@Harirai Yay multimedia :) Loved reading that you shared this with your grandmother! My grandmother was also my first collaborator in art when I was but a fledgling artist.
I slam dunked my original post just before the café was about to close. It was a happy surprise to see that it inspired a bit. Then I decided to dig out an old handout…
@Harirai Yay multimedia :) Loved reading that you shared this with your grandmother! My grandmother was also my first collaborator in art when I was but a fledgling artist.
I slam dunked my original post just before the café was about to close. It was a happy surprise to see that it inspired a bit. Then I decided to dig out an old handout that I gave to a few clients who wanted to know how I worked on my own personal, and gargantuan, speculative fiction octopod. I cut a segment from it, I hope this is an OK place for sharing it–
...Most importantly, getting the benefit of playing in natural media works best by staying uncomplicated.
Here's one simple low tech approach I like. Use large sheets of heavy weight 250-300 lb. paper suitable for brushing with water, as in prep for watercolors or acrylic inks. I like “real time” natural media, that demands a fast, not over-thought out, and effortless hand before it dries. I cut the big sheets down to a usable size and start with with applying a water wash to a tile before going at it with the watercolor, acrylic ink, Aquarelle pencil (colored pencils made for wet media), and even ground pigment shaved from a set of sticks, like the super vivid kind that come in a box in high intensity colors. For each tile that you prepare, use hues that reflect certain points in your story. I go after mood, tone, something that resonates with the drafted words.
Over time, I’ll get inspired to draw onto these tiles, or stick photos, hand drawn, or photocopied elements onto them. I hang these on the lines strung around my studio. If I find myself overworking, or being overcritical of a draft, I find that making these tiles pulls me out of the part of my brain that is weighing the sheer volume of the work, the weight of having carried this story around in one form or another (for much too long to admit here).
Clothesline grade twine, strung around in lengths of your choosing, can represent in each line any of the dynamics of story. Character arcs and timelines, the arcs of developing themes, environments/change of seasons, loose ideas that are still floating just above the “cutting floor”, and streams of ephemera for building speculative worlds, to name a few. Having a place to put all that’s swirling around in your head offers a good feeling in itself.
Fast, low-tech, simple, visual. It all works to put down those weights tied to the belief that rewriting is something really hard and sometimes a bit airless. All that's in our heads. The key is to connect with arts that will loosen things up, to open up to a sensed spaciousness with our stories.
Getting juiced to keep going with the process, seeing how our drafts literally grow and evolve before our eyes, gaining insights into new levels of what’s written, seeing the resolution, the closure, or the place for cutting to the next in series–if you find any of this happening for you in your visual experiments, then hooray!
Wow, thank you for sharing this! Fast smears of watercolor are my favorite medium, so this is great. It will take some strategizing to figure out where I can put up these strings, but I very much love the tile idea, even if I don't manage to get them hanging.
I went through a phase of experimenting with outlining using post-it notes on one of those tri-fold cardboard displays that are made for things like school science fairs. It was nice because I could move the post-its around at will but I could also fold up the whole board and put it away. Turns out moving post-it notes around a board isn't much creative use to me anyway, but I can imagine a revamped version with small art tiles as a portable alternative to the method you described.
In any case, I'm thinking I might spend tomorrow's writing slot downstairs with the art supplies and see what I learn.
@Harirai Yay multimedia :) Loved reading that you shared this with your grandmother! My grandmother was also my first collaborator in art when I was but a fledgling artist.
I slam dunked my original post just before the café was about to close. It was a happy surprise to see that it inspired a bit. Then I decided to dig out an old handout that I gave to a few clients who wanted to know how I worked on my own personal, and gargantuan, speculative fiction octopod. I cut a segment from it, I hope this is an OK place for sharing it–
...Most importantly, getting the benefit of playing in natural media works best by staying uncomplicated.
Here's one simple low tech approach I like. Use large sheets of heavy weight 250-300 lb. paper suitable for brushing with water, as in prep for watercolors or acrylic inks. I like “real time” natural media, that demands a fast, not over-thought out, and effortless hand before it dries. I cut the big sheets down to a usable size and start with with applying a water wash to a tile before going at it with the watercolor, acrylic ink, Aquarelle pencil (colored pencils made for wet media), and even ground pigment shaved from a set of sticks, like the super vivid kind that come in a box in high intensity colors. For each tile that you prepare, use hues that reflect certain points in your story. I go after mood, tone, something that resonates with the drafted words.
Over time, I’ll get inspired to draw onto these tiles, or stick photos, hand drawn, or photocopied elements onto them. I hang these on the lines strung around my studio. If I find myself overworking, or being overcritical of a draft, I find that making these tiles pulls me out of the part of my brain that is weighing the sheer volume of the work, the weight of having carried this story around in one form or another (for much too long to admit here).
Clothesline grade twine, strung around in lengths of your choosing, can represent in each line any of the dynamics of story. Character arcs and timelines, the arcs of developing themes, environments/change of seasons, loose ideas that are still floating just above the “cutting floor”, and streams of ephemera for building speculative worlds, to name a few. Having a place to put all that’s swirling around in your head offers a good feeling in itself.
Fast, low-tech, simple, visual. It all works to put down those weights tied to the belief that rewriting is something really hard and sometimes a bit airless. All that's in our heads. The key is to connect with arts that will loosen things up, to open up to a sensed spaciousness with our stories.
Getting juiced to keep going with the process, seeing how our drafts literally grow and evolve before our eyes, gaining insights into new levels of what’s written, seeing the resolution, the closure, or the place for cutting to the next in series–if you find any of this happening for you in your visual experiments, then hooray!
Wow, thank you for sharing this! Fast smears of watercolor are my favorite medium, so this is great. It will take some strategizing to figure out where I can put up these strings, but I very much love the tile idea, even if I don't manage to get them hanging.
I went through a phase of experimenting with outlining using post-it notes on one of those tri-fold cardboard displays that are made for things like school science fairs. It was nice because I could move the post-its around at will but I could also fold up the whole board and put it away. Turns out moving post-it notes around a board isn't much creative use to me anyway, but I can imagine a revamped version with small art tiles as a portable alternative to the method you described.
In any case, I'm thinking I might spend tomorrow's writing slot downstairs with the art supplies and see what I learn.