Robyn Hill Hendrix

My Unspoken (til now) Rules of Painting & Creativity

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Filtration 2, Watercolor on Paper, 2013. 8" x 10"

Filtration 2, Watercolor on Paper, 2013. 8″ x 10″

Always surprise yourself. Never do exactly what you are expecting yourself to do.

Make things go funky and weird, but go slowly enough that you know when to stop. (When you’ve reached the right amount of funk.)

Turn “mistakes” into another unexpected quirky thingamabob.

Talk to the funky, quirky things when necessary.

Watch the work unfold with eyes and heart wide open, kind of like watching a sunset.

Don’t cry too much while painting or it’ll start to smudge. Unless you want to fill the teardrops landing there with pigment…not really sure what the salt content will do to the surface but it could be a fun experiment.

The moment when you start to get bored of something is probably the point when you need to elaborate on it twice over rather than completely abandoning it.

Ask yourself if you can make some of the blobbies just a little bit bigger. Or just a little bit smaller.

Follow the rule of gravity. Or don’t.

Once in a while, do the thing that you think (or feel) is going to turn out really ugly. You’ll either get it out of your system, or discover something incredible.

Don’t finish a painting until you’ve already started another one. (Always have something in progress.)

Don’t drink the paint water by accident, and don’t dip your brush in your tea.

*Scientists, mathematicians, statisticians etc probably wouldn’t consider all of these to fall under the definition and functionality of a “rule”. Whatever.

I’m sure some of these could apply to other artistic disciplines. And non artistic disciplines, for that matter. Which one speaks to you? Do you have any weird, unspoken limitations you put on yourself as you write, dance, plan, organize, sculpt, sketch, brainstorm, or whatever it is you do?

 

bloop bloop

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sketchbook drawing

I took the day off work at the day job today to finish recovering from staying up all night on Saturday night for Northern Spark, and am attempting to turn it into a studio work day…currently getting distracted adding new artwork images to my business cards reorder from moo.com, which led me to scan a couple new things, including this funky sketchbook drawing from a couple months ago.  It makes me want to make funny little bubble sound effects to accompany it.

blip…bloop…blop….

hmmmm, just had a funny art installation idea that I need to go ruminate on now….

artistic evidence of E.T.?

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I awoke at 4am last night (I mean, this morning) and discovered a scrunched up bunch of black electrical tape stuck to my arm.  I have no idea where it came from.  For some reason my immediate thought was “Hey, maybe I was abducted by aliens.  Clumsy aliens who can’t even put electrical tape on a human’s arm (to cover up the puncture marks, obviously) without it getting all stuck together.”

Then I decided to draw, since I was awake.  Tell me if you think, based on my sketch, whether I was abducted by aliens, or whether you want to vote for the possibly more likely scenario that when my bed was covered in framing stuff over the weekend some mysterious electrical tape of unknown origin wiggled itself under my sheets.

hmm, evidence of extraterrestrial interference in my brain? or no?

I just noticed in looking over my post for proofreading that I initially spelled clumsy “clumbsy.”  And now I really love that spelling of it… like thumbsy…

Gah, now the more I look at the word “clumsy” up above the more I think it must be misspelled somehow.

some weird drawing I found

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I was cleaning up my apartment and found this paper cd envelope that I “illustrated” a few years back.  I can’t remember what the cd was that was supposed to be inside it, or why I made it.  Clearly I have squandered a potentially lucrative career in album illustration.  Or not.

side 1

side 2

If you look really really close I think you can see George Jetson driving his hovercar around in there somewhere.

Completed Sketchbook Project

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It’s done and in the mail as of two days ago!  Here’s the final slideshow of all the sketchbook pages (it may take a little extra time to load):

[portfolio_slideshow]

Yes I know the pictures aren’t that great, but scanning them gets rid of that ghost image effect of seeing the drawings on adjacent pages through the paper, which would defeat the purpose.  My theme was “And then there was none,” which I picked just cuz it was conveniently vague and was the one that most seemed to fit with my style of drawing.  I didn’t worry much about making the theme obvious but at the end I did try to make the forms sort of disappear into the top of the page in a “then there were none” kind of way.

Check out the massive numbers of sketchbooks Art House coop is receiving in the mail!

Here’s some links to other people’s sketchbook projects that I’ve discovered thanks to twitter:

a is for anika

brown paper bunny made hers into a zine that you can buy on etsy

Christina Norberg

Papier et encre

Cody Schibi (this one blows my mind)

drawings you can see through

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I am loving playing with the transparency of the pages in my sketchbook project.  I discovered the delightful possibilities of this right after my last blog update.  It’s working really well for my style of line drawing.  Unfortunately my scanner does not capture the subtle interaction between drawings on adjacent pages at all so I’ve resorted to taking not-so-great photos of it from the camera on my phone (my rechargeable batteries for my slightly higher quality digital camera don’t work anymore).

I suppose taking a video in a really well lit environment might work better, but I don’t have that capability right now.  Not sure whether to feel frustrated that none of my available technology can accurately document my sketchbook project, or proud that I’ve made artwork that defies digitization.

Hope you also enjoy the close up view of my thumbs.  The transparency doesn’t work unless you hold the pages flat against each other.

[portfolio_slideshow]

Although I hate to dictate to the viewer what those little circles might represent on the last two pages, you can probably tell that snow is on my mind as I am snowed in here in Minneapolis, Minnesnowda.  We’ve gotten almost a foot and a half officially I guess, though the drifts outside the back door are more like two feet.  Staying home all day has been a bit lonely since Alex is in Cameroon now for his mother’s funeral, but I kept myself busy putting up my Xmas decorations and trying to start cleaning the kitchen.  My graphics design class was canceled, giving me at least another week to procrastinate on preparing the “personal logo” project that I don’t really want to do.  It might morph into designing a better header for this blog & website, even though I’m pretty happy with the one I have right now and don’t think that would actually help me practice any of the new skills I’ve learned over the semester.  Can you use the term “semester” for a continuing ed class anyway?  Sounds weird…

Anyway stay warm out there fellow MN blizzard people!

Update: after a lot of shoveling and gracious help from various neighbors I was able to get my car out of the lot, out of the alley, and onto nicely plowed chicago ave.  My thumbs, arms and back are aching from all the shoveling!

Sketchbook Project beginnings

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Here’s the first few pages from my sketchbook project.  My theme is “and then there was none.”  I’m feeling less than confident about finishing it in time to send it in with everything else that’s been going on, but I’m going to try to keep plugging along and see how it goes.  At least it’s something that keeps me motivated to draw.  I’m enjoying returning to line drawings after I’ve focused mostly on watercolor work lately.  Kind of wish I had enough gusto and technical expertise to rebind it with yupo and other watercolor paper, but oh well.  Yupo isn’t good for lots of handling anyway, and the paint probably wouldn’t hold up as well.

page one

page two

page three

page four

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