Embroidered Collage

And that's actually rather freeing.

I can only complete so many creative projects in my lifetime, whether I spend much time on them or little. 

There may be more or better projects if I spend much time, but I can't know for sure, and they will still be only a limited fraction of the ideas I have had and the things I would like to have tried.  It sucks, but it's life.  And realizing it makes it easier for me to be at peace with the little amount of time I currently have available.

The idea came from my rewording of a statement by Dan Goodwin in his article at Creativity Portal called One Full Flavor.  His emphasis was on how the concept can be used to bypass the too many options part of creator's block, resulting in multiple completed projects instead of dithering and still wondering where to begin.

I've been having similar problems with too many choices, but because I've been feeling time and space constraints, not because I've been feeling blocked. I used to be able to spread out all over the room and just create what I wanted and know that if it didn't work, then no big deal, because there was always more time. 

Now I have to get in the habit of putting things away for when Alanna is mobile.  Her care takes much of the evening and after her bedtime there are online classes and dishes and spending time with my husband.  If I want to get anything done I need to make choices and if it's messy then I need to actually schedule time for it.

Somehow it makes it better to know that, in the long run, I was always going to have to choose.

What project do I most want to do right now?  I want to do more of the exercises in Keys to Drawing with Imagination.  It stretches me and I can easily slip them in.  I've also just signed up for a butterfly wing themed atc swap, so I'll need to decide how I want to pursue the theme this time. I'm leaning towards acrylics.  I haven't pulled those out in a while and want to do some color studies.

Does knowing that you will only ever complete so many projects change your view of what to do next?

The butterflies were made for a chunky pages swap and by the end I remembered why I had stopped doing these swaps.  I become tired of doing the same thing.  But that was also the very reason I joined this one - to push myself to make variations by giving myself a deadline and a purpose.  I definitely came up with some combinations for wing patterning that didn't initially occur to me.  The last four butterflies are shown below.

This set of doodles is from Exercise 1 in Bert Dodson's Keys to Drawing with Imagination.  Four of the fill patterns are from the book and two I came up with on my own.  I really enjoyed this pattern making exercise and expect to have fun through the rest of Part 1: Doodling and Noodling, but before I can work on Part 2: Drawing a New Reality I may need to go back to his original book Keys to Drawing and spend more time practicing on this reality.

I've not been very good at deliberately following exercises in the past, but I'm going to give it a try as Bert's are laid out so well.  The whole book was very interesting to read through and I picked up some good bits even without actually doing the work.  A number of the creative exercises could be applied to collage, with only a little adaptation, if I hadn't wanted to improve my drawing skills anyway.

The thick wool felt I used as a stitching base is very easy to stitch through and gives these butterflies a bit of extra dimension.  I actually purchased it as a base for needlefelting, but I like it in this application as well.  I limited my floss colors to a handful and my bead selection to one mixed bag so I could concentrate more on varying pattern from one butterfly to another.  It's interesting to see how much I can pack into a small space.  I'm over half way done now...

Two different treatments using the same hand-carved stamp on the complex background that I created earlier.

I like the first one better.  I collaged a little bit of lace paper to the background, then stamped over it in gold.  The butterfly didn't stand out much, so I outlined all the key features in black pen.  I still wasn't quite happy, so filled in some of the areas with colored inks. 

Part of me says - STITCH.  Part of me says - But it looks DONE.  I'd probably add just a bit of gold metallic along the tops of the wings if I did add stitch.

The second one is more fun than the first.  First I added some green lines to spice up the background, then stamped in a muted yellow and then added more colors with liquid acrylics.  This one is destined for a vivid rainbow colors swap so all the colors of the rainbow had to be included.

The weather was nice yesterday so we all went for a walk; the baby in the stroller, my husband with his nifty new macro lens for his camera, and me with my large sketchbook.  I sketched a couple flowers and a couple trees and a bit of the budding of the trees with a basic graphite pencil while we were out.  Then, when we returned home I added colored details to some of my sketches and explored some variations on the themes, pulling the key points out of my memory.

Trying to sketch the two different trees got very complicated.  All those branches going in front of and behind each other and providing fore-shortening challenges when they're coming straight at me.  It's easier when there are masses of leaves on them, but not nearly as interesting.