Noticing Notes: Opening Out

// January 10th, 2012 // 2 Comments » // process, Uncategorized, writing ideas

Noticing Notes is a weekly event on this blog where I discuss my mindful writing practice of ‘noticing’ and encourage you to join in.

What’s noticing? Well, here’s the twitter version:

Comfy? Good. Start writing whatever you’re experiencing right now: sights/sounds/feelings/thoughts/etc. Stuck? Write ‘noticing …’ continue

And this post has a slightly longer version

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“I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen”

(Frederick Franck)

I’ve started incorporating small sketches into my noticing. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get around to it. One book that influences what I’m trying to do with noticing is Frederick Frank’s ‘The Zen Of Seeing’. It’s about developing a meditative drawing practice– noticing the world through drawing.

I sometimes through the book, find an idea that resonates, then see how I can transfer that to my writing practice.

I’m always drawing, but it’s been ages since I really applied Frederick Franks ideas to my art, consciously anyway.

At the end of last year I started thinking how I was going to pull together my art and my writing, they’ve both been chugging along as mostly separate pursuits. I started doing some writing about how my focus has changed over the last 12 months. It seems I’ve stumbled into the business of noticing things, about developing creative presence and when I looked at the blog through that filter going back to drawing as seeing, as noticing seemed like the no-brainer thing to do.

So now I’m shifting between noticing as writing practice and noticing as a drawing practice and they fit nicely together and complement each other.

There’s a list of things I want to play with here, especially finding ways to do this that don’t rely so much on drawing skills. One thing I’m trying is, through the act of drawing, to see one fresh thing about the object that I’m drawing.

In the picture up top the one thing I noticed while drawing the coke can was the way the shape of it narrows when it gets near the opening at the top. There was also a bit of written noticing, that focused on the taste of the drink, how unsatisfying it gets (to me) once I’m partway through and the initial novelty has worn off.

Since starting noticing as a regular practice I’ve enjoyed the way I’ll suddenly be somewhere and just start noticing things mentally, I like the way this practice has started to open out a little and influence life outside of my notebook. Combining the writing with the drawings will hopefully encourage that to happen a little bit more.

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How You Can Join In:

Everyone is encouraged to join in in whatever way you like.

You could hang out in the comments section and share your own experiences and ideas.

If you have a blog, you might like to do a little noticing experiment in a post, or write about your experience with noticing, and leave a link! I’d love to go and check it out and leave a comment.

Of course, you could check-in and read the posts and never comment, just hang out and play quietly with your own noticing practice. (I’ve always been a shy commenter, and that’s my preferred way of hanging out on a lot of blogs.)

Noticing notes are posted early each week–Mondays usually–and are there to capture any noticing, or ‘noticing noticings’ that might come up for you (or me!) throughout the week!

You could also post mini noticing sessions, or noticing excerpts on twitter or google+. (Use #noticingnotes hashtag)

Toes Over The Line

// November 27th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // Labyrinths, process, scribble to Image

Today’s labyrinth is a little off-centre, a little rough. And I’m really happy with that.

I have to remind myself that painting the labyrinth is not about getting the form completely right, it’s about the process of painting itself.

I never ask myself if I’ve walked the labyrinth correctly, never berate myself if my toes go over the line. When I walk the labyrinth I just walk it. When I paint the labyrinth, why not just paint it?

When I first started painting labyrinths I put a lot of work into getting them perfectly centred on the canvas, or paper. I wanted the lines to be as smoothly painted as possible, the paths a consistent width.

Part of the reason I like this one is that I let myself paint intuitively, there’s a lot of pink, blue, green, and yellow swirls and circles in the layers beneath the final image.

I even knocked my water all over the piece of card and had to mop it up. Arty, messy fun.

If the end result looks good, looks like a piece of ‘art’, that’s nice but it’s only part of the deal. I like that I’m starting to loosen up a bit. When I paint more loosely, each labyrinth seems to allow it’s own qualities to come through. It becomes less about me, and more about the labyrinth.

Which is quite a relief.

Back On The Labyrinth

// November 5th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // creativity, illustration, Labyrinths

Right!

I’m on it!

Back in the Art Every Day Month saddle after a bout of food poisoning ripped through our household. The only one who managed to escape it was Mr One year old. So, we dodged a bullet there because things got brutal.

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The night before we got sick I did a late candle-lit walk of the labyrinth while listening to some Hildegard Von Bingen chants on my ipod.

It was amazing, and beautiful.

I walked a candle into the centre of the labyrinth and left it there as I walked back out. Once I was at the entrance I stood for a while and watched the candle flickering away in the centre.

After a bit, I felt like doing the walk again, and walked all the way into the glowing labyrinth. When I arrived at the centre I bent down to pick up the candle and it went out as soon as I touched it.

