Whimsy

 untrue, imaginative

From Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, by Ingrid Fetell Lee. Ideas for what we like: circles (bubbles! cells! the earth!), things in the air (hot air balloons!), CoLoR, patterns (see below!), abundance (see below!), play. Whimsy is created more by curving lines than straight. 

The amazing power of color: 

Why BALLS? They're safe! no sharp edges to prick us! A new term (to me): Affordances. An affordance is a different way an object can be used. Designers limit the affordances so the design has a clear use. Everyday objects with fewer affordances help us know how to use them. Because play is undirected activity, the best toys can be used multiple ways. "Of all toys, balls have the broadest affordances. They contact the ground at only one point, thereby reducing friction and making them dynamic and unpredictable" (IFL). They can be hit, kicked, rolled, shot. Moreover," ' According to Stuart Brown, curvilinear movements send the message that we are operating in the land of the 'not real,' making it safe to engage."

Where are there circles? pom-poms, polka dots, wreaths. Also: Palais Bulles (Bubble Palace in France!)

pattern, color

Palais Bulles, France. Circles! bring life

COLOR: Whadda bout it? Edi Rama - restored Tirana, capital of Albania. Tirana had undergone a harsh dictatorship after the fall of Communism. It was a corrupt city racked by crime. Rama, the Mayor, covered a historic building with orange paint. What happened? Less litter, people started to pay their taxes, people claimed the streets felt safer. Seems surface level--but consider the change it wrought.

Where it began

How it continues...

The power of being looked at. Love. Being seen. The place is seen. The place you live is worthy of being looked at. it's worthy of being seen. Publicolor deployed a similar idea-engaging youth in painting community spaces. Color helps schools and public spaces feel safer.

Maybe something else to look into: Things Organized Neatly (Harmony creates joy). Another new term: Knolling - a design term for laying things out at right angles. Arranging items parallel or perpindicular and taking picture from above:

Another question: why is art more celebrated than finance? Why, if you told someone, would they want to stoke your dreams? why is it seen as more noble? (chosen for itself). 

Okay! won't use up any more pixels!

OK, PS: And is it any wonder? (after all this, upon opening my window)

- The Maker of All Abundance

small bits of paper

Okay, here are some illustrations. Farmhouse by Sophie Blackall. Planting the Trees of Kenya by Claire A. Nivola. Make Meatball Sings by Matthew Burgess, pictures by Kara Kramer. Interesting--the first two were written and illustrated by the same person. Like Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney. I wonder if I am drawn to stories that are illustrated by the same person who wrote them.

I am going to try to name some things about illustration in general that I notice in these images. They are colorful. They are detailed--they do not forsake the detail! To the edges, they are detailed. They must have taken more than 1 sitting to create. They involve patterns --in fabric. They have the capacity to show landscapes (show the long view).

What distinguishes an illustration from a painting? The people are flattened. Things are kind of like a caricature of what they really are. People are doing things--in interesting positions, in activity. In real life, maybe they are not doing all these things at once. But maybe they are? Illustration allows for stylization.

What else? in the book about Cortita Kent, it talks about her asking her students to make a small window into a piece of cardboard to make a FINDER. "She wanted her students to look at ordinary things until the little details came alive." I think this is what some good illustrations do.

It reminds me of Anne LaMott, in Bird by Bird: who also writes about Index cards. She can jot down inspiration wherever she is, she can capture the specifics she wants to remember. She's also into small bits of paper. She's into short assignments. She keeps on her desk (p. 16) a one-inch picture frame to remind her of short assignments. That's kind of the concept of Bird by Bird. step by step. You don't have to see it all. "All I am going to do right now, for example, is write that one paragraph that sets the story in my hometown, in the late fifties, when the trains were still running. I am going to paint a picture of it, in words, on my word processor." The chapter where she talks about the 1-inch picture frame is the same one where she references what becomes the book title. So, she must think it's important.

Brian Doyle is into small bits of paper. He also writes notes to remember something flashing before him or through him.

These illustrations - in their details, kind of honor that 1-inch picture frame. If you looked at any particular corner, you could still be charmed.

Sometimes (maybe for years) I've thought I'd like to be an illustrator. I think I still do. Something feels daunting about it. Because when I look at illustrators' work, I think, that must have taken such a long time. I'd have to do it all perfectly (if it's painting). I've felt daunted by painting humans. But maybe I can keep looking. Noticing what appeals to me. Have fun with the patterns, designs, fabrics (that's the part I've leaned into--the inanimate objects). I also am interested to notice the differences between illustration--and the possibilities for imagination (like in editorial illustration) versus painting/representation. I wonder how starting to illustrate may change my ability to paint/represent. I guess I don't really know without trying it. 

I also like to sit down and complete an art project in 1 morning! The type of illustration I like (and for a storybook!) requires coming back to. I am a patient person but am I that kind of a patient person? 

Is some of the difficulty having the drive/motivation/exact whim/exact flavor/headspace of returning to something. When I'm in it, it feel good. But leaving it alone and coming back to it another day makes it feel like a chore. Maybe it can feel less like a chore if I can look at it with 1 inch picture frames--take a certain feature of it and try to see that FEATURE anew. I might still need to start with faces because I feel less confident about that.

Okay! Thoughts. thanks.

 

okay more illustration

 Illustrations

-I get nervous about getting the face right. Ok to start with the face. But what I get tickled with is the posture, the details. These

-It might take more than 1 sitting (!) Maybe more than 2 (!!)

-I am used to, when drawing, doing the "hard part" then fading out into nothingness. But illustration doesn't "give up" around the edges. 

