It’s a busy busy day, but since I was publicly described as a gifted artist today, I found a little time for art!

Here’s another Artist Trading Card – I made it tonight. It’s called My Precious Moments, in which Gollum meets the Precious Moments Figurine.

The becoming-an-artist thing is coming along well. I moved the computer room into the art studio and the art studio into the computer room, which gives the art studio more room and better light. I’ll post pictures soon.

I discovered why my new watercolour pencils seemed kind of anti-climatic. I had drawn a little doodly thing, and with great anticipation brushed water over it: the colours were supposed to blend together like watercolours. Nothing really happened except the paper got wet. I was disappointed. I actually entertained the idea that it was somehow MY fault, there was something wrong with my technique. Like there’s a wrong way to brush water over a doodle. Anyway, as I was organizing my supplies the other day I looked at the box and realized that they weren’t watercolour pencils after all. I had accidentally bought a box of plain old ordinary everyday coloured pencils, just like the other four boxes of coloured pencils I own.

So today I went to Wallack’s and bought myself a real box of watercolour pencils. Having Wallack’s around the corner from my office is both a blessing and a curse. I just can’t stay out of there at lunch time, and I never leave empty-handed. Today I bought the watercolour pencils and a portfolio (so that the drawings I haven’t yet drawn won’t get wrinkled). Speaking of which, I’m on Chapter 2 of Drawing for Dummies.

It’s kind of weird how, when you’re creating something, you can end up with something completely different than what you intended to create. Ideas are such mutants.

I no longer have any idea what this was originally intended to be. I’m not even sure what it IS exactly.

It occurs to me that I’m soon going to have an explosion of chaos in my life if I don’t start getting organized on the art thing. I can’t tell you how many little tiny pictures I’ve cut out, how many pages I’ve torn out of magazines, how many bits and pieces are starting to multiply on my table and spill over onto the floor. I’ve also been accumulating paints and pencils and paper and gel medium and gesso and brushes and tools. There’s almost no room left on the table for actually creating art. There are piles on the floor too. I’ve made all this mess and I’ve only been an artist for a couple of weeks.

It seems the de-cluttering stage of my life has given way to yet another accumulating stage. I’ve stopped throwing things out. I’m starting to pick things up off the sidewalk and bring them home. I’m grabbing magazines out of other people’s black boxes and piling them on my floor. I think of junk mail as ephemera now. I love ephemera. I look at everything with an eye to its creative potential. “This might be just the thing I need someday,” I tell myself as I tuck away the Rogers flyer for a rainy day. It’s not even a nice flyer. Deep in my heart of hearts, I know I will never use it for anything. I will probably throw it away in fifteen years.

I’m very lucky to have a room I can dedicate to art. It’s a small room, but it’s a dedicated room. Yet I know if I just keep doing what I’m doing, this room is soon going to get overwhelmed by all the bits of art-to-be. I think I should get organized now, while it’s still possible. Before it’s too late.

Apart from the impending chaos, there’s also the issue of having too many unfinished projects right in front of me at the same time while I’m trying to work on something. It’s distracting. Even worse, I end up getting glue and paint on the projects I’m not even working on, because they’re encroaching into my workspace. I’m kind of messy, especially with the glue.

I figure the main categories of things that I need to organize are:

• materials (eg glues, paints, paper, canvasses, etc)
• tools (breyer, paintbrushes, scissors, utility knives, etc)
• images (magazine cut-outs, photocopies, printouts, photographs, etc.)
• image sources (magazines, books, etc.)
• works-in-progress. I definitely need somewhere to put the works-in-progress so they’ll be safely out of the way
• miscellaneous (bits of jewelry, coins, keys, and other small three-dimensional objects I’ve been squirreling away in the hope that I might someday transform them into art)

The room has a closet, and the closet has some shelves. That’s a good start. But it’s not enough. I’m not sure what I need. More shelves? Something with drawers? Shoeboxes? A filing cabinet?

Here’s a handy tip I picked up on e-how.

“Hang nylon organizers with clear vinyl pockets. Some have small pockets only for paint tubes, while others add larger pockets for brushes, pens and sketch pads. Designed to hook over a doorframe, they can also hang on a wall hook near your easel. An added advantage: They’re easy to hide in a closet if the room has to serve other functions.”

If anybody has any other tips for me, I’d love to hear them.

John, the itinerate artist and tech wizard, left an interesting comment the other day that I should not wait for my muse. This made me think. I was lying in bed this morning, pondering my muse, and I wondered if I even have a muse, and if so, what does she look like? These were not questions I could answer. I decided to let the universe, in its infinite random wisdom, reveal the answer to me.

I formulated this plan while still in bed (ie still pre-coffee): I would do a google image search on muse: the first image that appeared would be my muse. I would create a bit of art for my muse, using its image, immediately upon getting out of bed.

This is my muse:

My muse is three guys? I never would have guessed that.

I did three pieces of art, but I have to confess I stayed in my comfort zone: the computer. I did not put on a beret and smock and get dirty.

After I completed the series, I cut up some cardstock to make Artist Trading Cards (ATCs). These are 3.5 x 2.5 inch cards, and you can do anything you want on them: paint, photography, collage, embroidery, anything. Even digital manipulation (that sounds a bit dirty, eh?). And then I printed my three Muse pictures and glued them onto three ATCs, which means I’m officially an artist now. I feel like I cheated though, since I didn’t actually use paint and stuff.

Speaking of cheating, I did my taxes. I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt kind of virtuous about doing my taxes the old-fashioned way, with a pencil and an eraser and sometimes a calculator. But this time I used QuickTax because I had some unusual financial circumstances this year, and I needed to explore different scenarios. You just plug in the numbers from your T-4 and other forms, and it does all those laborious calculations for you. If you want to play with a variable (eg, should I put more money into my RRSP), it instantly serves up the results. Virtue be damned, I’m a convert now: I don’t care if it feels like cheating. And I’m getting a refund, which is great because I need a new roof.