I’m not sure what shape I want this newsletter and blog to take now, but right now I’m imagining a weekly endeavor that comes out every Friday with two main sections — “Here’s what I’ve been up to this week” and “Here’s some stuff that’s been inspiring me and keeping me motivated” kind of thing. But the aim is to share more deeply about not just what I am doing but about other folks and other things.
So here goes.
This Week
I’ve been rather fortunate to find myself with a couple of rather quiet weeks. Being a part time teacher at a private school means that I get the summer off from teaching at my school, but I do keep myself busy teaching a few things throughout the summer. I finished up my first camp of the summer a couple of weeks ago, and I won’t have another until August. However next week, I begin a two-week summer art program for high schoolers that I’ve taught for about 18 years now.
So, for the last two weeks, I’ve been enjoying some down time, and I’ve been working on several things. First, I’ve been keeping up with my daily collages, and if you haven’t been following along on social media, you’re missing out. I am now at 460 straight days of creating a small 6in x 8in cut paper collage. It’s been a great way to explore my creativity and to experiment with ideas. I also worked on edits for my forthcoming book Get to Work: Practical Advice for Consistent Creativity which I’m hoping to self publish by the beginning of September.
Probably most significantly, I worked on a cut paper collage self portrait. Using a favorite selfie that I took a few years ago in the midst of the COVID lockdown, I turned it into a layered paper collage.
This wasn’t an idea entirely new to me, and about 20 years ago, I developed a project for my high school art classes that did something very similar. However, there were two main differences. First, students had to mix and paint their paper different values, and instead of a flat collage, they had to create a relief where the image was slightly 3-D. See and example below.
Artwork by Natalie K.
It was good to revisit the idea and create a new piece.
Inspiration
I am constantly inspired by so many people, and it’s really hard to figure out where to begin, so I’ll begin with someone who constantly inspires me and someone who I tend to quote and cite a lot when I give talks and teach classes. And that’s Austin Kleon. Though Kleon is about ten years younger than me, I want to grow up to be like Austin Kleon. If you’re not familiar with him, he is, as he describes himself, an author who draws, and he his probably best known for his bestselling book Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. It’s a book that I have read and reread several times. It’s a concise book with great advice for making and creating.
And just like Kleon suggests, I stole from him! I love that his books are small, concise, easy to digest, not expensive, and filled with some very practical advice. So, as I began working on my book Get to Work, I kept all of that in mind, and I just imagine my book fitting in nicely on the book shelf next to his.
But it’s really Austin’s advice from his book Show Your Work! that keeps ringing in my head ever since I had my little meltdown a couple of weeks ago. In the chapter titled Don’t Turn into Human Spam, he gives the advice “If you want fans, you have to be a fan first.” And he goes on to say, “If you’re only pointing to your own stuff online, you’re doing it wrong.” So, I’m trying to follow this advice, hence the new and hopefully improved newsletter and blog.
So, if you haven’t checked him out or if you haven’t read his books, I highly recommend him and his work. And it’s definitely a reminder to myself that I really need to reread his books.
Thanks so much for your time and energy, and I hope that you had a good week. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Until next time! Happy Creating!
Eric