Scribble to Image: Heart-Door Guy

// July 27th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // process, scribble to Image

I’m an obsessive filler of notebooks. One of the great things about this is that I have a great store of quick scraps and sketches to draw on for inspiration whenever I need it.

I’m kind of a Moleskine nut too. I know they’re overpriced, but the main difference for me is that little pocket at the back–I fill mine with images from postcards, flyers, magazines, and use them as inspiration or starting points for filling the pages up.

It turns the moleskine from a mere jotting pad into a mini art reference library–add a good pen and I have an instant pocket-sized art studio.

Once I start a notebook I feel like I’ve embarked on a real project. I love the way seemingly random scribbles talk to each other across the pages, as different themes and images start to repeat and clarify.

The image on the left is a small character that appeared in a sketch I was doing back in 2005. The woman on the right is a preparing for a small circus act that was performing in Pioneer Square in Seattle.

Somehow I sketched the small cartoon clowny figure in response to her. It was just jotted in there, maybe took a minute or so. I know I spent about 10-15 minutes sketching the woman and the tent structure and speakers and wires that were going up around her.

But this small cartoon figure ended up being the more important thing to come out of this drawing. He appears again in that moleskine a number of times, the next time he appears without the hat. In later drawings the little door in his torso opens up and small symbols start to appear in there.

Eventually the heart disappears and the hinged door moves up to take its place.

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A while back I was participating in the Creative Every Day challenge and the theme was intuition.

I was mostly just playing with textured backgrounds. I’d got a few backgrounds done and began searching for images that might be suitable to play around with,  and came across the moleskine with the clown guy and his heart-door.

I played with that idea  a little on a torn off piece of sketch paper and this is what came out of that. The door opens to to reveal an eye which is the symbol that arose in response to the theme of ‘Intuition’.

While the clown hat is gone the beginnings are here of a new, almost clown-suit with the stripey sleeves. The unicycle, too, brings back that circus theme.

This was pretty quickly scribbled down too, (with a rainbow coloured pencil!) I think the version at the top original had eyes, but I whited them out because the expression was wrong.

Something about that white smeared over the eyes felt right and the second vesion below it incorporated that as a blindfold which fit perfectly with the eye symbol peering out from his ‘heart-door’.

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Here’s the image that finally appeared on the blog.

I used the rainbow pencil to sketch the figure onto the background (I love the randomness of it, the colours keep changing as you draw), and you can still see it here and there though it was mostly painted over.

It was great to see Heart-Door Guy (that’s what I call him in my head) a bit more fleshed out and finished. One of the reasons I like to use a cartoon style of drawing is that the characters I create are expressive and feel like real beings to me.

The way he kept repeating in my sketches makes me think Heart-Door Guy is alive in some way, and wanted to make his way out into the world. He’s appeared on the blog three times now (here, here, and over there!) and I’m still working on him. He continues to shift and grow, and is becoming more real all the time.

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I’d love to hear about your creative process. How do you store your images, ideas, melodies? Do you mine small throw-away bits and scribbles and use them to create more substantial pieces?

Do you love Moleskine notebooks, or do your eyes involuntarily roll whenever they’re mentioned? (I won’t be offended if you think they’re silly, I think it’s great that some people love Moleskines and some people hate them.)

Cloud doodle + poem = blog post

// July 19th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // doodle, muse, poetry

Muse Missives: Invitation

// July 6th, 2010 // 8 Comments » // creativity, curiosity, missive

Dear Muse,

You are cordially invited to attend our upcoming creative endeavour.

It will be a simple affair with moderate amounts of paint, paper, string, sweet drinks, balloons, and birdsong provided.

We have taken the liberty of placing a sturdy chair beside the apple tree. We can also organize a faux-Classical Greek fountain if needed. Seriously. We live very close to a Home Depot.

You may be aware that my artistic side is fickle, fizzled, and occasionally crabby. We’re sure you can find a graceful way to be with this slightly hoonish part of me. I will be there to mediate if necessary.

There will be geese wandering the grounds, you may wish to wear boots.