I walked back out in the dark. How symbolic.

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Here’s another labyrinth. This one’s painted over a page from a book called ‘Little Saint’ which is a novel about a young French woman mystic.

I love painting over text and letting pieces peek through here and there, I try not to overthink it and just let my intuition pick what comes up. Makes for the occasional nice surprise.

I picked this book for playing with collage and erasure poetry (where you take a piece of text and create poems through blocking out what you don’t want). the book has lots of loaded language, plenty of mystical references, passages in French and historical stuff. Something juicy pops out on every page.

Looking forward to catching up on other people’s creations!

30 Labyrinths In 30 Days

// November 1st, 2010 // 10 Comments » // creativity, Labyrinths, process

We’ve rolled into November and I’m going to be participating in Leah’s “Art Every Day Month’ .

I’m really excited to join in, I’ve been participating in the Creative Every Day monthly themes for a while now, but this is my first time participating in AEDM

A few weeks ago, I was reading some of Havi’s writing about walking the Labyrinth at Taos, and it got me interested in labyrinths and I started investigating.

I’ve walked a labyrinth before and had read a little about them, but they never seemed more than mildly interesting to me.

For some reason, this time around, reading about them just triggered something, and well, to cut a long story short:

I have Labyrinth Fever.

I’ve been devouring books on labyrinths, drawing and painting them, I even put up a rope labyrinth in my back yard last week. I’ve decided to make walking the labyrinth a daily practice.

I do a walk first thing in the morning and one at night once the boys are asleep. They’re the easiest times for me to consistently be able to walk. Almost every time I walk the labyrinth I get some small insight, or image. And when nothing comes up, I just feel good walking it. The labyrinth is on the lawn outside our living room and I spend a lot of time standing at the windows tracing the path visually.

While I was working out how and where to build my labyrinth I began drawing and painting them. I was surprised at how meditative, and calming, painting a labyrinth was. It made me want to paint labyrinths exclusively.

All day, every day.

When I’m not walking them, that is. (They’re kind of hypnotic.)

I’m thinking about doing some Labyrinth Facilitator training next February. So, I want to use this month to really explore the labyrinth and see if my interest (obsession?) is still running hot after a month of being immersed in the labyrinth.

So, for Art Every Day month I’ll be creating 30 Labyrinths in 30 Days. Some drawings, small sketched paintings, some bigger paintings on canvas, labyrinth musings, maybe even try a labyrinth poem.

Faces and necks, edges and light.

// September 20th, 2010 // 7 Comments » // drawing

To see the human condition in the old woman, in the child, in the model on the stand, in that particular human being, and to let the hand trace it, this act of adoration is called, ‘drawing from life.’

(Frederick Franck)

In the last week or so I’ve started doing tune up sketches before I start painting.

I’ve been working away in an on-line drawing tutorial I joined recently–I’m focused on portrait drawings right now, and I’ve totally got the bug. It seems to be helping my painting process, too. I imagine it’s like tuning up or practicing scales in preparation for singing or playing a musical instrument.

I’m accumulating scraps of paper all around the house that I draw over and keep in piles. I don’t really care if they get thrown out or kept, I’m just excited by the act of drawing and the experience of seeing things more deeply.

The more I draw, the more flaws I see in my drawing. But I don’t feel bad, or frustrated at all about that, I just note it and move on to the next drawing.

I’ve hit a patch where my ‘art monsters’ have just fallen silent. I’ve never cared less about my shortcomings as an artist and I’ve never felt less blocked, either. And yes, I’m sure the two are related.

Perhaps those critical voices are just coming up with some new material and they’ll be back soon enough, but for now I’m just going to enjoy the peace and quiet.

I did some drawing from a podcast the other day where the instructor focused on the neck muscles for a while. For a whole week afterwards, whether I was watching TV, or out among real people, all I could see was neck muscles:  the way they supported the head, their tilt, the subtle shadows, the way light wrapped around their edges.

It was actually a little disconcerting to be so focused on people’s necks and I’m glad that’s calmed down a little. But I don’t think I’ll ever see necks the same way again, they seem more important and more beautiful to me now.

I remember when I was in high school and drawing cartoons with a friend of mine he showed me how, when someone wears a striped tie, the stripes in the knot wrap around one way, and the stripes below the knot change direction. I’ve never forgotten it, and still make a mental note of that detail whenever I see someone wearing a striped tie.

That’s one of the great things about drawing, the way it intensifies the world, makes everything seem more real, and alive. Ideals of beauty just fall away and there is only the line, that wavering edge–thickening in the shadows, thinning in the light–where a real human being meets the rest of the world.

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.

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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 …