-I like scenes where a lot is going on. Where there are different people engaged in different things, all within the same scene.

-What are MY stylish things? Color?

-I get nervous about making mistakes--with watercolor, with drawing, around faces. How to overcome this fear? Realizing if it's multimedia I can cover something up. I can redo a face. I can do it very gently at first and gradually add detail.

Illustration noticings

 I have been trying to NOTICE Illustrations as a first step before COMPLETING illustrations.

Here's some thoughts...now as for incorporating them into ACTION!

1) playfulness

2) A to C! I learned this technique in improv. When you are given a prompt, think of what it reminds you of, then think of what that reminds you of.

3) There's some emotional component--maybe more so than other visual representations, illustrations should evoke a certain MOOD

4) Make things big/ weird / feel free to highlight details you want

5) People get tickled seeing the details of things. We get tickled!!

6) Maybe think about delighting the author by having listened closely, including some detail?

7) Change up the perspective - from above/below/beside

Specificity

 Specificity in art makes the art--worth doing, worth receiving. the reaction not in general but in real time played out in your soul. the painting not in general but of the fingernails, the steam, the food you know. what I am not giving you now is specificity. but you know the exact lift of the eyebrow, the tone of voice, the way a baby knows a parent's. The exactness of it, the ruffage, the what's left-behind, the imprecision. it's what makes art worth giving. would I give art to an abstract person? I could. How much more fun to give a piece to someone that they specifically know, can see, know the size and the shape and the shadows that are it, know the lilt of tongue, the specific ache of the knee, the pitter, pattering precision of it. that is shaped, as near I can shape it, toward them, which is still a mottled hunk of clay with lumps and fingernail grooves running into it, but isn't that the best we can give someone else, anyway?

Seamus Heaney interview, the world you were given is out of kilter with the world that you're in

 Back to Famous Seamus. (not an exact transcription, but close-ish)

"...especially if that space had been packed and packed and packed with Catholic doctrine and your whole being was, was actually just inseparable from the faith, a faith, then you secularize yourself, you know, because that's what you have to do, you're living in the world. You necessarily live the life of your generation. You live the life of the world you're in. The world that you were given is out of kilter with the world that you're in, so you secularize yourself. Well then you say, "Well damn it all, there's something else."

22 min -interview "An afternoon with Seamus Heaney"

HoCoPoLitSo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpdzarVGOfs&t=1024s

Kindness Towards Readers

 1. As Billy Collins said (??), keep the mystery mystery and the real real. This is something like what he said, anyhow. Basically, do not describe in great metaphor or imagery tying a shoelace. 

2. Begin in Kansas, end in Oz. Is also something Billy Collins says. That is, start in the mundane/ordinary and you can lead them to the magical/zany/wondrous.

3. Imagine someone is not committed to reading yet. You are their initial entry. Make it welcoming.

4. Imagine you are waking someone up by what you are writing. Don't turn the lights on all at once. Be gentle. Use simple sentences. Use words that make sense.

5. Tell them the truth. We all deserve it.

6. Don't waste their time. Don't tell them things they already know. Tell them things that are interesting.

and more.

5 Lessons in Writing??

 2025!

I first had an essay published in Notre Dame Magazine in 2020. So, maybe it's an opportunity to reflect, 5 years later on things I think I'd like to learn / am learning / have learned since being given the opportunity to write. What an opportunity! Why don't I try?

1) Sitting with things & having multiple projects at once. 

    I hear writers talk about the discipline of writing, showing up when you don't want to, putting your bottom in the seat, making a commitment to a time and place. Weekend mornings have been that for me. Place - usually bed, and I have a few hours on a weekend morning. What a gift. I Do like following the wisps & whims of inspiration so have found having multiple essays to work on, flit between, has been helpful.

2) One topic for one page. 

    I think I've come to this recently. It's a gift & blessing to be granted One Page! Like a poem! I like poems that exist on One Page. That's a poem. So, too, I think for an essay on 1 Page, 1 topic is likely sufficient. Enough. Not that it can't go somewhere. But probably circling back to the Big Idea. Or staying with the Big Idea and that's enough. People are just waking up. Don't make them too dizzy. Just like when they are just standing. Let them get their bearings.

3) Exact details are funny.

    People like funniness. But oftentimes I think funniness is the truth, when we're willing to look at it. Anne La Mott likes index cards (?) to record things. Brian Doyle likes writing things down immediately. There is a call for immediacy sometimes because otherwise the details slip out, and the details are life! The details! like in a photograph, we can zoom in and see the little things. And writing about it because there are also details of our emotional experience that become smoothed and blurred out later.

4) I have tended to write about things that happen to me 500x rather than 1x.

    Tupperware. Walking in my neighborhood. Thoughts about babies in church. I tend to write about things I can gather data about, and continue gathering data about. A once-in-a-lifetime experience is something worth writing about! And they all are, but experiences that repeat allow me to gather data (details) and develop an emotional response to them. They allow the collecting experience to be ongoing. Also, watching Brian Doyle as a writer, a "normal guy in a normal life,"--to be so prolific, how can you do it? Except to try to capture the everyday.

5) Writing as practice of co-creation.

    I have just written a prayer (start-of). I have considered my art practice a way to show glory to God. Writing? Sometimes I dive in. What about intentionally asking God to help guide it? God is the Creator of the Universe. God is the Word of Life. God creates the things we notice, the receptacles through which we notice. "Martyr" means witness. I consider my art-making as witness-bearing.

In the next 5 years, I pray God may guide, call attention to, help me to bear witness to truth & beauty.

Amen.