Not unusual for me as of late but it is probably unusual given the 20mg of Ambien coursing its way through my bloodstream. I can really feel its odd effects. Everything is kind of dreamy. I haven't actually had a full blown out "sleepwalking" incident that you hear about on the commercials. Usually what I do is specifically what they tell you to do when you can't sleep. If you're not asleep within 20 minutes, get up and do something relaxing and quiet for 10-15 minutes and return to bed. Yeah, don't do that if you take ambien but since I'm a chronic and life long insomniac I've been taking ambien for years and years and have built up quite a tolerance. So I can take 20mg (like tonight), not be asleep in 20 minutes, and following the old advice I would get up and do something.
The very first thing I did was some gardening. In the house my husband and I had upstate there was a huge brick fireplace that we liked to leave going all winter long at a roaring crack. The empty wood rack was outside behind our garage and was no longer level. I'd taken my ambien got into bed and couldn't sleep. Sat on the couch. I guess at some point I got up, cleared away the old mulch, leveled the stone tiles the rack sat on and replaced the old mulch with a layer of fresh mulch on top. I woke up with very dirty fingernails and no memory of doing this.
When we moved back down to Long Island, I was still taking the drug. One night I couldn't sleep and decided to sit in my studio. At one point I decided to break out my largest brushes... my most vibrant colors and paint a floral mural on the guest room wall. A large white lily (now masked by the headboard) and a huge sunflower. I also scribbled Baha'i symbols and bits of scripture around the wall and painted a Qiblih line on the ceiling. I had been reading some of the writings of Baha'u'llah's before bed.
Another time I thought it would be best to organize my craft items in the basement. (Scary part here!) Drove our cars into the driveway to get them out of the garage leaving the driver's side door open on my husband's car and (it's a manual) was in neutral. My SUV was in park and all doors were closed. I then used a wheeling cart to move a dresser into the basement from the garage and began rigorously organizing my craft supplies.
The most recent event was after we had gone to dinner at my parent's house. My mother, a retired hairdresser, was lamenting the state of my permanent wave. It had grown out and was not looking fresh. She insisted it "just needed a trim." So unable to fall asleep, I got up, went to the bathroom just to shave a little off. And ended up with something looking layered and shoulder length... but oddly even and bouncy.
So I probably shouldn't continue taking this medication right? Wrong I do still take it. The problem doesn't really occur when I'm in bed. The problem happens if I get up and start doing random crap.... like I'm doing now. I was reading Richard Schmid's Alla Prima: Everything I know about painting. He mentions a few artists I wasn't familiar with so I figured I'd get up and look at some pictures.
No harm in that. Yet.
Look at the pictures and go back to bed kelly. Stop typing. STOP. no I mean it. now.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
No rest for the neurotic
I swore to myself I would sit on the couch and rest my arms. I really did. Really.But the silhouette of the pitcher was bothering me yesterday evening... and last night.... and this morning.... and early this afternoon... and my neurosis finally won around 4PM. After fiddling with this edge for nearly two weeks with no success, I also gave in and broke out the tracing paper. I really do love the right side. The curve seems perfect to me. I figure trace it, flip the paper over and voila! Easy peasy! But it seems that left edge is still bothering me though not enough to gnaw at the inside of my head.
The best part? I'm finding that I'm actually overjoyed that it wasn't as simple as that. For the first time since my pre-veterinary days, I'm not feeling a sense of utter failure and worthlessness that I'm having trouble figuring it out. For the first time in nearly 3 years, I'm seeing challenges to overcome and not giant holes in myself as a person.
I remember when I got my first organic chemistry exam back. The C- was sobering. This was an aluminum bat to the head that this was not the community college I'd come from. This was not some sort of romantic or nostalgic return to being 20 years old. This was Ivy League. This was the dream of a lifetime. This was serious. Heart attack serious. I worked harder. I went to the chemistry resource room study times. I'd go to professor and TA office hours. The next exam? C. Better! So I worked harder. I signed up for the free private tutoring from chemistry majors. I spent more hours in the library. I started walking back to my car well after dark. The third exam. C+. Still better!
