Tag Archives: Jem

Artist Date – Indianapolis Museum of Art

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My friend Jem and I went on a bit of an Artist Date, as prescribed by The Artist’s Way. I was feeling the need for some inspiration, something to cause my brain to make different waves. I took a day off work, and in the morning we went to a coffee shop and worked on our drawings:

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Then in the afternoon we went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art:

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Unfortunately, while they did have some cool kinetic sculpture (including work by Alexander Calder, the inventor of the mobile!!!!), those were in areas where I was not allowed to take pictures. I was able to shoot this wall, which is kind of cool, if not a seminal work by the originator of the mobile:

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Fair enough, the other stuff is in my head anyway, where it will do the most good!

The whole idea behind an Artist Date is to take the art half of yourself (or maybe it’s the art 7/8 or the art 3/4, whatever – you decide the exact equation) out and treat it well, show it a good time. In return, the art portion of you will grow and flourish and start helping you do really awesome stuff. It’s also part of a practice called “refilling the well,” where you replenish some of the energy needed to run the creative engine inside of you.

There were honestly some kind of scary moments in the museum, like when I realized I was writing down tons of names of sculptors, but almost nothing about photographers. What does that mean? Does it mean I’m not going to be doing photography? Does it mean I’m supposed to be a sculptor? Does it mean…well, what DOES it mean? I mean, that lamp, the one with all the brass on it – how do you do that? And those clocks! The clocks with the copper, brass, and steel faces! Those were gorgeous! How…can someone make a living like that? How do you make something so precise and so gorgeous? Many questions, no immediate answers. I guess that’s part of the price of admission with this stuff. (Actually, the IMA is free, which means my confusion and fear cost me nothing. Huzzah!)

Overall, I really enjoyed myself. I got some new ideas for sculpture work, and found out some fun stuff about the Art Nouveau movement. Things could get more interesting. I think we’re entering dangerous inspirational territory here. At any rate, Jem and I have refilled the well, so look for some fantasticness to occur here in the near future!

More art with Jem

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The one on the right is looking pretty sweet by now. This evening we finished up the separate pieces of that project, so there wasn’t a way to switch on and off on it. To give both of us something to do, we decided to start another project and swap between the two. I pulled out a scrap that was sitting around and seemed to be of a size that we could finish the two projects at about the same time. I started the design while Jem colored on the larger piece, then she added her own design work to the smaller one while I traded off and did color on the larger piece. I think Jem did some amazing color work on the smaller one. We’re tossing around different ideas on how we want to use color in the future, and I’ve purchased a few different supplies to help us out on some things later. This just keeps getting more and more interesting.

The art returns!

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Like a welcome breath of fresh air, the collaborative drawings with Jem return! Our projects were on hiatus for all of November while I banged out my novel in various coffee shops and restaurants in and around the Circle City, but now that NaNo has passed, it is time to return to these fantastic explosions of color and design. This one was started brand new this evening, and I have to say that I’m really, really friggin’ pleased with how it’s looking already! If you compare this with some of our others, you’ll notice that there are some real interesting changes taking place in the line art. Stuff is showing up that wasn’t present on our earlier stuff. It’s kind of weird, but kind of cool. More will be revealed as we continue, I’m sure.

Triangle, Triangle(s)…5

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Number five in the series of installments, and look how close we are to being finished! I have just a few minutes left to put in on one of them, and then we’ll be done! Per Melissa, I’m thinking on ideas involving circles for the next one. I didn’t own the color black until we were halfway through these, and tonight Jem decided that she was going to add tons of black around the squiggly things. Personally, I think that was brilliant, really made the colors jump off the page!

Triangle 1,2,3

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Today’s blog post is brought to you by the numbers 1, 2, and 3, and the letter “M.”

Here’s another look at the triangle stuff my friend Jem and I are working on. I actually cheated. This is the half that I worked on all by my self for several hours on Sunday. Jem was way ahead of me on her half, and I was feeling like I was holding things up, so I took some time to play catch up. It still sort of looks like I didn’t do much, but there’s more color on the page, so I’ll call it good for now. I kind of like that little purpley squiggle thing, yes I do. Go me and my attempts at color blending.

Triangles

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Tuesday night, and it’s time for Jem and I to draw! These sessions are becoming something that I really look forward to, and I can’t even explain exactly why that is. Part of it is simply the activity itself. I like drawing these sorts of things, free form designs. Part of it is that I like the way Jem does stuff. She uses tons and tons of color, bright stuff, and that’s pretty much why I started doing these things in the first place. Her designs and the tones she uses in them are very positive.

I’ve also noticed that when we do this I seem to lose track of time. Jem has said the same thing. If anything is going wrong or bothering me, I completely forget about it for two or three or four hours. I can get lost in what we’re doing, which is pretty awesome.

I think, too, that I like the social aspect of it. When I do the sculpture stuff I do it on my own. There’s a lot of just me sitting there in the basement looking at something. It’s very gratifying, and I love the results, but it’s really nice to have someone sitting there going, “Oh, crap…that was the wrong color,” or “Hey…that looks better than I thought it would!”

Tonight we ended like this, with all of the drawing done, and just a bit of the coloring started. See how clever we were? We cut the paper at an angle. Craziness! The idea is that this will be a paired work with both triangles mounted in the same frame. Kind of a different way of doing things, makes you think differently. I was working on the blue part, and it took forever for me to do just that little bit. It turned out okay, though. Slow, but good. Can’t wait to make more progress!

Woohoo! More art!

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Finished artwork! Rock!

Finished artwork! Rock!

My friend Jem and I started on these a few weeks ago. I think we got these done…four weeks? That’s amazing, if I do say so myself. We were both really stoked that we completed them. I just love finishing a project. I’ve said it before, it used to be a hallmark of my creative life that I would start a project and not complete it, but these, THESE ARE DONE! Yet more evidence that I CAN finish something. And Jem can finish something as well, which she has also told me she cannot do. Here is proof that she’s lying. If she tells you otherwise, just pull this up and remind her.

Any rate, these were tons of fun to do, and we immediately started on new ones that night. We got all the line work done for them. She’s going on vacation next week, so no drawing, but we’ll resume in two weeks. Awesome!

More Drawing

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Cooperative drawings with my friend Jem.

Cooperative drawings with my friend Jem.

Here’s more of the work from me and my friend Jem. This is from the second night of our efforts. She said she didn’t realize at first that it would take us so long to do them. I laughed. I’ve done one of these alone before, and it took something like two weeks of free time to do it, and it wasn’t nearly as big as even half of one of these. Super-fun stuff, though, we both agreed. She’s much better at the color blending than I am, which is adding a lot to the project. Can’t wait to see what they look like when they’re done!