Art Journaling Quotes

Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome.  –Samuel Johnson

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.              —Chuck Close.

Sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out what you can make with what you have left. –-Itzhak Perlman

Class shock

This is not about class warfare, or even the one percent or the 99 percent. This is about taking scrapbooking classes. To be honest, my experience at the class I took yesterday.

I have to say right up front, that I am not a cropper or scrapbooker. I loved the original idea of scrapbooking as a gateway to creativity, but left the arena when I began to notice an alarming number of items, supplies, equipment and tools that were one-thing specific. A tool to punch a hole. Another tool to punch a larger hole. A tool to cut a 12-inch sheet. A tool to cut a 10-inch sheet. I began to see the scrapbooking arena as being consumed by retailers who want to sell you more and more equipment because you believe that your next purchase will make you an artist. This is a hard idea to overcome.

The products and tools being turned out for scrapbookers are lovely and tempting, but so many of them don’t encourage creativity, they chase it out of the room and replace it with accuracy and project completion.

In that way, scrapbooking mimicks office life. You had to be fast and accurate, and if you followed directions, you got a project that looked just like the one on the cover of the kit. Good job!

It had nothing to do with creativity, it had nothing to do with meaning-making. It had a lot to do with peer pressure. Scrapbookers became brand loyal. If you had the blue one, you needed next year’s pink model. You bought the pink model although the blue one still works just fine? Good job! We love you! And like getting a nod from the boss, it is deeply satisfying. And has nothing to do with creativity. Or with meaning making.

Why do I say all this? Because I took a scrapbooking class.  I was the  only one who did not arrive wheeling a suitcase of equipment. The instructor came in, put five plastic boxes, one in front of each small group, and returned to the front of the room. I’m not pretending she represents all scrapbooking instructors. She did mention the brands she represents. And then, to my amazement, she recited the assembly instructions for all five kits, one after another. She moved smoothly from box to box, picking up the completed piece and describing how we were to peel this sticker and apply it to that transfer sheet and then transfer it again, noting sheet colors and decorations by brand name. I began to take notes and she told me not to. “Just follow what I say. As soon as you know what to do, start.”

Women (there were no men in class) jumped, snatched kits out of the plastic boxes and applied themselves with a fervor and concentration. Tools flashed. A woman next to me asked me where my tools were. I held up my journaling bundle. She shook her head. “You’ll never keep up with just that.” It seemed the goal was keeping up and completing. It was not a technique class by my definition, it was a multi-project class.

One of the coloring steps was interesting. I applied a color I like. The instructor was suddenly over me, tapping my transferred sticker and saying, “Pink. This is not supposed to be indigo, it’s supposed to be petal. Start over.”  I nodded, and waited for her to leave. I’m not a fan of pink. I continued on the indigo. The woman on my right looked at my work and shook her head. “That’s not right,” she said kindly, “You are doing it wrong. You’ll be here till midnight.”

I am not criticizing the women or the instructor. Many women left with completed project that looked just like the completed kits at the front of the class. I felt I’d spent two hours in a factory, failing at lining up the chocolates.

For me, this is not creative work, it is assembly work. It fosters perfectionism and obedience. It doesn’t allow for variation, play, or exploring.  For me, there was no meaning making.

Maybe a few people who are scrapbookers want more play, more exploring, less dependence on tools, more on intuition. Maybe they want a way to discover who they are, and what skills they have and how those skills can be important to them. If so, I’m interested in you. I’d like to know what your next step to creativity is. I’d like to know what you love about scrapbooking and what you don’t. I’m interested in meaning making and how we experience it.

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling, a book for people who want to make meaning but don’t know how to draw.

Happy New Year 2012!

New Year comes at an odd time of year. It’s mid-Winter,  the shortest night of the year is past, but the coldest months are ahead. Spring makes more sense, when determined shoots push out, and so does Fall, when the harvest is in. But no one called me to ask, and Romans messed around with the calendars until it worked to their satisfaction, and so Filofaxes were invented. (I’m skipping a few years between the two. I learned that from Timeline on Facebook.)

Thumbnail moon from space.desktopnexus.com

In the years you start celebrating New Year’s at home because it’s more comfortable to tipple champagne in your jammies, you look at each new year and begin to wonder. If you will still be here next New Year. If it’s time to start working on your bucket list. What kind of regrets you might have if you woke up to very bad news. (Add your own here, we can scare ourselves best. Just don’t leave them in the comments, thank you.)

The question I ask myself more often is, “Have I really done what I was supposed to do?” A lot of my life seems routine, but it was a responsible life–earned a steady income while I was a single mom, went grocery shopping, cooked healthy meals, kept the house clean, oversaw homework, polished shoes, didn’t date seriously till I knew what I wanted.