I kept this unrelenting storm up for 3 long years until I was walking back to my car in the cold Ithaca winter when the library closed at 1AM. Always feeling, even though my grades had leveled into the B range, my hard would pay off. Only towards the end, when the rejection letters came did those B's I was working at least 100 hours a week for start to devastate me. It had finally dawned on me. Everyone had lied to me my whole life. Years of hard work, dedication and sacrifice don't always pay off. And it wasn't going to pay off for me.
As usual, life had shown me that my cold glass half empty attitude was right. Because not only is the glass half empty, someone is going to come along, drink the rest of the water and steal the empty glass. I became afraid. I became afraid of everything. I saw death and felt its presence everywhere. I didn't want to invest myself in anything again. I didn't want to chance it - working for anything again. The smallest flaw, the tiniest imperfection shined a giant spotlight on the biggest failure of my life.
Is this a ray of hope? Am I finally moving on? Could it be that my soul is finally starting to heal?
Frustrated with zero spoons
I did so much this week (although nothing compared to what a normal person would be consider a lot). The result? Thursday has arrived and I now have no spoons..
5 months this has been going on and there seems to be absolutely no rhyme or reason or consistency to what is going on. There seems to be absolutely no predicting or properly managing the exhaustion and pain. It's like I'm running a race with a blindfolded and every single day how far away the finish line is moves. Sometimes it's a foot in front of me. Sometimes it's a few miles away. And it's not like it behaves like a slide rule either. It's fluid. It's jagged and jumps around. It is frustrating because it makes it nearly impossible to plan anything in advance. Even something as simple as a dinner with a friend.
A childhood friend of mine just moved from Oklahoma to Massachusetts. My husband is going to a RC helicopter event near where she's moved to and thinks it would be a great idea if i went to visit her. Normally? It would be. These days? I have absolutely no idea how I'll feel. She's a mother of 3 with a busy job and a busy life. I remember when she lived very close to me, she had two children then and visiting her was exhausting. The kids and household life don't stop because your friend is coming over and most of the time I spent with her was tagging along during her day. Something like that would be impossible for me now.
Granted, now that I have more medications, I no longer worry about simple things like showering or using the bathroom stopping me in my tracks. But I still have absolutely no idea what, day to day, I will be able to handle beyond the basics. I don't know when I'm going to run out of spoons, all I know is that suddenly, I don't have any. And then I also have to worry about the basics like making it to the bathroom once I hit that wall. Which leaves me in a state of fear about leaving the house for fear of being stranded.
Although hitting that wall quickly is probably my own fault. When I feel well, I tend to try to move quickly and get done what I need to get done as fast as possible. If the pain, the exhaustion are indeed creeping up on me, I'm probably not noticing because I'm so engrossed in getting what I'm doing completed before I'm unable to. It's frustrating to feel fine like I did this morning, go to bake some cinnamon rolls and then the minute I set the dough aside to rise? BOOM. Pain started blossoming in my arms and legs. Exhaustion shot through my neck and shoulders and brain like a cannon. You ask yourself... what do I do now? Do I push through knowing you'll end up having to down enough vicoden to make a whale's liver curdle and end up laying on the couch for possibly days? Or do you leave your best mixing bowl outside on the deck with a bunch of yeast dough in it where it will accumulate insects until your husband gets home from work to bring it in and throw it away because it's ruined? Do you leave the flour and dough bits all over the kitchen counter and floor to attract ants?
More often than not, I end up cleaning the mess and finishing what I'm doing and popping pills.
5 months this has been going on and there seems to be absolutely no rhyme or reason or consistency to what is going on. There seems to be absolutely no predicting or properly managing the exhaustion and pain. It's like I'm running a race with a blindfolded and every single day how far away the finish line is moves. Sometimes it's a foot in front of me. Sometimes it's a few miles away. And it's not like it behaves like a slide rule either. It's fluid. It's jagged and jumps around. It is frustrating because it makes it nearly impossible to plan anything in advance. Even something as simple as a dinner with a friend.
