Things I drew this week pt. 2
snails, or other ways of being
This week was a lot of dilly-dallying around in my sketchbook—no real ideas forming, no direction. I often don’t approach drawing with any sort of pre-formed idea, but the last few days it felt unfruitful and unfocused. Bone dry inside my brains. There was, however, lots of time spent contemplating whether to toss my hunk-of-junk computer out into the snow, wondering whether the sun might ever come out again in a meaningful way, and dismaying over the amount of water seeping through the stone walls in my basement. But—it’s deep winter, and I suspect many of us are feeling similarly disenchanted.
Just an hour or so ago, I saw several flocks of geese headed toward the river in town, back from their wintering. Lovely.
[here are some doodles and aimless pencil wanderings]
Something fun and low-commitment I did was this color visualization meditation. The color I ended up bringing to the forefront was lavender, so i’ll be trying to incorporate that into something/s in the coming days.
Here's the link if you want to try it. If you do, let me know what color you envisioned. and I wonder what the correlation is between state of mind and color?
I’m trying to give my creative self a bit more attention and nourishment lately. I might write a deeper post on this in a few months, when things have had time to sink in and take effect a bit more, but here’s a quick n dirty list of a few habits that have been immediately helpful.
— meditation. Increasingly longer sessions have begun leaving me feeling distinctly ‘blissed out’. I feel so new agey but also my mind feels like it’s on fire in a way that I can’t help but proselytize about. See also: David Lynch talking for any length of time about the source/boundlessness of his creative energy.
— staying off of my screens (I know, I know). Not entirely, but like, a lot of the time. Analog or bust.
— stream-of-consciousness drawing. This is the same concept as with writing; I just approach the page with a pen, some open curiosity and zero agenda. I’ve been often pleasantly surprised at what feels like pouring out onto the page.
Ok! That’s all my brain can output for now. I hope some warm sunshine kisses your shoulders <3