Now that those days are over, I ask myself, “What do I need to do to live a life with no regrets?” It’s another variation of the question, “What is the purpose of my life?” (I don’t waste time with the inconsequential stuff like “What’s for dinner?”)

I decided I didn’t have to have the answer to that, actually. I turned the question around (I have a 5,700 year heritage is answering questions with questions), and said, “What does life want of me?” It seems easier looked at from that perspective. Life does not ask one thing of us. There is a different answer every time we ask. Just as there is not one “right” answer to “what is your favorite color,” or “what is your favorite song?”, there is more than one right answer to “What does life ask of you?”

Hand-marbled paper © by Rosefirerising

To dig out the answer, I put it in the surrounding that Victor Frankl, the philosopher and therapist did: At this moment, I can give the answer as if I were living a second time, and had made a wrong choice before. What choice will I make this time? This choice is made as if I can return to the past and make the change that alters the future. All by changing my perspective now. What life asks of me is to be responsible for my own answer.

And what’s the purpose of that? Here is what Frankl says:

“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself . . . . you have to let [success] happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run. . . success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”

I have the freedom to pursue the work of my heart, because the work of my heart makes meaning, and when I am making meaning, I know what I’m doing. I know where I am going. I’m striding out into 2012 not to pursue greatness, but to make meaning. How does that translate into action?

I’m choosing to teach classes that won’t please everyone, that won’t gather a huge audience. I’m not going to teach classes that let you walk away with a product–a pretty journal, or a gift for your sister-in-law. I’m going to teach classes that will give you an ink-stained heart, and write yourself whole.

I’m teaching classes that put you in touch with your creativity, that allow you to make meaning. I want to do this. I don’t have time to waste. You’ll leave the class with a new vision of your own, with having discovered your own creative heartbeat.

I’m a little scared, because it’s not what’s out there now. But I started with Raw Art Journaling, and I have to support what I started–that making meaning is the force behind living an artful life.

–Quinn McDonald is available to teach classes in meaning making through journaling. She has two classes scheduled in January.  She’ll teach others if asked.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosefirerising, under an Creative Commons agreement.

Classes in California–Mark Your Calendar

Give yourself a gift of meaning-making for the holidays. Or give your best friend, sister, or someone you value a gift of a raw art class. I’ll be in California in January–on the 21st and 22nd. (Saturday and Sunday). If you are going to CHA (Craft and Hobby Association), you may want to break away and do something for yourself.

iHanna's confetti lines

Saturday, January 21.  9 a.m. to 1 p.m.:  One-Sentence Journaling
Location: STUDIO CRESCENDOh
207 N. Broadway St., Studio L
Santa Ana, CA 92701

What will you do in class?

My classes are a little different from other classes–you won’t walk out with a pretty gift for your sister. Instead, you’ll walk out with ideas that will fill your life with explorations of your world and meaning making in your journey.

If you’ve started a dozen journals, but have never finished any of them, if you have always loved the idea of keeping a journal, but haven’t ever kept one, or if you have kept a journal but don’t find it satisfying, this class will make your heart glow.

You’ll start with one word and grow it into a pile of words and a box to keep them in. You’ll chose a word and use it to start your journal with just one sentence. Two, if you are ambitious.

This class is about the power of words you use every day, and the words you want to use on your journey through life. You will laugh hard and write deeply, one sentence at a time. Raw art is part of the mix, and your pages will have color and design on them to help you stay connected with your writing.

At the end of the class, you will have completed at least five journal pages
and have enough ideas and techniques to last you for years to come.

Price: $88. Register at the bottom of this page on Jenny Doh’s website.

Bubbles, by Quinn McDonald

Sunday, January 22, Journaling for Perfectionists.
Location: Zinnia
1024 S. Mission St. South Pasadena, CA 91030  Phone: 626.441.2181

What Will You Do in Class?
Started a bunch of journals but never finished one? Don’t want to start a journal because you will “ruin” it? Join me–a journal-keeper and recovering perfectionist– to play in your journal. You’ll learn ways to start your journal, ways to save a “ruined” page, and intriguing ways to write in your journal regularly and be satisfied with your work. If you are new to art journaling, even better, because we will be adding color to the pages as well.
Be prepared to laugh a lot, too. At yourself, and at the odd and bouncy walls we build around our lives with perfectionism.

How long:
2.5 hours–11:30 to 2:00 on Sunday, January 22.
Price: $55  To register: Call Tamara at Zinnia– 626.441.2181 or email her at Tamara@Zinnia.biz

Come join me in a class–I’d love to meet you and help you find your story!

