Day one of being creative elicited laughter, but not much in the way of actual art. I consider myself to be an autodidact of sorts -- in some areas anyway. Art? Not turning out to be one of those areas. Look! I have a special pencil and an eraser I can't stop smelling, and a book and a fancy sketch pad. (I look like I'm angry and/or annoyed in both of those pictures, but I was actually feeling quite chipper. Awkward self-portraits.)
And yet...
Nope.
And yet...
Nope, nope, nope.
I gave up on the damn clouds (as you can see) and colored a picture instead:
Color in the lines? Oh, I can so do that.
I'm not ready to throw in my drawing towel quite yet (in fact, I'm pretty mad at it and want to show it who's boss), but I am having a difficult time coming up with ideas for being creative outside of my "arts and crafts" box. I need another box. I do have a few things on my list that aren't necessarily hot glue gun or crayon-related, but I am open to other suggestions. Got any for me? Anything you'd like to see me attempt? I am here for your entertainment, people! Let me entertain you.
I spent quite a lot of time putting a fancy email button on my blog yesterday, please feel free to use it, if for no other reason than to make me feel better about the two-ish hours I spent trying to make two lines of HTML code work properly (thank you, brother-o-mine). Let that time not have been in vain.
... of course most of you reading this blog are my friends and family and already have my email address. Whatever. Use the button anyway.
At 10pm I snuggled into bed, socks on, book in hand. Two pages later, I remembered that this is "Do something creative every day month". Sigh. I got out of my warm, cozy bed and colored a picture.
January: Take a picture every day February: Make something and/or be creative every day (I'm taking an art class starting mid-Feb, which will fit in nicely with this task). I am not taking an art class. March: Meditate (2 minutes or 2 hours, as long as I do it) April: No shopping, at all (excluding food and toilet paper, of course) May: No eating out (I'll eat at someone's house, but not in a restaurant) June: Walk 100 miles July: No TV (this includes Netflix, Hulu, etc.) August: Daily dancing (dancing in my living room totally counts) September: Eat vegetarian (bacon, I miss you already) October: Try a new food (or a recipe if I run out of food ideas), daily November: Learn something new (a new word, a new cloud formation, how to solder properly, whatever) December: No SWEARING (fuuuuuuck)
"Make something and/or be creative every day." Sure, no problem. My family gene pool is obviously rife with creative talent if we use my brother's myriad music ventures
and my sister's artistic hand as examples.
"Where was my fault in loving you with my whole heart?"
Last night I sat down with my "Drawing for Dummies" book to officially kick off the month and get those artsy juices flowing. I turned to a random page and found this little guy:
I am easy to draw.
I was on the phone with my mother as I was absentmindedly sketching Babe the Blue Black Ox and I quickly dissolved into giggles, followed soon after by peals of laughter. Hysterical laughter, actually. Crying-can't-talk-going-to-pee-my-pants laughter. Behold! My talent!
Why am I so sad?
Methinks the creative gene skipped the first generation. Just so we're clear, it's supposed to look like this:
Fierce.
Not this:
Not fierce.
I giggle every time I look at it. I'm giggling right now. If this is any indication of how my month of "being creative" is going to go, I might try my hand at knitting instead. Now, lest I give up too quickly, I did not have the correct pencils, erasers or fancy art paper last night, which clearly affected my output. I stopped by the art store this evening and and stocked up on the necessary supplies: fancy pencil, fancy sketch book (40% off!), those big, blocky erasers that totally smell like childhood, crayons and a coloring book. I also bought a paint-by-numbers kit (oh yeah, that's happening).
Why do you smell so good?!
Based on last month's experience, I know I will not have an abundance of time during the week to spend attempting to draw oxen, so I will have to be creative in my creative ventures. (See what I did there?) Coloring in a coloring book will count, as will ... other-things-that-are-easy.
Here are some of my ideas (that I mostly pilfered from the Internet).
1. Draw, color, paint.
2. Make another robot.
3. Make an awesome paper airplane and/or oragami (I picked up a book about that too. I ♥ my library.)
4. Make a candle (my sis-in-law is good at that shit).
5. Put together a little bonsai zen garden in my mom's greenhouse.
6. Try new recipes, mostly cupcakes. "Making" toast will not count.
7. Flip through the craft books that I borrowed from Mindy for other ideas. (I could do that right now, but the book is all the way across the room and ... meh. Getting up seems hard.)
8. Work on the Antarctica map project I've been kicking around in my head for years now.
9. This list has to go to 10.
10. Writing exercises (yes, I have a book for that).
