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NewsletterLetting Your Creative Ideas Stew A Bit
Happy Friday – TGIF, right? I’m glad the weekend is coming around, giving me time to catch up on a few projects and just chill with my brother that is visiting from the States. All my rushing around and frenzy-like projects got me to thinking about letting things just go on hold and stew a bit. I wrote about getting into a creative trance previously and I think we all can relate to a similar experience. Your muse suddenly drives you to start a new project and pursue an idea that seems so vivid in your mind. You get into that mode of just trying to get it all out and that’s what I did with my paintings on paper.
I got into a creative trance thinking about the subject of luck, fortune by chance and how bizarre that people believe you can create luck even when they feel bound by the chance or fate in luck. There was this paradoxical and interesting issue of luck being random, you have no control – but with the lucky charms and superstitions people have it seems you do have control or at least some power to change or turn your luck around. I started researching symbols of luck and working on the paintings, creating lots of contrast in unplanned and planned elements. I collaged, I painted, I stitched the thread, I stamped with my cork stamps and I drew with pen and inks… then suddenly, I didn’t know what to do anymore. I was frustrated because I didn’t know how to finish up the set that I started. I just lost my mojo!
I’ve been thinking about this all week and I realized perhaps I just need to let it stew a bit. We often jump into projects quickly, but it can often take a long period of time to finish, even periods of forgetting about it and not working on it. Up until you are ready to finish it up or get back into it again. So I decided that it would be okay to have a bunch of unfinished projects. It’s not failure, everything is just on hold, right? I wonder how others feel about letting your creative ideas stew and putting projects on hold…or perhaps even just deciding that you will simply abandon something? I heard Ali Edwards on a Paperclipping interview say that she feels absolutely no guilt for not finishing something or leaving a project half-done… because she knows that she has already created great things in the past – I suppose focusing on what you have done, as opposed to what you haven’t. That’s sort of a great way to look at it, right? Such a positive perspective.
Posted on April 9, 2010 at 9:06 am | thoughts + discussion
Hello fellow explorers and creative minds! My name is Linda, aka tortagialla - a nickname my adorable husband dubbed me meaning "yellow cake" in Italian. I'm your not-so-typical Californian girl who took the plunge and moved to the Tuscan hills of Italy. Now I'm living my dream designing, illustrating and crafting full-time. You can contact me via email linda [!at] tortagialla [!dot] com
Sometimes I feel bad about getting distracted and not finishing, but other times I realize that the project just wasn’t as meaningful as I thought it would be. Other times I’ll be working on something that is holding my interest but it just seems to be taking so long to get to the finished product, because of waiting for paint to dry or having to do other things instead of paint. I get impatient trying to get to the final destination, and I think I could learn to enjoy the moment better.
Oh, and I’ve tagged you for the Sunshine blog aware
I guess we have to learn to read the signals from ourselves…interesting thought…
Oh, Bobbi! Thank you for the Sunshine Award tag…I appreciate the sentiment and so glad that my blog brings a bit of sunshine to you. However, I don’t participate in chain links/letters type of postings on my blog though, but I do appreciate your tag wholeheartedly. Grazie
This is an interesting topic—I often have to ask myself: am I putting something on hold (or wanting to give it up) because I’m afraid, or because I really need some more time to develop the idea, or is the idea just not that exciting to me anymore?
I think that the answer to this means a lot—if I’m just afraid, then that means I’m just procrastinating and chances are that the project would really be good for me. Like you say though, I often find myself jumping into projects quickly, and sometimes I do have to step back and let the ideas gather. Also, recently, I had to abandon an idea for a bigger project because I realized that I just wasn’t excited about it anymore. I felt much happier when I shifted to a new idea for the project!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts…yeah, I guess it goes back to reading your own signals, following what feels right…because it is okay to stop a project, put it on hold, etc… very cool.
#1 — I love the sneak of the art you’re working on. I’d love to see the whole thing b/c it looks lovely and it looks finished to me. I also love that you’re making something artistic about these thoughts you’re having about luck and symbols of luck. Makes me want to go play, too.
#2 — Ali’s comment in my interview of her was a breakthrough moment for me, too. It had never occurred to me that it was okay to just not finish something. I mean, I don’t finish things all the time, but I never felt okay about it before. That is really important for me because I have A.D.D. and I can jump from one interest/inspiration to the next within minutes.
#3 — Walking away from a project works for me in everything I do, from dancing to writing, to scrapbooking. In the next episode of Paperclipping (due to come out in 1.5 weeks) I mention how lately I have a complicated artsy project going on at the same time as a simple one because while working on a project I need to have lots of back-away moments. This is the reason I rarely finish a layout in thirty minutes. Lately I’ve realized I can back away by switching from my complicated project to my simple one. Then when I need to sit back from the simple one for a minute to let it process, I am ready to look back at the complicated one.
Thanks for stopping by my art blog, Noell! I love listening to the Paperclipping Roundtable podcasts and learning sooo much from my membership to the Paperclipping videos…woohoo!
I’m happy you like my little peak of artwork, too. I will have to give myself some time to feel they are finished and present them as a series. There’s actually 10 squares of paintings and I actually started thinking they would be nice background papers. Also, I thought they could be scanned in and made into a collage of inchies, which was a cool thought. My ADD-ness really takes me everywhere – ideas making my mind bounce from one thing to the next.
Great tip on moving from a simple project to a more in-depth one, so we can vary the range and intensity of what we have to concentrate on. I suppose we do that naturally, like when we need a break and go do something that is easier or more repetitive in nature. I think that’s why I like to have lots of projects going on, I can go to whatever feels right for the moment, so I’m not forcing myself to do anything I’m not ready to do…
Looking forward to the new episode! Thanks again for you thoughts, I really appreciate it!
Oooh Linda, I really like this post. I’ll need to listen to Ali’s interview. I really like your piece that you’ve posted here and I’m inspired to make some cork stamps too and get back to doing some collage. Unfinished projects rare really interesting. When I come back to an unfinished project it seems I have something new to add to it especially since lately I’ve been experimenting with a lot of new kinds of media. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Leah, thanks for stopping by! I really like my unplanned free pieces too, but can’t seem to get to the point of completion. I’m happy to have inspired you though! We have lots of corks in our household, so it’s a cool way for me to use them since I like stamping as well. I agree sometimes you just need time to get back into an old project…let it stew…
i think you’re so right about things just needing to stew a little. i tend to start a big pile of things and each little seed comes to life when it’s ready. it’s easy to feel guilty about whats happening or not happening, or forget the big picture though.
i have some ponderings on luck i’ll have to dig out some other time when i’m not so sleepy! basically i feel we can create our own luck by being big-hearted and wide-eyed enough to latch on to the moments that lead us to the places and things that shape us. some might say “that thing that happened to you was pure luck…” but somewhere along the way i feel like we must have worked for it in some way or sought out that “lucky” moment? i don’t know… hmmm… just some sleepy thoughts
Oh, love how you said we have to see the big picture…step back! I starting thinking about the cartoon of Grandpa Scrooge diving into his gold coin monies…only I’m diving into projects and totally can’t step back!
Wow, I had not that about that aspect of lucky…perhaps the opportunities are there but it depends if we take the opportunity when we notice it. Interesting! But then it feels like there is no luck by it’s definition of some random act…we really earn everything along the way?! Oooo… okay, so this must sound really lame, but discussions like this remind me of the college days where I would stay up all night having these discussions with friends…those were the days!