–Quinn McDonald teaches what she lives. She is the author of Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art.

Ideas: Set Free Into the Wild

“Set your ideas into the wild.” It was just a sentence fragment I read on a blog today, but now, hours later, it still resonates. What a wonderful image–taking your ideas and setting them free against an autumn sky, to soar away.

The memory of fireflies, Ink on paper. © Quinn McDonald

You lose control over them, but you never really were in control of your ideas. You just kept them, like fireflies in a jar,  until you had filled your eyes with wonder, and then you let them go, because they weren’t really yours to begin with.  But you never forgot the glow in the dark and the churn of comfort and power you got from opening that jar and having the fireflies crawl to the rim, lift their wings and blink up into the grassy-smelling dark of night.

Our ideas are ours to nourish, marvel over, and set free into the wild. You write a book, you teach a class and your ideas float across space and time, to be caught, transformed and set free again, in different shapes and textures. You may not even recognize it when it comes back, but as it passes you on the street, dressed in a suit and formal with design, you’ll smell a hint of summer grass and catch a slight wink of light, and the memory will still be there.

The experience of recognition, the experience of power and joy, that makes setting free your ideas all the more worthwhile.

–Quinn McDonald has a jar of ideas on her desk. She remembers it once held fireflies.

Eye on the Heart

Making samples of your art is always hard. You want to get every part right, you are working against a clock, and you don’t want to start over.  Usually you have a show coming, art retreat deadline coming, or a class deadline sneaking up in jackboots.

Here it is: the intersection of art and writing. Communicating from the heart is never easy to understand.

The past two days to get samples made. Of course the gremlin shows up. This time he showed up in a van with the whole family. It wasn’t the ‘aren’t-good- enough’ trap I fell into. It was something much worse. It was, “what if my concept for this class is simply too complicated? What if no one comes? Maybe I should do something else, something easier to understand” And there it was–the same thought that had driven me out of silverwork. The idea that I had to focus on what sells, what is easy for clients to understand and pay for.

I thought about it for a while. I know that a lot of people prefer product classes–you go in, hand over the money, and walk out with a cute project. If you are adept, you walk out with a project good enough to give as a gift. I don’t teach those classes anymore. Enough people teach those. I’m going for something else.

Almost every artist I know has videos, a You Tube channel, and online classes. I think that’s brilliant. I’ve watched a lot of You Tube–I’ve learned how to tie a tie when my husband had his arm in a cast, how to do Coptic stitching with both one and two needles, and how to do a reasonable watercolor wash.

But it’s not what I teach. I think we make art for a different reason–not to make gifts but to make meaning. That’s why I teach in person. To see a glimmer of hope and help the person stay with it. To see the shadow of fear and let the person know that’s OK, too. That’s why I teach classes that include deep writing.  Sometimes when I explain a class to store owner or art retreat leader, I get a blank stare. Each time that happens, I feel a pang of guilt, an urge to take it back and offer a simpler class.

But I’m not going to make that same mistake again.  I want to offer people access to their own creativity, to joy, to meaning-making.  There may be fewer people out there who want to explore meaning, but they are my audience.

I often thrill to artists who do esoteric art with great enthusiasm. With great love. The only reason that kind of art works is because it connects their hearts to their soul through their minds. It’s challenging. It’s thrilling. It’s frustrating. But in the end, it has more satisfaction than anything else. And if you are willing to share what you learned after going through that process, the class will be powerful, particularly if you walk out with your hands empty and your heart full.

Years ago, an artist friend of mine learned how to make fishing nets by hand. She sized down the pattern and used hair-fine silver wire to cover small rocks. It took infinite patience, and person after person said, “Who would buy that?” “How much will you charge?” Her answer was, “It doesn’t matter. I’m learning how to encase my hard heart in delicate beauty.” Years later, I saw her work in a gallery, and smiled. She had found her audience, appreciation and the value she had to make for herself first.

So I’m going to take a stand for my own art. The art of exploration, of writing, mark-making and meaning making. It’s too juicy and rich for me to walk away.

I’ll soon be announcing two classes that I’m teaching based on this concept of deep work and deep satisfaction. I welcome those who want to join me. And if the classes are small, it won’t make any difference to working from the heart.

–Quinn McDonald is an artist who works at the place where words and art elude each other. She is the author of Raw Art Journaling, Making Meaning, Making Art.

Making Room for You in Your Life

You’ve heard it before. You are in a class and the instructor says, “All you need in ten minutes to do X. Do it right when you get up and it will be done.” The instructor means this, because the instructor has a routine and the routine feels about 10 minutes long. In reality, nothing takes 10 minutes, least of all right after you get up. If you lined up all those10 minutes you want to dedicate to exercise, writing, spiritual practice, organizing or pet walking, you’d have to start at 5 a.m. and stay up till midnight. And never go to work.

