Inspiration Junkie robayre.com

Here are the pages so far, for my page-a-day book. You can see them better here.

Wow, there are currently 3 treasuries that feature my Theo painting. I shared one the other day and here are two others. Click on the image to go to the treasuries while they last.

This one is a treasury promoting the Create A Day blog

And this is another bunny themed treasury.

I just discovered that I was featured in another Etsy treasury. This one is pretty clever. Check it out here until Tuesday at 1:19 am.

So far, regarding my resolution of changing my furniture around, I’ve only managed my bedroom. The funny thing is that it took me about a week to make the connection between how much time I was suddenly started spending in my room, other than sleeping (reading, working on artwork and even eating lunch), before I realized it was because I had changed the furniture around. This just goes to show further support of my theory that changing furniture around lifts the mood and creates more positive energies. AND discovering this evidence should also prompt me into action to finally change my living room and art area around.

I recently discovered a blog from a link to this amazing dress. The dress is so gorgeous that it led me to explore it’s designer’s blog and I have found it to be extremely interesting. Elsa is a wife and mother of two. Her husband is a producer and worked on the film The Kite Runner. Her son has been diagnosed with autism and she shares a great deal about this. Also, she is a creator and like me, she works in many different formats. On her site, she has shared hand drawn illustrations, to designed and sewn softies. But the thing that makes her blog so captivating is the way that she shares all of the parts of her life from her family, to artmaking process to her personal history, I love it all. Check it out.

My sister gave me this newspaper cutting a while ago and I wanted to share it here. I think it came from the Chicago Tribune. It talks about how there is this movement of people strategically placing things in bookstores, anything from realtors putting their business cards in books about home buying, to poets placing their self published books on the shelves. Who knew we were so trendy, putting our drawings on the shelves in the art section and drawing impromptu pictures of authors and then hiding them inside their autobiographies? This might interest you Rosa. Check out the article, it is interesting if not just to read the creative manners to which artists have worked and how some stores have reacted to them. I like the last artist, who does the reverse Andy Warhol.

So far so good on working on a piece each day. I have this little book, probably 5×5 inches that I picked up at the Paper Source warehouse sale a couple years ago. It had some hideous pictures of eyeballs on the front that I was able to tear off, but the rest of the book is lovely. It is hardcovered, bound in a dark red book cover and the pages are a good sturdy high quality paper. I actually picked up a couple of these books so I will be filling them throughout the year.

Also, today I read about a new blog called Create A Day, which challenges it’s members to create something everyday. Since, I’ve already resolved to doing this already I thought I might as well share in the community. I guess everyone is welcome, so if you read this and are interested, just visit the blog and leave a comment saying you would like to participate. I just think it will be another tool to further my productiveness.

Oh and I forgot, I wanted to show this youtube video that Erin’s brother Paul made. He makes these in a “take a step, take a picture” kind of way, and turns it into this really cool virtual sort of travel video.

Above is a piece of Mailart I created as a swap with Katie, a flickr friend. I really like how it came out. It was one of those pieces that I worked on forever. I started with the left side, drawing in with an illustration pen and then inking in with watercolor. Next I drew in a snail, hated that, then pasted in papers, ripped them out and repeated this over and over for the next several months. It would sit on a shelf or in between the pages of a sketchbook for periods of a time until I created this. After that, everything fell into place. The white parts over the stars, above the snail, is aluminum, so it is actually silvery.

For a while, I’ve been encouraging a friend of mine who is really great at photography to get involved in this 365 days project where you take a self portrait everyday. So, now it is the new year and it seems everywhere I go people are all jumping on the 365 days projects. It has me thinking about how I know that the more productive an artist is, the easier it is for them to work and develop. I usually equate productive and polific artists to success. You never hear about a great artist that only created one piece of work. Doing something creative everyday is part of my everyday life. But I am usually all over the board, in one day I will work on spinning, painting, and metalwork. The next day photography, collage and drawing. Finishing and completing a piece, is something that happens with less frequency.

I just read this interview with Artist Betsy Walton, whose artwork I’ve admired for a while. She mentions her rituals for artmaking and it reminded me how most artists have rituals. I think I read one time how Penelope Dunham said as soon as she put on her painting apron she’s ready to go. Last winter I started my own ritual where I light up some candles while I work, it just makes me feel cozy and safe. It was during the winter but after I noticed how it helped me, I continued doing it, even in the hot summer. I think it all comes down to feeling comfortable and making the environment conducive to production, as well as making an ease in transition from right brain to left brain thinking. I think it was a drawing professor that drew my attention to when you first sit down to work on something, there is a period where creation feels more like a struggle, and then all of a sudden you get into your groove and that is when you have switched gears in your brain. When you sit down more frequently, this struggle becomes less and less and that is where I need to get to.

All of this 365 day projects has me wanting to at least get into a pattern of, not only creating everyday (which is something that already happens) but to hone in on one form for 365 days. Not only would it help in the ways I mentioned above, but it would also be nice to have a year worth of work to look back on. What I would love to do is make one piece of mailart everyday, but I honestly don’t think that is possible. Instead I think I will work on making one piece in the vein of Keri Smith’s morning collages, no pressure, it’s just meant as an exercise to get me creating.