Sunday, June 10, 2007
Craptastic
Although it isn't legally summer yet, yesterday was one of those perfect summer days - good for motorcycling, sitting outside drawing, bonfiring and tenting. Sunny, warm (70-80 degrees Fahrenheit), some puffy clouds, which almost seemed to threaten rain in the morning, but decided against it.
While the kids were occupied with friends (sleepovers have been the thing to do now that school's out), Husband and I went for a motorcycle ride around a nearby lake. Gorgeous, although Husband took a bug to the ear at one point.
When we returned, Eldest Son and Husband sat down to watch a little TV. SciFi channel was playing the movie "Lake Placid II." Eldest said that it was craptastic movie day on SciFi. Isn't craptastic a great word? Eldest was referring to movies with plots so predictable that you know what's going to happen before the movie even starts. All you have to do is insert your favorite mutant animal and you've got the storyline. The Lake Placid movies are about giant, killer crocs. After "Lake Placid II," the movie "Ice Spiders" was in cue. It was so craptastic that the guys didn't even bother to watch it.
Meanwhile, I sat on the back step listening to music and doing some of the drawing exercises out of "Keys to Drawing with Imagination," the book I mentioned in yesterday's post. I filled about three pages in a drawing pad; some of the results are above. The first image is of the exercise "Take a Line on a Walk." In this exercise, you draw a quick doodle first, a line that hooks up to itself. Don't think about this too hard - it's a doodle. The next step, what Bert Dodson calls noodling, is to fill in the doodle using various techniques. The first one I did is the large shaded one at the top, followed by the one just below it with the spiralling lines.
The second image above is a portion of a page on which I continued more exercises from Dodson's book. I didn't care for how much of the page turned out, but I did like the rabbit, cat, and flowers I came up with. The cat is the outline of Rotten Spotty, who kept sneaking out and dashing off every time the back door opened yesterday. Little bugger.
The third image is from the "Building Blocks" exercise in the book. Drawing bricks or stones (or stubbling, dotting, or stippling), you're supposed to stack them up until you have another image. This is one of my favorite exercises because I've always loved mosaics. I've drawn these sorts of trees before, but I particularly like the stone one here.
As for the bonfiring and tenting I mentioned in my opening paragraph, last night Young Son Number Two had a friend over. We started a fire in the fire pit. It wasn't really a bonfire, although the kids like to call it that. It was a campfire. It took some doing to get going because we didn't have enough small kindling to keep the fire alight after the paper burned up. When we finally had a decent fire going, we had the requisite s'mores, although we prefer to eat them disassembled. Afterwards, Young Son and his friend slept out in the tent. Ahh, summer. It's anything but craptastic.
Labels: bert dodson, craptastic, doodling, drawing, fire, husband, minnesota, motorcycle, movie, music, rotten spotty, scifi, sons, summer, weather
Monday, October 02, 2006
Writing Day
It's Monday and, as such, this is my typical set-aside writing day. This is when I have a large(r) block of time in which to work on short stories and essays. If you talk to most writers, they will say that they are always writing. 'Tis true for me. My writing brain never shuts off. There are story ideas everywhere, plus I'm constantly working out the plots and characters for stuff I've started. I take notes continually. I use cheapy ten-cent school notebooks to record my ideas. Right now, I'm working out of three of them. One is for Filter & Splice ideas, one is a catch-all notebook, and one is for a series of linked short stories I'm writing.
Because I typically have to wait until Mondays to flesh things out, sometimes it's hard to get in the groove of writing. To warm up, I have a journal I keep on my computer. Normally, I vomit out all the whiny stuff, or talk about what I'm currently writing. After a page or so, I'm ready to write. Today, I'm using my blog as my warm-up. When I write in my computer journal, I take a print-out of the current day's entry. Then, if my computer crashes (God forbid!), I have a hard copy. I'm tempted to print out my blog for the same reason.
One of the nice things about my computer journal is that I can see how long it's taken me to write a story because I tend to record when I start a story and when I finish it. The story I'm currently working on was started back in April. It's been a tough one to finish because over the summer my writing got interrupted by warm-weather activities. I'm trying to work my way back into the head of my main character. While I am the character's creator, the character is also distinct from me, so it's not that easy to tap into her psychology once I've let it go. That's the goal for today.
Because I typically have to wait until Mondays to flesh things out, sometimes it's hard to get in the groove of writing. To warm up, I have a journal I keep on my computer. Normally, I vomit out all the whiny stuff, or talk about what I'm currently writing. After a page or so, I'm ready to write. Today, I'm using my blog as my warm-up. When I write in my computer journal, I take a print-out of the current day's entry. Then, if my computer crashes (God forbid!), I have a hard copy. I'm tempted to print out my blog for the same reason.
One of the nice things about my computer journal is that I can see how long it's taken me to write a story because I tend to record when I start a story and when I finish it. The story I'm currently working on was started back in April. It's been a tough one to finish because over the summer my writing got interrupted by warm-weather activities. I'm trying to work my way back into the head of my main character. While I am the character's creator, the character is also distinct from me, so it's not that easy to tap into her psychology once I've let it go. That's the goal for today.
Labels: blog, journal, story, summer, writing
