Category Archives: Art

Posting for Practice: My 365 Day Challenge

Posted in 1920s, Art, Creativity, Inspiration, Jazz Age by

I started the new year by setting a challenge for myself: complete and post one drawing each day on Instagram. Here are a few of my sketches:

adelle dancing-queen tyler

I really wanted to establish a practice which would require me to draw at least once a day, and so far I have been sticking to it – I just posted my drawing for Day #37!  By the end of the year, I hope to have some drawings that would be worthy of starting my online shop (my goal for 2018). I am focusing on practicing, experimenting, and putting it all out there. I always feel a little vulnerable just before I hit SHARE, but people have been really supportive so far.

This is what I have learned so far:

  • this is a great way to keep creative ideas flowing – the more I create, the more ideas seem to just come to me
  • having a back up file of content to share is really helpful on the days I cannot create art but I still want to post; whenever I have more time, I draw more than one sketch to keep in a file
  • this has been great for experimentation; I love so many styles of illustration right now, but ultimately, I want to develop my own style – the only way to figure it out is to try out lots of different styles to see what sticks

If there is a creative habit you have been wanting to establish, I highly recommend taking on a daily challenge of your own.  If you would like to follow me on Instagram, my handle is @adellecirca1920

I would love to hear what you all are working on in 2017. Please share in the comments if you have a chance.

Follow Your Curiosity

Posted in 1920s, Art, Creativity, Inspiration, Jazz Age, Self Knowledge by

I watched an inspiring video by Elizabeth Gilbert about following one’s curiosity to figure out pathways in life here . Up until now, Gilbert has always been an advocate of the philosophy to “follow your passion” because that has always worked for her. A letter from a frustrated reader caused her to change her perspective; the reader had been searching for a passion for years, and had reached the point of being depressed because she did not seem to have one. It caused Gilbert to take a step back and think about the pathways of various people in her life that did not know their passions, but discovered them over time. She has now revised her theory about passion to accommodate people who are like hummingbirds – people who flit from interest to interest, and then eventually they are able to look over the field of their lives to see what they caused to bloom. I am one of those hummingbirds. I went through life for years frustrated by the fact that I could not seem to find one passion that really rang true for me. Now the dots of my life are finally starting to come together to reveal what I am trying to do.

One concrete example of how I have followed my curiosity has to do with drawing. Over the summer, I went to visit the National Museum of American Illustration in Newport because I was curious to see how they would present the work of illustrators in a house museum National Museum of American Illustration .

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National Illustration Museum

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On Writing: Summer Writing Woes

Posted in Art, Creativity, Inspiration, Writing by
Photo courtesy of Central Home/Pinterest

Photo courtesy of Central Home/Pinterest

My writing habits got woefully off track this summer. I wrote….some, but the weather was just soooo nice, and we had suuuch a hard winter that I just had to get outside, and there was just soooo much to do, and I neeeeded a break.  Is my whining working yet?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Although I didn’t get as much writing done as I would have liked to this past summer, there is one ritual I maintained even during the most enticing days of summer – I woke up at least an hour and a half early to have time to myself before my day started. During that time, I would at least write my morning pages (for the uninitiated, morning pages are three pages of stream of consciousness freewriting proposed by Julia Cameron). The great thing about these pages is that they let me know what I am thinking about writing, reading, experiences, my responsibilities, and just life in general. The thoughts are not always fun or productive and sometimes they lead absolutely nowhere, but more often than not, they yield solid ideas for taking action. For example, I have written about needing to write more in my recent morning pages, and my exploration yielded the following actions to try:

1. Use morning pages to write about my current project to get my mental juices flowing

2. Work on one project during that time (I always have more than one writing project in play to keep me from getting bored)

3. Read something for inspiration everyday

4. Plan/schedule an artist date once per week (this is another suggestion of Julia Cameron’s – to do something fun once a week by yourself for at least two hours to inspire your inner artist; I’ve been doing this off and on for about three years, and it has changed my life)

5. Make time to just think (this is to remind myself to just be still and take time for daydreaming or pondering ideas I find intriguing)

6. Meditate before bed (while I used to enjoy doing this as part of my morning routine, it takes too much time away from my writing – I’ve decided to try flipping it to bedtime)

In case you are interested in learning more about Julia Cameron’s suggestions to do morning pages and artist dates, I have included her website http://juliacameronlive.com/ (there are two videos under the tab about the artist’s way video program).

These are the tips I have come up with so far to get my writing back on track.  What tips and tricks do you use to keep yourself writing on a regular basis?