Tag: Drawing

Introverting and Extroverting.

Posted on by evebarbeau in creativity, Digital, Drawing, Uncategorized
Peasant girl in Interior
Girl in Interior, 2019, digital

I feel as though I’ve talked about this before, but I took a quick browse through my previous post titles and didn’t come up with anything. So…

On the Big Five personality test, I show up as a strong introvert. I didn’t need a test to tell me that. I can spend massive amounts of time alone, and enjoy it, and I get very antsy in crowds.

But people are born to community. In times past it was a matter of survival—still is! We all need other people whether we’re introverted or extroverted.

In the past, I could get my extroverting done at my day job, and I guarded my alone time with a jealousy that may not have been entirely healthy.

Here’s the thing: When I spend a large amount of time with other people I lose myself. Yes, I know how weird that sounds, but truly, when I’m alone again, I can’t figure out who I am and where I left off. I can’t get back into the groove. I feel as though there are bits of me scattered all over the place, and I can’t gather enough of the pieces to make a coherent me.

I come to the studio, or to my writing desk, and I sit, and sit, and don’t know what I’m doing or how to begin. It’s similar to ‘page fright’—a fear of the blank canvas or a blank sheet of paper—but it’s not the same. In page fright, you’re afraid of messing up. I’m not afraid of messing up the page, I just don’t know what to do with the page, or canvas, or brush or pen.

In early March I went to Ottawa, Ontario to visit family. I had a wonderful time, but though I’ve been home for ten days now, and itching to get back to my work, it wasn’t until this weekend that I was finally able to put enough of the pieces of me together to do some creative work.

There are rhythms and reasons for everything. This is part of a creative rhythm for me and usually it’s best just to go with the flow.

 

And Just Like That It’s Autumn

Posted on by evebarbeau in Autumn, creativity, Goal setting., Light, Uncategorized
Crayola
Crayola, multi-medium construction

Yes, it was only a week ago that I moaned a little about the heat and the smoke and the lethargy of the dog days of summer. There were hints even then that things would change. The light was different, even on days when there was no smoke. The past few days have been overcast and cold. Yesterday didn’t warm up much over eleven degrees Celsius (about 52 Fahrenheit).

The end of summer always comes as a big shock to me. It’s not like I haven’t lived in this province for nearing seventy years, and yet, each time when the potato plants die, the ferns go yellow and the weather goes cold, it’s a big surprise to me. And it never fails that it’s cold and rainy when school starts.

For all that I love September. I get excited about buckling down and finishing projects that I’ve been working on in a lackadaisical manner during the summer. So today, right after my walk I got to work on the revision of The Chronos Project. And this afternoon I’m going to finish a drawing and start another.

But first I’m going to put on some socks!

So, This Happened

Posted on by evebarbeau in Age, creativity, Digital, Gardening, Self Care, Uncategorized

Why am I so Tired

My first real comic. I’ve wanted to learn to make comics and cartoons for a long time, but the amount of knowledge I don’t have is overwhelming.

Finding myself without a blog topic—AGAIN—I decided to give it a try, knowledge or not. In this case the story is one that happened to me about a week ago.

Heart Attack!

Honestly, I don’t often think I have a catastrophic health issue, but hey, age makes these things likelier. I’d been feeling so tired for a number of days. Along with the tiredness I had dizzyiness and a feeling of heaviness in my chest—a feeling as though I wasn’t getting enough air.

As you can see from the comic above, I aced all the heart attack tests. I was not having a heart attack. Thank goodness. The Medic decided that I was likely tired because I’d been working hard and that all those wonderful spring smells, like leaf mold, lilacs, lily-of-the-valley—blossoms of every kind, were giving my lungs a hard time. Hence, difficulty breathing and tiredness.

Yay! It’s all good.

So what do you think? Should I keep on with the cartooning? Did the story come through? Were the drawings interesting?

Creativity and a Memoir

Posted on by evebarbeau in creativity, Digital, Memoir, Mind, Working Hard
Cellist, digital drawing, 2018

 

 

On my recent visit to my granddaughter, she was persuaded to show me what she’d learned in her cello lessons. We talked about the cello while she was setting up. One of the threads on the bow was broken and we wondered what you did about something like that.

“What are they made of?” I asked.

“Horsetail hair,” was the reply.

“Hmm.”

Google told us, soon enough, what to do with the broken strand. Cut it off.

But this use of horsetail hair reminded me of another time in my life when these hairs had done something more than brush flies off a horse’s back end.

I was five, possible six when I first made use of a horsetail hair. On a regular weekday afternoon my two sisters and I, pestered our mother to let us sew doll clothes. We wanted to use a real needle and thread. We’d been allowed before under her supervision. This time Mom said no. She was tired. We had a little brother and he was keeping her up at night. She was going to take a nap, and we were to go outside and play. My mother wasn’t careless of her kids. These were different times and children were taught to grow up faster.

Grumbling and complaining–I’m sure I was the loudest–we went outside with our little scraps of fabric. We wondered around the farmyard in a desultory fashion for a while and ended up in an old broken down storage shed.

