Chris I should really get my shit together.
I’m thinking of changing/eliminating my complex “productivity” system with something simpler.
Such as “Write it down so I don’t forget it. Then do it as soon as I can.”
I don’t need more software. I need more ideas and the energy to act on them.
Establishing a creative practice is our most valuable and urgent task – as important to our well-being as fitness or nutrition.
Chase Jarvis
Having an issue changing ribbon on the typewriter today. Frustrating and how the heck did the writers of the past use this so frequently?
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
In the digital age, don’t forget to use your digits! Your hands are the original digital devices. Use them.
Lynda Berry
Step one really should be to change out the ribbon. I’ll be back when step one is completed.
What does it mean to be an explorer of art? To reach out and investigate out of curiosity. Right now I am curious about analog art, that which is done by hand and not digitally like I have been doing for the past twenty years.
As a child, I was naturally curious in just about everything. That curiosity has been set aside through education and a career. Always on a back burner simmering until recently it has been boiling over and ready to go.
So why explore now? To inspire myself, to see new things or to see things in a different perspective and to create something different.
Recent examples have included making zines of my photos using Affinity Publisher or Apple Pages. Or by pushing buttons in GarageBand to generate “music” on a loop for a photo collage soundtrack.These are creative ways to explore the art of making photo books or collages. But there is still so much left to be explored and conquered such as sketching, painting, paper collage and somehow creating a hybrid of these with my photos. That reminds me to send some images to a photo lab and make paper prints for use later.
YOU ARE AN EXPLORER.
YOUR MISSION IS TO DOCUMENT AND OBSERVE THE WORLD AROUND YOU AS
IF YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE.
TAKE NOTES.
CoLLECT THINGS YoU FIND ON YOUR TRAVELS.
DOCUMENT YoUR FINDINGS. NOTICE PATTERNS.
COPY. TRACE.
FOCUS ON ONE THING AT A TIME.
RECORD WHAT YOU ARE DRAWN To.HOw To BE AN EXPLORER OF THE WORLD
I. ALWAYS BE LOOKING. NOTICE THE GROUND BENEATH YOUR FEET.
2. CONSIDER EVERYTHING ALIVE & ANIMATED
3. EVERY THING•iS INTERESTING. LOOK CLOSER
4. ALTER YOUR COURSE OFTEN.
5. OBSERVE FOR LONG DURATIONS (AND SHORT ONES )
6. NoTICE THE STORIES GOING ON AROUND YOU.
7. NOTICE PATTERNS, MAKE CONNECTIONS.
8. DOCUMENT YOUR FINDINGS (FIELD NOTES) IN A VARIETY OF WAYS.
9. OBSERVE MOVEMENT.
10. CREATE A PERSONAL DIALOGUE WITH YOUR ENVIRONMENT. TALK TO IT.
11. TRACE THINGS BACK TO THEIR ORIGINS
12. USE ALL OF THE SENSES. IN YoUR INVESTIGATIONS.Keri Smith, How To Be An Explorer of the World
Explorers, scientists and artists analyze the world around them in surprisingly similar ways, by observing, collecting, documenting, analyzing, and comparing. I don’t know what will come from all of this new art kick but I will enjoy exploring and discovering the world in ways I haven’t done or even imagined until recently.
Time to log off this laptop and apply pencil to paper.
Finally getting around to creating that photo journal of my daughter. It has only taken fourteen years.
Side note: It is easier than I thought now that Apple Pages allows us to make photo books. I think I’ll send to the printer as well as a digital .pdf.
Just picked up a couple of art supplies to start creating in analog as opposed to digital all the time. I have this need for a tactile experience. I am lousy and impatient but somehow feel the need to experience this. Oh, and the smell of wood and graphite when I open that tin is amazing.
Just picked up a couple of art supplies to start creating in analog as opposed to digital all the time. I have this need for a tactile experience. I am lousy and impatient but somehow feel the need to experience this. Oh, and the smell of wood and graphite when I open that tin is amazing.
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly… Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them…throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you…trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly…on tiptoes and no luggage…completely unencumbered.”
– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