A childhood friend of mine just moved from Oklahoma to Massachusetts. My husband is going to a RC helicopter event near where she's moved to and thinks it would be a great idea if i went to visit her. Normally? It would be. These days? I have absolutely no idea how I'll feel. She's a mother of 3 with a busy job and a busy life. I remember when she lived very close to me, she had two children then and visiting her was exhausting. The kids and household life don't stop because your friend is coming over and most of the time I spent with her was tagging along during her day. Something like that would be impossible for me now.
Granted, now that I have more medications, I no longer worry about simple things like showering or using the bathroom stopping me in my tracks. But I still have absolutely no idea what, day to day, I will be able to handle beyond the basics. I don't know when I'm going to run out of spoons, all I know is that suddenly, I don't have any. And then I also have to worry about the basics like making it to the bathroom once I hit that wall. Which leaves me in a state of fear about leaving the house for fear of being stranded.
Although hitting that wall quickly is probably my own fault. When I feel well, I tend to try to move quickly and get done what I need to get done as fast as possible. If the pain, the exhaustion are indeed creeping up on me, I'm probably not noticing because I'm so engrossed in getting what I'm doing completed before I'm unable to. It's frustrating to feel fine like I did this morning, go to bake some cinnamon rolls and then the minute I set the dough aside to rise? BOOM. Pain started blossoming in my arms and legs. Exhaustion shot through my neck and shoulders and brain like a cannon. You ask yourself... what do I do now? Do I push through knowing you'll end up having to down enough vicoden to make a whale's liver curdle and end up laying on the couch for possibly days? Or do you leave your best mixing bowl outside on the deck with a bunch of yeast dough in it where it will accumulate insects until your husband gets home from work to bring it in and throw it away because it's ruined? Do you leave the flour and dough bits all over the kitchen counter and floor to attract ants?
More often than not, I end up cleaning the mess and finishing what I'm doing and popping pills.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Pitcher and Cherries
Oil painting isn't one of those things that's taught to kids in school. Even back when art programs weren't in danger and you always took art in school, they didn't teach you oil painting. My school had a pretty damned great art program (consequence of growing up in a rich neighborhood with insanely high property taxes I suppose) and oil painting wasn't taught. It's messy. It takes a long time to dry. The clean-up can be horrible. It just isn't conducive to a grade school environment.
I often envy people who went to college for fine arts. And I don't think that majoring in fine art is a fluff sort of major in the slightest. Those classically trained painters always seem to have some sort of quality I really want to gain. Yes, I went to the Roslyn School of Painting for a number of years as a teenager. My parents have roughly a dozen or so paintings in their house to show for it. I wouldn't really have called it a school of painting. The classes are not instructional, they consisted of me picking a picture out of a magazine and painting it. Fine for getting started and fine for a young tween but not really when you want to take things more seriously. So for the first time, I decided to take a beginning painting course at The Art League of Long Island.
It is a five week course. The first two are with still life and the last three with figure. The teacher, Irene Vitali, is excellent. I feel like I'm really learning how to build up an oil painting from the initial washes to the final highlights. She's very good at seeing exactly what your particular painting weakness is and quickly zeroed in on the fact that mine is painting exactly what is in front of me regardless of whether or not it's good for the painting. She constantly walks around the room, praising and correcting and offering explanations for her corrections.
It was a shame that we only go two weeks with this particular still life. I really would loved to have maybe painted it from another angle (should have taken a picture, just thought of that). I think that her removing the still life and setting it back up actually was a very good thing. The cherries ended up being somewhere else and in a different configuration. Everything was just a little bit off.