It was a grimy place full of rusted metal things, some hanging from the walls on nails, some in boxes stacked on makeshift shelves. There was one tiny window through whose dirty panes light strained to come in past the dirt and fly-blow. Blue-backed flies bumped against the glass trying to get out, wishing they’d never come in.

We found some boxes, arranged them in a row,  and sat.

And sat.

What to do?

My eyes roomed the walls. Nothing of interest. Nothing of–wait! Thread. Long thin threads.

For some reason, our dad had collected a clump of horsetail hairs and hung them on a peg in this shed.

“Hey, we could–”

I wasn’t sure what we could do–but thread! It seemed somehow that we had half the answer to our sewing needs. Where, in this place, could we find a needle?

I pulled one of the horsetail hairs from the peg and had a flash of understanding. The hair wasn’t limp like a thread, it was firm and springy. Maybe…

I came back to the boxes to sit with my sister. I folded the bit of cloth in half and threaded the tip of the horsetail hair through the layers of cloth.

I doubt we got far with our horsetail hair sewing. Little children lose interest fast and it was a dark and dirty place to hang out. I remember the hair going through the fabric, but it must have been a loose weave, for I tried, it again with the broken cello bow thread, and it was reluctant to go through the polyester fabric of my top.

You know those creativity tests where they ask you to think of a zillion things to do with a brick or a paper clip? I don’t do those. Tests make me nervous. But if they ever ask the question: what can you do with horse tail hair? I have at least one creative answer.

What about you? Do you remember a time when you came up with a truly creative idea?

Learning

Posted on by evebarbeau in creativity, Graphics Tool, Learning, Studio
by Aaron John Gregory

On our recent visit to California we attended the Pacific Grove Good Old Days. I’m not a fan of believing that the old days are somehow better then the ones we’re currently living, but it really didn’t matter because the Pacific Grove Good Old Days are basically a street fair, with arts displays, live music, midway rides for the young, and lot of things for sale including food.

It was a great deal of fun to weave through the various display and sellers booths. Among them we found a real gem–Cotton Crustacean. The booth was manned by Aaron John Gregory and sold T-shirt decorated with beautiful images of sea creatures. If you’re a prog-rock fan you may have heard of Aaron Gregory before. He’s a member of the band Giant Squid. I listen to some progressive rock, but hadn’t heard of Giant Squid before. Give them a listen. They might be just what you’ve been looking for.

Aaron is also an illustrator and designer, and draws the images for the T-shirts himself–hours and hours of night-time stippling. Stippling. I had, of course, heard of it, but it was something I’d never tried. In fact with my high and mighty fine arts degree I probably thought it was beneath me. Phah! I still have a lot to learn.

So, I tried it. Aaron uses pen and ink. His images lingered in my mind and while watching television with my husband I started out drawing a creature, cribbed from William O’Connor’s Dracopedia on my Samsung Tab A with S-pen tablet in Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro. As you can see, I didn’t get the idea of trying the stippling until I’d already added some colour. I let it stand, though it does nothing for the drawing overall. I think I need a whole lot more carefulness. Some of my dots ended up being little lines, but the process was enjoyable and I plan to do it again.

Digital Stippling

You Want to Keep Your Marbles?

Posted on by evebarbeau in Mind, Self Care, Uncategorized

ElenoraThis may not be the cheeriest topic you’ll find on a blog, but it is, I think, a timely one. You know we boomers have never been ones to step back and let others take over from us.

Hang in there you poor Millennials, we’ll step aside one day, but we’ve still got a lot to do.

Okay, so we’re going to make them wait a bit, but you don’t want them to have to take care of us when they finally get to be boss. It isn’t a fair thing to do, besides, you know, there are still things to do, and you can’t do them if you can’t think.

About 27% of us will get Alzheimer Disease

I know. Depressing! But wait, not one-hundred percent, only twenty-seven percent.

Only about the quarter of the elderly populations get Alzheimer Disease? But what about Auntie Mildred, and Great Uncle John and most of those poor ones in long term care?

The Majority of Dementias are not Caused by Alzheimer Disease.

That’s right! And unlike Alzheimers, you can take actions to keep from developing many of these other types dementia.  I recently picked up Dr. Antoine Hakim’s book called Save Your Mind. Dr. Hakim is a prominent Canadian Neurologist, and he firmly believes that we can stave off non-Alzheimer Dementia by doing seven things.

  • Control you blood pressure. Strokes, even those tiny TIAs hurt your brain/mind. Your brain needs a lot of energy to function, which means you need to get nutrients to it. Hardening of the arteries, doesn’t help you. So take care of vascular issues
  • Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Lay off the sugars, and don’t go overboard on the fats
  • Learn something new all the time. Read and write. That’s right, writers, you’re helping your brain. Make art. Heck, make anything.
  • Don’t smoke.
  • Exercise regularly – Walking is good.
  • Care about other people and have some good friends who care about you.
  • Find a way not to be sad for long. Depression hurts in more ways than one.

Not so bad, eh? You’re doing all these things already aren’t you?

If you’re not, consider it. It’s not to late to start and you don’t want to burden all those hard working young uns.

Above is a drawing I made of my little sister. Here she is as a young beauty.