So how are you ever going to get a daily practice of writing, art, music, dance, meditation, anything—in and stay alive?

I have an alternative suggestion. All of us have the same amount of time in a day—24 hours. They aren’t making any more. So getting up earlier or staying up later is not the issue. You are booked. Your day is full. If you want to a daily practice, you have to choose.

Give yourself permission to make meaning, let the housework slide, or let the kids make dinner so you can get your creative work done.

Choose one thing over another. For most artists, everything else comes first. We got into that habit with the day job. Work came first, then kids, housecleaning, pets and art came dragging along late at night. No wonder it didn’t earn a living. You treated your art as if it were an afterthought, not the creative force in your life. It seems fair to take care of everything else first, but when you put your creative work last, meaning-making takes a back seat to laundry.

Move art making as a daily practice to the top of the list. Fit in a day job, eating, and sleeping. Everything else drops down the list.

You not only don’t have to do all the housework yourself, sometimes it doesn’t get a priority at all. My house is hardly ever company ready. Cat hair swirls in the corners of the staircase. I don’t have dust bunnies, I have dust buffaloes. But I write, meditate and read every day. Because I changed priorities.

I used to do all my chores on time–vacuum, dust, clean bathrooms, empty dishwasher, do laundry. . .the list is impressive. At the end of the day, I was too tired to be creative. Then I gave myself permission to let the housekeeping slide. Not forever, but some cleaning doesn’t get done until it needs to. Ask others in the house to pitch in. Don’t do it for them when they don’t. Laundry that isn’t perfectly folded can still be worn. If the sink backsplash has water spots on it, the sink is still clean enough to use.

Use the  newly-found time to focus on your art, or reading or daydreaming, but don’t use it to check up on Facebook, watch TV or read blogs. Try daydreaming instead—it can be an important part of your creative practice.

Or, make yourself a permission slip? Don’t have time? OK, I’ll send you the one above–but only if you give me a compelling reason why you can’t make your own!  (I have three to give away)

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach. She never has enough time to do everything she would like, but she has learned to choose a mix of things that keep life interesting. Ironing isn’t one of them.

 

Lessons from the Lizards Tail

The black-and-white cat was paying rapt attention to something in front of the

Crouching house cat, hidden lizard

fireplace. He had that ears-cupped-and-tilted-forward look, and was holding absolutely still, eyes wide open. He does this only when there is something of great interest to him, and that is almost always something that is about to become part of his toy repertoire.

I got up, and looked at the spot on the tile. It looked like a stick. Suddenly, almost all of the stick shot across the room, leaving a wiggling piece behind. Nature works really well. The thing was a lizard, and it had dropped its tail, which wriggled appealingly, allowing my cat to focus on it, while the rest of the lizard scrambled to safety away from the cat.

Picking up the now-tailless lizard with a paper towel,  I stepped out the door and shook the paper towel out gently, close to the ground by the fig tree. The little lizard body tumbled out.”Must have picked it up too hard,” I thought, feeling guilty. I thought I’d killed it, after the cat had missed it. Just as guilt waved over me, the lizard pulled out of its frozen position, and shot, tailless, up the fig tree to safety.

Some lizards drop their tails to save their lives, leaving their prey interested in the wiggly, but not vital to life part. I’d never seen it work so well. The cat was perfectly happy to let the business part of the prey escape if he got to keep the  funny, wiggly part.

It seems like such a good idea to be able to drop a non-vital body part to save the important working parts. We don’t come equipped with convenient tails, but we do drag around burdensome “tales”–the stories we drag around as baggage. The sad story of how our parents didn’t give us what we needed. The mean roommate in college who was so thoughtless. The boss who wasn’t a mentor we’d hoped for, but gave us all the drudge jobs.

All those stories pile up and slow us down. They make us prey for anger, stress, decisions based on revenge and stored-up resentment. We can drop our “tales” of hurt and pity, leave them wiggling for someone else to become fascinated with. Because they aren’t helping us. No doubt, it’s hard to give up the story we live, the perspective we have on them, how we make choices based on past hurts and injustice. And those stories of injustice get us a lot of attention as our friends condemn those who hurt us. That’s what friends do. They think it’s helpful, although often attention simply encourages clinging to behavior.

Recasting our past is hard work and not appealing. The work of letting go of the past means admitting that our perspective isn’t working and deliberately looking for a new perspective, one that allows us to live a less-burdened, less blame-riddled life. It won’t be done in a single day, but the small steps and work is certainly worthwhile. My clients have experienced it, and not a single client regrets the work of re-invention.

