Into the Woods...

One of the most incredible and valuable aspects of this class was the necessity - not just the option, but necessity - to loosen the hell up! Of the millions of things I learned about myself, my style, my inspiration, and my process throughout the course, one thing I found interesting (or, rather, confounding) is that I am a walking artistic contradiction when it comes to character design. 

My brain will happily wander down any rabbit hole it happens upon and irresponsibly explore ideas until I have driven myself at least seven miles past my freeway exit. I have strategically placed sketchbooks and notebooks very un-strategically; I have provided myself the opportunity to write or draw my ideas willy-nilly nearly everywhere I happen to be. For the character of Ichabod, I drew inspiration from not simply a myriad of comedic film clips, but additionally from things like...doorknobs. I savor the process of exquisite character detail to the point of near Daniel Day-Lewis delusional immersion...and YET, when it comes time to release my mind to paper in a fury of Pollock-like expression, I never fail to sit quietly with my microscopic-tipped mechanical pencil hovering over an obsessively cleaned surface, looking for the perfect way to execute my first line, then erase it, then re-execute. 

I've been wound tighter than a Swiss time piece.

And I realized this translates to everything in my life. My mind is Fosse and the rest is Nureyev! Oy. What sort of psychological ink-blot delving hypnosis is required to undo the furrowed, purse-lipped expression of my right hand and bring my life-choreographer metaphor closer to something resembling Twyla?!

Oh...wait...what's that? Good Will Hunting-like therapy not required? Chris Sasaki, in twelve short weeks, you just saved me millions. 

Even in the beginning weeks of "experimentation" I found myself bringing to class my very reigned-in examples of crazy. Apparently I wasn't fooling anyone, at least not Chris. Goddamit, we were going to have FUN! Messy in-class exercises! NO pencils! Don't put your hair up for this, it's a perfectly good brush! If you want to fulfill your childhood dream, if you want to DO what you've wanted to DO since you were a kid, BE A GODDAM KID!

Just for the record, Chris is not a drill sergeant. The above were my internal mantra. That pencil wasn't coming out of my hand on its own, I had to slap it out.

So...below are the results of my progression from Goody Two-Shoes to drawing Floozy. I'm still practicing. I'm striving for Lili VonSchtupp-like looseness...

Ok...perhaps the magazine cutout
method didn't QUITE help loosen
me up technically, but it was a really
great way to think about shape
choices, texture, mood, and
simplistic ways to convey expression
and character!

Scaredy-pants Ichabod in the forest...thanks to a whole mess of ink!

This is where it got just plain goofy fun. Ne'er a pencil in sight! You can also see (perhaps) this is the point where Michael Richards' Kramer had been added to the mix of inspiration....playing with Mr. Bean, Kramer, and a mouse...yeehaw!

Just a few notes...playing with both the Headless Horseman and Ichabod.

My pencil is my Zen Master...

While I have been quite busy "not taking" freelance and working and drawing and doing all sorts of things, I have made time enough to do something every day that I haven't done in years - that I rarely do anymore - until recently. I have started making little happy decisions. A little 'yes' instead of a 'no'. A little 'yeah, I should' rather than an 'I really shouldn't'. This seems simple, but when you work and pay bills and have creatures who rely on you for things and...a mirror that has suddenly turned on you and demands you put in overtime at the gym, these little decisions feel very difficult. It might just be me. Maybe I'm too good at guilting myself out of things, which is ridiculous because...well, it's just ridiculous.
But with my decision to draw every day have come other unexpected joys and changes. My decision to draw every day was made entirely for the purpose of getting better at drawing. It didn't really occur to me how much it would change the way I see things on a daily basis. Even when I'm not drawing something, I'm noticing the way the light grazes the top of it. I love watching the little fat birds that peck away at the seeds on my neighbors towering flowers, but I never noticed how positively circular they are! Running has become more than that thing I do for exercise. I hardly notice anymore how badly I want to throw up or lay down! I am on a conveyer belt passing the afternoon light in the harbor and on the sides of the knotted oak trees in the gulch.
And somehow, feeling a bit more aware of my world, feeling my senses enhanced, has filtered into my choices...minute to minute, hour to hour.
In the middle of my run the other evening, where normally I would push through and sweat as I passed people - jealous as they strolled with their feet in the silvery water, I stopped. I removed my running shoes and walked the beach with my feet in the water.
This seems like a no-brainer. That's because it is.
All of these little happy decisions seem to accumulate and I find at the end of the day when I am clean and sliding into bed...I feel content. Who knew?!
Suddenly I feel the urge to go sketch....
In the meantime, I'll share a few with you!

Beach quick-ones...

Tai Chi-ers, a solo hoop-shooter and some dog owners at the park. Mud painting thanks to Jasper, a very happy puppy.

