Just do it!

"Art is what you can get away with"  Andy Warhol

Vision

"Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
Steve Jobs

Creativity takes on many forms

Make it your business to know who each of these folks are/were they have what the Finnish people call Sisu*

*Sisu is a Finnish term meaning, roughly, inner strength, determination, perseverance in the face of  adversity, and a strong work ethic.

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. (Maya Angelou)

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what
 you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. (Steve Jobs)

Albert Einstein said, "Creativity is the residue of time wasted."

The artist begins with a vision – a creative operation requiring an effort. (Henri Matisse)

Do it no matter what. If you believe in it, it is something very honorable. If somebody around you or your family does not understand it, then that's their problem. But if you do have a passion, 
an honest passion, just do it. (Mario Andretti)

Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it's done right. (Walt Disney)

When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again.
 All the rest is humbug. (Edouard Manet)

If you stick to your work it will take care of you somehow. (Kiki Smith)

I would add: 

Creativity takes effort.  More people would be creative if they just saw the value in
putting time into it. What ever it is!

t'*s a combination of stamina, courage, and obstinacy held in reserve for hard times

ee'-soo) is a unique Finnish concept that cannot be fully translated.  One definition is: spec*ial strength and stubborn determination to continue and overcome in the moment of adversity.  It's a combination of stamina, courage, and obstinacy held in reserve for hard times

what to paint

Paint the necessary; ignore the obvious. (Bill Hosner)

Her Face to the Wind (pastel, 20x16) by Bill Hosner

More birds

We are what we repeatedly do. (Aristotle)

Oh dear.

Keep working at it.

The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all. (Julia Cameron)

Display

It's interesting when you make things or do things that open up the possibilities for making more things, or different kinds of things. (Bruce Nauman)

working at it

You begin with the possibilities of the material. (Robert Rauschenberg)

seeing is believing

What I see in the winter from my sauna window.

See the planes of light as shapes, the planes of shadows as shapes. Squint your eyes and find the big, fluent shapes. (Irwin Greenberg)

Play

Pastel acorn. I am playing.

Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It's crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it? (Frank Gehry)

Stretching for creativity

It is a warm up really. The 100 day project. It what you do daily to keep in shape, to stay fresh, loose and alert. I had to remind myself of that as I have been struggling with a boring "workout". I needed to change it up a bit and really think about my long term vision. The 100 day project is about creative excavation, creating exploration and creative exercising. It is that simple. So when I found myself struggling with the tight feeling of my weekly restrictions I knew it was time to try something new. So I stuck with the medium that I was on the previous week (pastels) to really  help me loosen up and I explored new shapes and revisited old ones. Some wonderful things happened. I am currently staying in the pastel phase of the 100 day project. I am still exploring the acorn and  some new things have been happening there. Also, I have been inspired to do more birds which I haven’t done in two years. I am feeling a bit limber again!

which way are you going

Art is a continuous activity with no separation between past and present. (Henry Moore)






This is a real picture,not something photoshoped or re-touched. Unless you have two heads, there is no reason not to move foreward. And if you do have two heads, just communicate with yourself.

Slow and steady wins the race. (Aesop)
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. (Dale Carnegie)

Rules

I want to break a rule, my own. My own self imposed rule about my 100 day project. There I said it. I am bored with the acorn. I want to try something else and stick to the medium for longer than a week. I just get into the swing of things on Sunday night. Then I start all over. It is the artistic equivalent to the movie Ground Hog Day.

It seems to me that we get use to rules. There are rules that are suppressive, and wrong, there are others that help us live in harmony.

To  break some rules can be seen as a sign of strength, break others it is a sign of weakness.

Challenging rules can be freeing and a good thing. 

But, when we put forth a set of self imposed rules and break them ---we have let ourselves down and dare I say “failed”. These self imposed rules, regulations, and restricitons may have no rhyme or reason, they may just be trap to keep us from exploring possibilities.

Self imposed rules may be the thing that keeps creativity under lock and chain. It may be the very thing that needs to be avoided.
So while I mull around my own set of limitation for this go around I am going to dedicate the next few posts  about rule setting; abiding by them, the purpose of them and of course breaking them.

 Here are a few quotes to get started as  I am contemplate my dilemma

Thomas Edition said, “Hell, there are no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.”