After taking a number of pictures with my phone, I printed them out and have been using them as a reference. I think that it is going exceptionally well. I am working very hard to not overwork or overpaint. I really want to leave a very painterly quality. And you also can't really see it in this picture but the upper left hand corner of the background is still thin and you can see bits of toning of the canvas underneath. Trying to smooth out brush strokes and trying to blanket the whole canvas... trying to make it look too photographic are things that I really need to work on. Don't get me wrong I find that level of realism impressive, but if I want my painting to look like a photograph, why not just take a photograph? There are extremes, and I have seen some examples of both on blogs and websites. I've seen paintings so real they truly did look like photographs (Oriana Kacicek's Sunny Side Up). And I've seen paintings where I could probably count the brush strokes on both hands (Carol Marine's Cheery Cherries). These are two opposite ends of the spectrum and I'm not saying either one is wrong. I'm just really want to find my own style and my own way.
Now if I could just figure out how to figure that out.....
I often envy people who went to college for fine arts. And I don't think that majoring in fine art is a fluff sort of major in the slightest. Those classically trained painters always seem to have some sort of quality I really want to gain. Yes, I went to the Roslyn School of Painting for a number of years as a teenager. My parents have roughly a dozen or so paintings in their house to show for it. I wouldn't really have called it a school of painting. The classes are not instructional, they consisted of me picking a picture out of a magazine and painting it. Fine for getting started and fine for a young tween but not really when you want to take things more seriously. So for the first time, I decided to take a beginning painting course at The Art League of Long Island.
It is a five week course. The first two are with still life and the last three with figure. The teacher, Irene Vitali, is excellent. I feel like I'm really learning how to build up an oil painting from the initial washes to the final highlights. She's very good at seeing exactly what your particular painting weakness is and quickly zeroed in on the fact that mine is painting exactly what is in front of me regardless of whether or not it's good for the painting. She constantly walks around the room, praising and correcting and offering explanations for her corrections. 
It was a shame that we only go two weeks with this particular still life. I really would loved to have maybe painted it from another angle (should have taken a picture, just thought of that). I think that her removing the still life and setting it back up actually was a very good thing. The cherries ended up being somewhere else and in a different configuration. Everything was just a little bit off.
After taking a number of pictures with my phone, I printed them out and have been using them as a reference. I think that it is going exceptionally well. I am working very hard to not overwork or overpaint. I really want to leave a very painterly quality. And you also can't really see it in this picture but the upper left hand corner of the background is still thin and you can see bits of toning of the canvas underneath. Trying to smooth out brush strokes and trying to blanket the whole canvas... trying to make it look too photographic are things that I really need to work on. Don't get me wrong I find that level of realism impressive, but if I want my painting to look like a photograph, why not just take a photograph? There are extremes, and I have seen some examples of both on blogs and websites. I've seen paintings so real they truly did look like photographs (Oriana Kacicek's Sunny Side Up). And I've seen paintings where I could probably count the brush strokes on both hands (Carol Marine's Cheery Cherries). These are two opposite ends of the spectrum and I'm not saying either one is wrong. I'm just really want to find my own style and my own way.
Now if I could just figure out how to figure that out.....
Manhattan Henge
The fascinating phenomenon of Manhattanhenge is something that I'd really like to see myself one of these days. It truly is amazing how many wonderful and flat out cool things exist out there that are just waiting to be discovered... by being bored and watching a random episode of CSI:NY.
I don't know about anyone else but I find this whole concept really interesting. I have never been a fan of cityscapes (painted or otherwise) but something about the juxtaposition of the darkened buildings and the pure light of a sunrise that struck me.
The first section was merely laying out shapes and making sure the perspective was correct. I know that most painters tend to snub their noses at the use of black but really sometimes there is just no way around it, in my opinion. It wasn't that straight raw umber wasn't dark enough, it was more that it wasn't devoid enough, if that makes any sense. I originally had it as straight out of the tube and it just felt like a giant mud puddle. Once I added just a little black it all started to look much better.
