Jack Kornfeld quote

From his book A Lamp in the Darkness

use it or it really IS wasted

Afraid to waste paint? Leave it in the tube to dry or leak or harden.

Or USE it with a brush and surface. Something good will come out, even if it's just in the joy of splashing.

Picasso quote

Dust is too mild a word. How about chaos, or pain, or stress or burden . . . those seem more accurate to what making art means to me.

But can you do it?

One small choice at a time is the key.

Miles Vorkosigan says

this line, which so applies to drawing.

You have to be willing to be bad at a skill so you can eventually be good at it . . .  in any area, being bad at a thing is the reason why many people don't discipline themselves to keep practicing . . .

In the journal, with birds.

write it down

Danny Gregory showed his sketchbooks in his Sketchbook Skool class (so good!). He had written in several great quotes. I particularly liked this one.

Timony quote from Widdershins

From the Charles de Lint book, Widdershins, one of my favorite books of all time, in almost 60 years of reading. (Read The Onion Girl first).

So many great characters, such plot complexity, action, wisdom and philosophical depth.

Timony said this.

W/c in the Aquabee sketchbook.

found on the internet

From The World According to Lupus, found via a friend's link on Facebook. She fell down walking on a flat floor and broke her foot.

cats believe this

If you've ever seen a cat jump and miss, or run into a door, then suddenly stop to lick intently, you know they're pretending they had no plan to do anything else.

Billy Collins, fabulous American poet and former US Poet Laureate.

Pen and a version of Zentangle, in the PaperBlanks journal.

Paul Madonna, artist

Paul Madonna is a San Francisco artist who draws what he calls comics--one-frame city images with no people or cars, and a line of words. They may be dialogue or philosophical or observational. His drawing skill is astounding.

I like his observation today: In hard times, beauty can seem frivolous--but take it away, and all you're left with is hard times.

the perfect creativity . . .

. . . is to play seriously and work playfully:

A master in the art of living 

draws no sharp distinction 

between his work and his play; 

his labor and his leisure; 

his mind and his body; 

his education and his recreation. 

He hardly knows which is which. 

He simply pursues his vision of excellence 

through whatever he is doing, and 

leaves others to determine 

whether he is working or playing. 

To himself, he always appears to be 

doing both.

 
— Lawrence Pearsall Jacks

colorful meditation

Playing in the journal. Playing with paint frees you from the mind, too.

Any focused concentration on an activity can work for that, not just traditional meditation methods.

Acrylics and poster paint pens.

Isaac Asimov said:

"What militates against creativity most of all is peer pressure. By definition, that is creative which seems new and novel to most people. People distrust the new and novel, and prefer the tried and true.

Therefore, the creative person is a pain in the neck. any person with tendencies toward creativity quickly finds out he is having trouble socially.

Since many people would rather be popular and one of the boys than anything else, they stifle those tendencies. And creative people *are* irritants and pains in the neck. How many of them do we want?"

I found this Asimov quote in some notes I made years ago. I see the truth in it, but I also know creative people who would rather make and create than please any group of commentators around them. And many creative people attract a social circle of admirers.

There are degrees of strangeness, of course, but I wonder if greater tolerance now and internet-audience acceptance makes more people than in Asimov's time dare to be new, novel and fearless of social condemnation.

Swedish proverb

My roots are half Swedish, but I seldom see a Swedish proverb. Just heard this one.

By the end of every day there's something surprising and unexpected, be it a birth, death, loss, new find, a crash, or a gift.

Acrylic on journal paper.