Emerson said, “Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle. 

To blossom forth, a work of art must ignore or rather forget all the rules. (Pablo Picasso)

Direction

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. Do something else to it. (Jasper Johns)

finding reality

benda

"What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things... it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface. "Constantin Brancusi:

"When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water... If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirit. "Constantin Brancusi:

Simplicity

Constantin Brancusi: The Newborn

"Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things.  Constantin Brancusi

things to do with your 100 day project

I now have dozens of acorns around my house and on my table. At this point I am wondering why the acorn? What  can I possibly do with it, to it, for 100 days? I am at the 33 day mark. 1/3 of the way. I wonder what will become of all these acorns and what will they morph into in the next 64 days.
Here is one thing I have done. Made some gift tags. I knitted the bag and felted it. It will be a Christmas gift for someone this year. Notice the tag in the corner.

Color

painting by Hans Hoffman

"The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the
mystic realm of color. Our entire being is nourished by it. This mystic
quality of color should likewise find expression in a work of art." Hans
Hoffman, Artist

Display

I have found that with my past project display is key...watching them grow, as in the case with the above photo. I did a bird a day for 100 days. ( sometimes I did more). This time around I have not hung up my acorns. I miss this aspect to the project and see the value in display. Especially when you feel like you are stuck, not uncommon of a feeling about 1/3 of the way through.

Pastel

Week five:
I am including a sample of a past 100 day project that I did in pastel. The thing that I loved about the past project was that I hung up the work each day. I am missing that now. I think that viewing progress is part of the habit. It gets you hungry for more. You view it even when you are not actively engage in producing it, and new ideas come about.

End of week 4: Paper cutouts

This is by far my most favorite medium during this project.

Habits and 100 day project

If you want to change your art, change your habits. (Clement Greenberg)


Clement Greenberg (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994) was an influential American art critic closely associated with Modern art in the United States. In particular, he promoted the abstract expressionist movement and was among the first critics to praise the work of painter Jackson Pollock.
( from wikpedia

End of week three

This week is the end of water color pencils. Not sure I like this medium by itself. It has always worked better for me as a mixed media. See below pictures; one is water color pencil on different papers and below that is a painting I did ages ago with colored pencil, water colors and water color pencils.

Influence

On my last 100 day project I worked with paper and circles and lots of colored paint samples, this painting of Lake Superior is a direct result of all that work. I call it: Oct-April

Control

Someone once told me that control is only an illusion.
Below is a sample of water color pencil on cold press paper.

The difference between hot press and cold press paper

I am having issues controlling the water color pencil meduim on the paper.
Mainly because I start to treat the colors like pencil first then add water. I am going to try the water first on the paper then add the pencil...we'll see.
The paper has made a big difference. See what Dick Blick has to say about paper.

What is the difference between a hot press and a cold press surface?

Hot press board is smoother, and is generally slightly more expensive for a given size and weight. Artists who work with airbrush, markers, or pen-and-ink often favor a hot press surface. Hot press boards produce sharper and finer lines. Graphic design applications also tend to favor a hot-press surface, especially when adhesive wax, adhesive film, rubber cement, or transfer lettering is used. Hot press board scans better. Sharper detail can be reproduced from its smooth surface.

Cold press board is slightly textured, and is usually favored when a brush is used, as for watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and tempera. Artists who work in a drawing medium that requires some "tooth" to the surface, such as charcoal, crayon, or pastel, also tend to prefer cold press. Calligraphers and graphite and colored pencil artists choose either surface, depending on personal preference.

More on habit

When creativity has become your habit; when you've learned to manage time, resources, expectations, and the demands of others; when you understand the value and place of validation, continuity, and purity of purpose, then you're on the way to an artist's ultimate goal; the achievement of mastery. (Twyla Tharp)

Lake Superior
benda

Looseness

Odilon Redon
















I have been trying water color pencil this week. I have to stay loose with it, it gets overworked so easily. I changed the paper. I went from cold press water color paper to regular heavy weight drawing paper. So far I like the results better.
Perhaps though I just need to get looser and go with the flow. Not a bad lesson. I will post the results of both papers this week.