But I think the biggest challenge of this painting is going to be letting go of my perfectionism. The temptation to break out the ruler is going to be overwhelming. I think that the darks of the buildings are going to be difficult for me as well. In the past I always painted from pictures or from life and tried very hard to replicate exactly what I saw. In cases like that, it was easy to ignore the old technical lessons like how cool colors recede back or how the eye is drawn to harsh lines. Here I really want to try to take a concept and create my own image using pictures only as basic guidelines so it's going to be interesting to see if I can remember all that and see how it will all work out.
The one thing this painting is not turning out to be is the quick and easy project I thought it would be. It seemed so minimal and so simplistic but the more I painted the more I found out that the simplicity is just an illusion. Yeah it looks like a simple value and color grade to the sky some blobby dark grey and brown and black buildings on the sides. But when you paint it like that? It looks flat and boring and, for lack of a better word, wrong. I had to add in small scumbling of purples and pinks (which you can't really see in the photograph) and very light pinks and oranges and yellows (again which you can't really see photograph). I am expecting the buildings to be equally as challenging.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Daily painting
Recently I decided to make a foray back into oil painting. I remember as a teenager it brought me great joy (actually the parental praise brought me the most joy out of it). And if I can drop the modesty for a few minutes, I seemed to be fairly good at it without being taught. It made me feel good to know that I may have some sort of inner kind of talent for something and since my hopes and dreams of veterinary school have disintegrated I really wanted to reclaim something. Plus unlike many of my other hobbies (quilting, knitting and spinning), painting is the most stationary in terms of body movement and the easiest on whatever the hell this illness is that I seem to have now.
So I do what I usually do whenever I pick up something new or restart something. I dived in head first, pedal to the floor. I did a lot of web searches. I read a lot of artist blogs and webpages. Daily Paintworks being one of my absolute favorites for inspiration. The variety of styles is truly incredible. I could spend hours clicking around. Plus the weekly challenges are really something I would love to start doing.
But if there is one thing that reading all these blogs and websites has gotten through to me is that in order to paint better, you have to paint. So, beginning now (and oddly enough with the start of a month) I will make an effort to paint every single solitary day. Whether it's working on a larger painting or just a small little "study" or "sketch" like painting. I will post pictures along with self critique involving what I do and do not like about the painting along with what I feel I learned. And, most importantly, I will list at least 3 positive aspects of the painting and no more than 5 negatives.
August 1, 2011
PRO
1) I love the stem. It actually seems "attached" to the pear.
2) There's a good range of values in the pear. The darks seem dark enough to me and the lights are light enough.
3) I didn't overpaint the pear. I left a nice "painterly" quality to it instead of trying to make it look like a photograph.
4) The lighting is done well. There's good direction to it.
CON
1) The background color is far too bold. I fell in love with the color of the fabric that I think I'm letting it overpower the pear itself.
2) I placed the pear far too high. I loved the shadow it was casting so much it's almost the focus of the painting. If I actually wanted to frame this it would really not work. As it is I want to slice off a good inch from the left side and bottom.
LESSON
I learned a great deal about bristle pressure in this painting. A lot of the time I found myself actually removing paint from the pear because I was pressing too hard. I'm learning to not choke up so much on brush and instead hold the brush more towards the back. I also found that in the beginning when I'm just fleshing out shapes and values that I need to use far far far less paint to do it. I need to start making a pledge to myself to also stop painting after I sign the damned thing. I put my initials on the bottom corner and then I started futzing with the background and the little speckles. I'm also still working on the signature. I know that seems like a silly thing to want to work on but I really want to find something I like. I want it to always be the same thing... the same color... the same style. Right now I'm really liking the simplicity of the initials and the straight from the tube red.
So I do what I usually do whenever I pick up something new or restart something. I dived in head first, pedal to the floor. I did a lot of web searches. I read a lot of artist blogs and webpages. Daily Paintworks being one of my absolute favorites for inspiration. The variety of styles is truly incredible. I could spend hours clicking around. Plus the weekly challenges are really something I would love to start doing.