We can’t change how our story began, but we can change how it continues and build for a happen ending.

Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach and author of the book Raw Art Journaling, which helps people choose the story they want to live. Yes, the book can be used for re-invention. It’s a multi-purpose book!

Raw Art Journaling: The Book

Tonia Davenport, my editor at North Light books, walked across the parking lot carrying a tote bag. She’d told me about the painted canvas cover she’d made for her computer, and we generally have show and tell when we get together.

Front cover taken on my kitchen counter because I didn't want to wait for good sunlight tomorrow morning.

But this was different. She handed me a sealed, padded envelope. “It’s your book. The first advance copy. I thought you should open the envelope.” And so, sitting in the outside garden of Pita Jungle on a cool May evening, I opened the envelope and slid out  the printed, color copy of my book.

When you’re a writer, you often look at a piece of writing you did a year ago and cringe. Wish you had done it differently. Wish you could re-do it. I didn’t feel that at all. Each page looked wonderful. It was the first time I’d seen the book in color. Held a bound copy. Enjoyed what I hoped it might be–a welcome for everyone who wants to keep an art journal but can’t draw. A set of projects that come from your heart, that will make your ideas come alive for you. A way to pique the interest of everyone who is tired of assembling perfect kits, of pre-designed scrapbook pages. Who longs to make meaning while they make art. Who wants. . . more. More meaning. More deep writing. More than just putting

Back cover--glare and all, just to be able to post it.

color and words on a page. A real exploration of the journey. I hope readers feel encouraged, cared about, nurtured. Grandiose ideas? Foolish? I hope so. It’s about time. I felt the same way when I held my son for the first time–filled with big dreams for him, filled with joy at the power of creation.  Now it’s time to take my word for 2011–Step Up–and step into the world with the book.

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art.

Recovering Perfectionist Starts Something New

Combining fabric and paper to create mixed-media postcards is my latest art project. I’m new to sewing, after one disastrous failure when I was about 10, and spectacular embarrassment in a class of 8 to 10-year-olds when I was 30. This time, I’m not sewing clothes, I’m experimenting.

Jeff Szymanski wrote The Perfectionist's Handbook.

Experimenting is hard for perfectionists. There’s a lot of risk. You could mess something up. (Serious when you are a diamond cutter, not so much when your materials are smallish pieces of paper and fabric.) There is also the possibility of looking foolish, as you feel pleased with amateur level work. Yet I know few people who went from beginner to master in a single step. That’s what makes us perfectionists such procrastinators–if we put it off long enough, we might make it perfect. So we put it off in hopes of perfection. Sadly, perfection is elusive.

I’m a recovering perfectionist, so I push myself. I post my experiments, even my mistakes, on my blog,  because it may be helpful to someone just starting out. Or ready to quit. What made me want to quit with almost anything is the enormous amount I had to learn right at the beginning. As a recovering perfectionist, I figured out that I work on the meaning

Monica Ramirez Basco, Ph.D. wrote Never Good Enough.

first. What makes it important to me. That’s generally content–the Why in “Why am I doing this?” Once I have that down, I work on details. The “How,” especially the “How am I going to make this work?” if I worry about details first, I’ll never capture the overall concept.

The past few days, I’ve been posting photos of postcards in progress. I’m pleased that I’ve figured out how to thread a machine and wind a bobbin and make the machine run forward and back. I’m not worried that the pieces aren’t perfect, or that the mistakes show. I was surprised when I began to get emails telling me I wasn’t a quilter (you’ll get no argument from me), or that I should take a sewing class (hmm, wonder why?) or that putting up my mistakes shows that I’m an amateur. (Yes, I am a rank amateur on the sewing machine.) What is it about starting a new project that brings out the outer critics to chorus up with the inner critic? I don’t answer the critics, no more than I get into an argument with my inner critic.

The crucial stage is starting. If I bog myself down in details early on, I’ll never see anything beyond the details. If I try out the big picture–does this concept work? I’ll make progress. I’ll learn techniques and problem-solving. I’ll figure out work-arounds and work throughs. But mostly I’ll keep working. If I let the critic slow me down fixing details, I’ll quit. I won’t learn.

So to all the people who are letting me know I’m making mistakes, don’t expect to hear back from me. I’m busy. But if you hang around here, you will see a postcard with a zipper, or lined in copper tape, and they’ll all have mistakes, too.

–Quinn McDonald is a recovering perfectionist and creativity coach. She writes about her experiences as a beginner. Because she begins every day with an eye to making meaning.