Stay loose and flexible, and keep your expectations very low. (Chris Baty)

It is precisely from the regret left by the imperfect work that the next one can be born. (Odilon Redon)

a 100 day sampler

A participating artist 100 day project.

end of week two

Week two: the colored pencil week

I am almost done with week two, doing just about two acorn studies a day. I haven't decided on what I will use starting week three.

Week one: #2 pencil and paper

100 days=14 weeks plus some

I have started a new 100 day project.
I have been thinking about how many weeks 100 days make up. It is a little over 3 months, a quarter of a year, a summer. It is almost the length of a semester of school: 14 weeks add a couple of days. Know wonder it feels natural to me. I always liked the semester calendar. It never felt too cumbersome.
So this time around for my 100 day project I have divided up my project into days and weeks. Each week during the 100 day project I will use the same shape/object but a different medium.
This week, week one, I will be using pencil. I will try to post the results after every week.
I have narrowed it down to the following mediums...not in any particular order:
Pencil, colored pencil, pastel, charcoal, watercolors, water colored pencil, encaustic, oil paints, acrylics, collage, paper, mixed media, markers, and artist choice.

100 days of art, a different medium each week. Beginning Monday Nov 1st.
Week one--day one.
This should be interesting

The by product of habit and ritual

The thing about the 100 day project is that while creating habit and ritual you discover a wealth of interesting ideas. It is creative excavating. Who knew we were all artistic archeologists.

It is time for me to get back into some serious excavating. I began the 100 day project today. I will write more on my project tomorrow.
There are others who are currently engaged in this habit, it is a powerful exercise.

May the force be with you.

"Habits are to the soul what the veins and arteries are to the blood, the courses in which it moves." -Horace Bushnell

100 day project.....new edition

anytime is a good time to start
I received this email from an artist friend

Decided to start the 100 day project. After a life changing event this
week for my husband and me, I thought it would be a good time to start. I
have had collected rocks, stones, pebbles througout my life. All this last
summer I have been putting them in a box on the porch. I could always feel
the pull of rocks, so on thurs. I gathered them together and brought them
to my bead table. I also grabbed colored cord and beads. It just started
to happen. I think I could have done all 100 that day. So far I have 3
done and am excited to see where this takes me. The other component to
the project is the number 27. My husband worked for 27 years and that was
a major part of our life that is now over.

Recent Work

Everyone knows that yellow, orange, and red suggest ideas of joy and plenty. (Eugene Delacroix)

Never underestimate the power of giving things away

"Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked." Robert A F Thurman

MAIL

This is second phase of the 100 day project; here the first 100 people that send me a self addressed stamped envelope will receive one of my 100 day paper cut outs. This has been really fun and interesting. So far I have had mail from 4 states Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan ( both the upper and lower peninsula) Getting the mail is fun, sending out the cutout piece is like releasing a butterfly out into the world.
I wonder what it is like for the recipent? I had 100 now I have 86 left. I wonder if these simple cutouts are as interesting as a piece or more interesting to view as a series of 100. I kept it simple and only used color paint swatches, a old philosophy of art book, glue and scissors.

If you are participating in this phase 2 with me please feel free to send me your thoughts.

100 days

I made it!!!I should have made a cake. It is something to celebrate.
Maybe next time.
Also,
congrats to all that are still engaged in the habit of a 100 days project, or a 10 days project or a daily practice. It is all good for the creative brain.

Day 99

My mind is experiencing a subtle pressure---what did I accomplish--what was it all about-- how was it different?
I am in the process of working on an artist statement. The 100 day project definitely infiltrated my paintings. I painted 15 30x30 paintings. All under the theme a Sense of Place. As the 100 day project intensified I think the paintings did too.

Art to the people

The house has exploded with paper cut outs. And I have been thinking about art in relation to the artist and the viewer. This equation is essential to complete the artist process, beyond creation. In regards to this I recognize that in this day and age we are becoming more and more connected to one another via on-line networks, emails, cell phone, photo sharing sites etc. Here the viewer has an opportunity to witness art electronically ---which has a place--- but it cannot compare to seeing art first hand. With that in mind, I have decided after Sept 8th (the end of my 100 day project) to take my 100 plus cutouts and distribute them to the first 100 people who send me a self addressed stamped envelope.
To receive one of my paper cuts outs,
send a self addressed stamped envelope to:
Benda
100 Day project
9426 Freda Rd
Atlantic Mine MI 49905
Bonus:
There is the added sensation of receiving something tangible in the mail, an experience which is becoming rarer as we become more addicted to social networking.