But if there is one thing that reading all these blogs and websites has gotten through to me is that in order to paint better, you have to paint. So, beginning now (and oddly enough with the start of a month) I will make an effort to paint every single solitary day. Whether it's working on a larger painting or just a small little "study" or "sketch" like painting. I will post pictures along with self critique involving what I do and do not like about the painting along with what I feel I learned. And, most importantly, I will list at least 3 positive aspects of the painting and no more than 5 negatives.
August 1, 2011
PRO
1) I love the stem. It actually seems "attached" to the pear.
2) There's a good range of values in the pear. The darks seem dark enough to me and the lights are light enough.
3) I didn't overpaint the pear. I left a nice "painterly" quality to it instead of trying to make it look like a photograph.
4) The lighting is done well. There's good direction to it.
CON
1) The background color is far too bold. I fell in love with the color of the fabric that I think I'm letting it overpower the pear itself.
2) I placed the pear far too high. I loved the shadow it was casting so much it's almost the focus of the painting. If I actually wanted to frame this it would really not work. As it is I want to slice off a good inch from the left side and bottom.
LESSON
I learned a great deal about bristle pressure in this painting. A lot of the time I found myself actually removing paint from the pear because I was pressing too hard. I'm learning to not choke up so much on brush and instead hold the brush more towards the back. I also found that in the beginning when I'm just fleshing out shapes and values that I need to use far far far less paint to do it. I need to start making a pledge to myself to also stop painting after I sign the damned thing. I put my initials on the bottom corner and then I started futzing with the background and the little speckles. I'm also still working on the signature. I know that seems like a silly thing to want to work on but I really want to find something I like. I want it to always be the same thing... the same color... the same style. Right now I'm really liking the simplicity of the initials and the straight from the tube red.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Healthy destruction
Illness is a strange thing. You're always healthy... until one day you're not.
Plagued by mysterious shooting and stabbing pains through the muscles in my arms and legs, I went to a bunch of doctors who never figured anything out.
With utter humiliation, I stopped working in June.
I felt completely betrayed by my body and the universe that had stolen not only my hopes and dreams from me but now my health. Of course, I couldn't stay angry. I couldn't wallow in self pity. Don't get me wrong, I did plenty of both (and sometimes still do) but I couldn't keep going like that. When people say misery loves company, yes the straightforward answer is that miserable people like to make others around them miserable too but when it's just one person? I think that misery can multiply inside yourself.
So I started reading things online and in books and listening to guided imagery audio files.
http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/
And I actually started to settle into things.
Don't get me wrong... I don't want to sound like I'm fully at peace and that I've completely accepted the fact that I can't even go to the mailbox or take a shower more than two days in a row without blinding hot pain racing through my limbs... But at least now it's getting better.
Instead of being angry and miserable all the time, I'm only angry and miserable some of the time. And, hey, it's always the little things.
Plagued by mysterious shooting and stabbing pains through the muscles in my arms and legs, I went to a bunch of doctors who never figured anything out.
With utter humiliation, I stopped working in June.
I felt completely betrayed by my body and the universe that had stolen not only my hopes and dreams from me but now my health. Of course, I couldn't stay angry. I couldn't wallow in self pity. Don't get me wrong, I did plenty of both (and sometimes still do) but I couldn't keep going like that. When people say misery loves company, yes the straightforward answer is that miserable people like to make others around them miserable too but when it's just one person? I think that misery can multiply inside yourself.
So I started reading things online and in books and listening to guided imagery audio files.
http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/
And I actually started to settle into things.
Don't get me wrong... I don't want to sound like I'm fully at peace and that I've completely accepted the fact that I can't even go to the mailbox or take a shower more than two days in a row without blinding hot pain racing through my limbs... But at least now it's getting better.
Instead of being angry and miserable all the time, I'm only angry and miserable some of the time. And, hey, it's always the little things.
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