More about Making Art -- The First Two

I recently finished the second of my two scherenschnitt works in progress. By finished I mean glued on to the background paper. I have not yet matted or framed them, mainly because they are small and will be much easier to move un-matted (tucked into the pages of a large book. I do have a cutter and some mat board, so after the move that will be my next step.

This is the first "real" art that I've finished in a whole lot of years. By real I mean real to me. I'm not about judging what constitutes art for others, but I do know that random sketches and practice efforts don't count in my own mind. There are a number of reasons for that gap, some practical and some "can I just stretch out on the couch and tell you about my childhood."

One thing I can say though is that getting this art accomplished was primarily a matter of medium. Over the years I've painted and sketched in a variety of media (watercolor, acrylic, pastels, charcoal, pencil) but never with particular dedication. But scherenschnitt was an art form that I first practiced when I was very young and that always interested me. I haven't touched it for a very long time and therefore it didn't have a lot of baggage attached. It's also perfect for my lifestyle. It's compact and lends itself to short bursts of inspiration and brief spurts of time. It's fragile, but not wet or messy and it's easy to keep in-progress pieces tucked out of the way. And above all it's fun and not stressful.

I've been slowly dipping my toes into Julia Cameron's The Artists Way again, which is a very valuable resource. But in addition, I just picked up How Not to Make Art by the same author. This is a book of single panel cartoons with negative advice. It was quick, simple, easy to digest, but included the same profound and thought-provoking messages of her more serious work. Advice along the lines of "Make sure your first project is overly complex" and "Never let it be fun" really hit home for me.

So, here they are. Note, I'm not sure how to photograph this kind of thing appropriately -- these didn't come out as well as I would have liked -- but their existence is more important than their quality.