More on Matisse

During the last decade of his long life, Henri Matisse produced some 270 paper cutouts. Although they constitute independent works, many also served as maquettes for projects as different in scale and purpose as book illustrations or designs for liturgical vestments and stained-glass windows. During the 1930s, Matisse had already used paper models to help him compose his paintings. Then, after two serious operations in 1941 left him in poor health, the artist worked more and more with paper cutouts—something he could do sitting up in bed or in an armchair. With scissors, Matisse cut shapes from sheets of paper that his assistants first had colored with gouache. These would be pinned into position and, once finalized, glued onto a white or multicolored ground. After the late 1940s, when the size of these cutouts increased so much that they had to be executed on the wall, he would direct his assistants as to the specific placement of the shapes and they would carry out his vision.



Source: Henri Matisse: Snow Flowers (1999.363.46) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ode to Matisse

Matisse
Got a book on Matisse at a garage sale, forgot how much I love his work, especially the paper cutouts!
Matisse's infuence on my cutouts: Matisse Right, Benda bottom.

92 days into the 100 day project.

I have shoe boxes stuffed with paper swatches, an indoor cloths lines filled with hanging tags, and taped cutouts stuck on my walls that are all part of my "paper, glue, scissors" The 100 Day Project. There were days when nothing seemed exciting, and other days where I would produce 4-5 cut out images. Morning were the best for me, but when I couldn’t sit down and work on the 100 day project because of an early morning commitment, I worked on it in the evenings. As the project winds down, I wonder about the lasting effects; how has the project infiltrated my paintings, how does sticking to something daily effects my psyche, how does doing something, anything everyday effect my habits, and lastly what next?

#1 of MY 10 things great about NYC

I was feeling uninspired the other day.
I was thinking I needed a dose of art.
Not European, not gallery art, not commerical. But something with some roots to it. I was thinking about how I wish I could go and spend a day at the MET likeI did last May.
It is hard not to get inspired in NYC, but you do run the risk of over-stimulation and feeling very insignificant. All in all the MET it is one of the reasons I love New York, plus it is a great building. I don't think there is a building that big in a over a 200 mile radius of me, not including an ice arena.

Complicated

Do artists make everything more complicated? Or does sometimes it just seem that way?

Drawing and habit

j renee benda
























Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.
Keith Haring

It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.
Camille Pissarro

How Dickens is like Art

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - Charles Dickens

Do I dare compare the 100 day project or my recent studio time with a Tale of Two Cites? Sometimes making art is like the best of times. Sometimes not. Sometimes there is lightness in everything you do and sometimes not. Sometimes artists feel hopeful and then sometimes we don't. But this is true about everything in life. So even though sometimes there is a long winter it is ALWAYS followed by spring.

The 1/2 point

I love paint!

Looking over the last 50 days is interesting. I am getting bored with "paper, scissors, glue." but have no other ideas. Perhaps I am in a 7th inning slump.
I have worked in the studio as well and that is more interesting.

The house is filling up with 100 day project work and we have gained one new member and lost a few along the way. Here is J Renee's project.
jrbenda

Inspiration

I was recently sent this quote from an artist friend. It fits well with the theme of habit and "stick-to-it-ness".
"Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time". Brenda Ueland

The sounds of silence

"It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity and consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I will not venture to discuss. But I do know that many who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where they can root and grow. We must hope they find them." Mark Rothko

Discipline and Habit

Is there a difference between discipline and habit? I usually think of discipline as something I have to do, that I consciously decide to do but that that I resist. And habit as something I do without much thought, like a bad habit. Good habits may start out as disciplines and morph into habits; some good disciplines never make it to good habits and are still struggles.


Over time, as the daily routines become second nature, discipline morphs into habit. (Twyla Tharp)

Old habits die hard. (proverb)

Discipline in art is a fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing. (Henry Moore)




)

Meaning

Philip Guston
I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.
Philip Guston

The circles are everywhere. They are hanging here and there. They are on the floor, spilled over with the scraps of my 100 day project. They are in my paintings. I think they are about unity and possibly and more importantly about self.
But, when I read the above quote by Philip Gunston, I think more and more that they are about painting.
Homeward bound-cbenda