There is no need to bring wine (though feel free), a small bag of bread crusts will suffice.

Breathlessly awaiting your arrival,

Dave.

Singing The World Alive

// June 29th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // creativity, curiosity, singing

“… there never was a world for her

Except the one she sang, and singing made.”

Wallace Stevens

*****

At school we learned about the Australian Aboriginal concept of Song-lines, and the stories of Creator Beings who criss-crossed the continent singing the world alive.

I love the idea of the world being sung into life. Just holding the idea gives me a heightened awareness of the life pulsating all around me, even from supposedly inanimate objects.

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I was always self conscious about my own singing abilities. I told myself that I was unable to sing, the same way all people (in Western cultures, anyway) tell themselves they can’t do something.

Singing Memories:

Standing up as the old people sang hymns in church, and being struck dumb in a sea of fear.

The school choirmaster walking behind us, listening as we sang, and banging us on the head with his balled up fist if we were out of tune

Being in a band as a teenager and having to get fall-down drunk to be able to sing.

Hearing my wife sing for the first time. *Bliss*

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Singing the world into existence? Not my strong point. But I still love the idea, and think there must be an equivalent way that not-so-great singers contribute to bringing this world into existence.

When I think of singing, what comes to mind is:

The act of opening required in order to let the sound out.

Listening, adjusting the sound as it moves out into the world.

The content, what is being sung.

The effect on others as the sounds reach them, and shape their experience of the world, even if only for a moment.

If I think of singing in this way, then I can see how in some small way, my actions can become a kind of singing, too.

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So, in what ways do I sing world alive?

Through:

My drawings and paintings

My arms when I swing my boys around, and when I hold my wife

Words arranged into poems

Stories I make up for our older son

Cooking food for people I love

Reading, and what I choose to read.

Catching insects in cups and escorting them outside safely

Secret rock sculptures I leave in the garden, for people to see, or not.

The kind of work I spend my time doing

The kind of thoughts I spend my time thinking.

My serial failed attempts at maintaining Meditation/Yoga/Vegetarian practices, and my commitment to keep coming back to them.

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And when I do actually sing?

When I let my creaky voice come out it has its own wobbly charm. Babies smile, and it’s never really as bad as I make it out to be.

In what ways do you sing the world alive?

Sleepy Buddha

// June 18th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // creative parent, curiosity, illustration

I love to peek in at our boys when they’re asleep. Our 4 year old is having a difficult time at the moment, learning to socialise with his little brother and his friends from next door. It’s hard.

He’s navigating all this stuff and learning, but right now things are a little fraught.

So when Finn falls asleep, the day’s tension drains away from his face, and he looks so peaceful and relaxed. Like a little sleeping Buddha all twisted up in his sheets.

I love seeing him like that. It’s a reminder that even though things are a little tough for him right now, that’s all just surface movement and deep down he’s really  o.k.

*****

I was waiting for a bus the other day, and running a little late, worried that I might not get home on time.

I could feel the tension rising and there was a whole lot of mental chatter happening about the bus, about being late.

This expanded to commentary on the people crossing the road while dodging traffic (chatter), the McCain-Palin bumper sticker on a car going past (chatter-chatter), cigarette smoke hitting my face from someone else waiting for the bus (chatter-chatter-chatter).

Then I looked up at a tree across the road from the bus stop.

One branch bent slightly over the road and a handful of leaves rustled in the breeze, they looked for a moment like small green fingers beckoning me. The flash of bright green and the soft movement reached me, and brought me back to myself.

The chatter in my head calmed down. And I was just there for a moment standing quietly, at the bus stop, in my body, waiting for a bus to arrive and take me home.

Everything was soft, and alert at the same time. As if the small gesture from the tree had briefly awakened the sleepy Buddha in me, and he’d lifted his head off the pillow and looked around.

Then the bus pulled up and I got on. And I couldn’t find my ticket, and the exhaust was smelly, and my shoulders ached from carrying my laptop around, and …

The Rarest Angels

// May 27th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // creativity, illustration, poetry