The Great History Detective

         I have become slightly obsessed with the research phase of my character development. I'm not sure whether this is good or bad in the context of progress, but it has proven to be good in the "holy crap!" and "WHOA!" and "COooool!!" kind of way.
My grandfather always told stories about growing up in Napa in the 30s & 40s, about all of the characters that existed in he and his brothers' world. Built by my grandpa's words, the Napa in my mind existed outside of the town 100 miles away...it was a glorious, mythical combination of place and time in my imagination.
         It never really occurred to me to find actual photographs of my grandpa's Napa. Why mess with the Napa in my head? But as I began to sketch out how the Napa of my grandpa's childhood felt - the stories and the characters - I wanted for more reference. Obviously to get a feel for the aesthetic and for accuracy....I certainly can't draw a 1939 Oldsmobile from my head!
What began as a Google Image search has turned into full on dork-out historical detective work. I'm talking genealogical dives...into the great depths of time. I've been fitting pieces together here and there and today I found one of those odd shaped little jigsaw pieces that you really need in order to connect the two parts you've been building separately - yeah, that piece! I found that!
         After following random trails like a Basset Hound, I came across a Google street view image of the section of Main Street where my grandpa lived. On it was an abandoned furniture store. Wait..a...minute...the faded paint and shape of the building...yep. It's in the background of a photo of my grandpa and his brothers. The photo must have been taken some time around 1940 and the three boys, dressed as makeshift caballeros, are standing in front of the furniture store, with vibrant paint and clean striped awning. It was ALIVE! Do you know what this proves?!  All my detective work, piecing history together to prove that....indeed. There was a furniture store in Napa. AH HA!
         Well, at the very least, I can happily report that the Napa of my imagination and the Napa that exists in old photographs I've found online are actually quite similar. All of the photos are in black and white, though. Luckily, the Napa in my head is in full Technicolor (with an Instagram vintage filter, of course). And everything I come across is informed by the feeling of my grandfather's stories - adding life to every static image of history I find. So that's lovely.
         While it won't be winning any awards for architectural 10-minute sketch of the year...here is a little feeling sketch of the boys walking home in the golden afternoon of late summer after playing some back alley baseball. Sigh.

And a teeny tonal sketch of the Napa Grocery in my imagination Napa. My grandpa & his brothers used to don homemade capes and masks and marauder along the rooftops of the buildings on their streets.

In Defense of Daydreaming...

          I am fully aware of my daydreaming "problem". I have very early memories of being beckoned back to earth..."Anika...ANIKA! Did you hear what I said?!" and if the disruption was brought by a family member, it was often followed by "you are JUST like your grandfather!"
          First of all, I'll take that as a compliment. And just like my grandfather, I've spent my life defending my wanderings, battling judgement, and - for what it's worth - frustrating the hell out of myself. In one of several columns my grandpa wrote on the subject, he laments:
         "Teachers never gave up, though. They all seemed to regard daydreaming as an affliction just short of Parkinson's Disease or opium addiction, and they would devote almost every counseling session to a long, involved explanation of how daydreaming was delaying the cultivation of the firm mental discipline I would need in order to succeed in the world. They had the same success rate as my mother."
          So, naturally I share a kindred delight in finding a kind word regarding daydreaming!

          "The last time I can remember reading a kind word about daydreaming was two years ago, when somebody wrote: 'Daydreaming is the Walden Pond of the mind - a quiet retreat where old ideas and images can be comfortably perused an new ones created.' I even remember who wrote that. Me."

          Boy, do I wish my grandfather were around so I could share with him the extraordinary revelations of one Jonah Lehrer who, in his somewhat recent book Imagine: How Creativity Works and in several interviews and articles, not only defends daydreamers, he uses scientific proof to make us look like geniuses! In fact, after listening to one of his lectures, for the first time in my life I felt downright proud to be so distractible!
Here's a picture of my neighbor's kitty in my yard:

          Did you know that people who tend to be more distractible (who are known as having low laden inhibitions - in fancy science jargon) who also have moderately high IQ scores are SEVEN TIMES more likely to be Eminent Creative Achievers. I have NO idea what that is, but it sounds really great and I'm that. Also, people who daydream score significantly higher in tests of creativity - which is saying alot considering that apparently most people lose a great deal of creative sensibility somewhere between 3rd and 5th grade. Apparently, this is the age when kids start comparing their own creativity to the creativity of others, thus developing creative self-consciousness, thereby inhibiting creative thinking as a defense mechanism. I was always too busy daydreaming to notice how Richie and Leslie were drawing their houses....thank goodness.

          Anywho, this leads me to my point. Another topic of emphasis in Lehrer's reporting is the mental and creative requirement for "breaks". In an article for the New Yorker, he writes:
          "If you're trying to solve a complex problem, then you need to give yourself a real break, to let the mind incubate the problem all by itself. We shouldn't be so afraid to actually take some time off."
          The past couple of weeks I had been so intently focused on how to build the story, the world, the characters, that I practically came to a grinding halt. I was also intently focused on getting into the Advanced Character Design Class at the Animation Collaborative - getting the right stuff up on the blog and my site for the portfolio review, then wondering what would happen while I worked my tail off to earn the money to pay for the damn thing - exhausting!
           So, last Monday morning, I woke up and thought to myself  "today should be a day of inspiration". Instantly I began to talk myself out of it....no, I must focus. I must draw. I must focus and draw and focus. Then, the wonderful words of Mr. Lehrer came to mind and I realized that a day of inspiration was just the focus I needed!
            So I brushed my teeth and headed on up to San Francisco in the hopes of somehow, someway imbibing a whiff of genius from the extraordinary Tyrus Wong, whose work is currently on display at the Walt Disney Family Museum (my go-to inspiration headquarters anyway - bonus!). I won't give you a play-by-play (although a late lunch DID consist of cold oysters on the half shell and duck liver), but let's just say the whole day was a VERY good idea. I'm still happy I thought of it...with a little help.
Here are a few photos and sketches from my Day of Inspiration:

 

It's not every day you get to sit on
Walt's favorite bench & sketch...

I miss living in the Presidio - I love the houses. These
sketches were done super duper quick to avoid imposing
my voyeuristic creepiness on the homes' inhabitants...

Of all the hundreds of photos I took of Wong's work...this
little guy is the only one that turned out without my
squinty-eyed, gapey-mouthed reflection in it.

Mary Blair, how I love thee...


Go get ya some inspiration!!