boga Board.
Here I am blowing it dry, after several light washes of Ziller + walnut ink, and liberal scraping with an aquarelle watercolor brush handle (for texture, but really because I’d inadvertently added one or two scratches, and if you haven’t figured out by now, my favorite method for dealing with “mistakes” is to feature them):
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until I’d already wet the paper that the sheet was not Arches, as I’d asumed, but Fabriano Uno. Uh, oh…
I had a Very Bad Experience with Fabriano Uno several years ago, when I decided to try it out for a client’s ketubah.
Bad Move. Never use a paper you’re not familiar with for a client piece, especially when the deadline is fast approaching!
In that particular case, a watercolor tree design, I did the painting before the calligraphy, which is reverse of my usual method — normally I do the lettering first, and add any painting/artwork afterwards. But I was very nervous about this painting, and was afraid of sinking several hours into the calligraphy, only to ruin the piece went I went to paint, and have to start over again.
So the painting was done, and then I made an error in the calligraphy — right in the groom’s Hebrew name, in fact.
Normally this is not nearly as big a deal as it sounds — I almost always make at least one mistake in a big ketubah text. With Arches it’s a fairly simple (albeit slow and tedious) process to carefully scrape off the ink with a scalpel, then burnish the paper down and treat it with gum sandarac to prevent bleeding when you write on it again. I’d done this procedure dozens of times, and it always went off without a hitch.
Not with the Fabriano Uno, however. When I went to write on the “fixed” paper, I might as well have been writing on tissue paper, it bled so badly!
PANIC!!!!
I think I tried at least two more times, and each time it bled worse. Now I was in danger of scraping right through the paper, and I still hadn’t fixed the error!
And did I mention that the clients were picking the piece up the next day?
Um, yeah…
Ultimately, I was able to solve the problem by outlining both bride’s and groom’s names in gold ink, so they appeared to be floating on a gold field. It’s a common tradition to make the first instance of the bride’s and groom’s names extra decorative, so it wasn’t out of place for me to do this. I then added some gold dots as decoration on their English names, to balance out the piece.
Whew… Crisis averted! And the clients were happy.
But back to my own ketubah. After the washes were dry on the Fabriano, I tested some lettering, and guess what? It bled.
Argh!
So back to the drawing board. I pulled the Fabriano out of the Boga Board (there may have been some swearing involved…) and stretched a third sheet — this time my tried and true Arches again.
Here it is, stretched and ready to paint, with the text layout template on top:
Unfortunately, this sheet had the same splotchy problem as the full sheet I’d started with (you can see it looks a little mottled, even without any paint on it.)
But I decided to see what would happen anyway. Here it is with a wash of the same Ziller ink + a bit of walnut ink blend, angled slightly to allow the paint to pool at the bottom (and you can see by the dark pool in the upper left of this photo that I didn’t do a fabulous job of stretching…)
And another pic, from a different angle:
After much blotting with paper towels, and re-applying of washes using a natural sponge (see 15 second videos here and here), my fingernails and cuticles were blue! Even after using my favorite barrier cream, Gloves In A Bottle (highly recommended, both as a barrier cream, and as a kickass moisturizer)!
Thank goodness there were still a few days before the wedding, for the blue to wear off!
And now I had a background I was fairly happy with… even though I hadn’t planned on those %&@*# splotches!
However, given that the rest of the Arches paper was likely from the same, splotchy batch, I didn’t think it would buy me much to try yet again. So I decided to learn to love the splotches…
And when I did a quick lettering test on this third sheet, voilá, no bleeding!!!
Next it was time to tear out the sheet, 7 7/16″ x 17 5/8″. Here I’m assembling my tools:
About to tear lengthwise, paper face-down on my drafting table:
Hmph. It feels a little wide to me…
So I trimmed the printed template to give me a sense of how it would look 1/2″ narrower:
Better…
And yes, definitely better. I could have trimmed even more, but it’s virtually impossible to tear off less than 1/2″, so I’ll probably leave it be. (And I’m happy that the biggest and most annoying of the splotches was part of the torn-off area! Yes!)
More test lettering on a piece of scrap, to try out ink densities, and confirm that this is the lettering style I want to use (very different, btw, from my original plan):
And erasing pencil lines to get a clearer sense of texture, ink density, etc:
Here’s a pic with the lettering test swatch sitting on top of the “real” paper, on top of the canvas (the key and pen nib may or may not be incorporated into the final piece. We’ll see…):
That’s where I am so far. And now back to work! Watch for more pics in another update…
Merry Merry and Happy Happy!
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!
