Pretty skies

 These photos are from Thailand, taken way back in May.
 I found them while looking for a different picture and they made me smile; I thought I'd post them while I'm home enjoying sunsets in the Pacific Northwest.
No matter how cliche they can be, pretty skies and sunsets are almost always nice.

Harsh Critique

Recently I was reading a story I'd written to Oscar (my son, he's 4). When I'd finished he was laughing and saying "Again! again!" which felt pretty great.

Then he stopped laughing and got very serious. His eyebrows crinkled and he paused his finger on his upper lip.

"Mommy," he said, "I'm not sure if this story has a problem."
Honestly, those words were also pretty great to hear.

Cheers to a critique partner in the family!

More color in Penang, this time using the Hipstamatic

 I took these pictures in Penang, Malaysia, using the Hipstamatic photo app on my Iphone.
 Pretty cool for phone pictures.

 My sister's been using an app called Instamatic. Supposedly it lets you change your pictures retroactively for similar results. I'm very curious if I'll be able to use any texture photos taken this way for my illustrations.
Time will tell...

Dragon Boat Races

 Last month my family traveled to Penang, Malaysia for a weekend trip to watch some Dragon Boat races.
 It's such an interesting practice. If you are interested in it at all, click here to learn more about the tradition.
 My favorite part of the experience was listening to the drummers beating out the pace of the strokes.
 We couldn't get too close to the boats in the race, but I did manage to see a few docked boats.
The boats have dragon heads and tails. So neat!

More crafty fun: Batik

So, like I've been saying, my sister is crafty -- like me.
 
So I had to take her to the nearby KL Craft Complex to try Batik while she was visiting KL.
We also took my son, Oscar, who loves art projects lately.
Painting with Mommy and Auntie Kelli was a big treat (he made 4 batiks!).
I made a tree of life with a labyrinth in it.



 
The craft complex had a new offering too -- they sewed our batiks into pillows for just a few dollars more.
 I added the ribbon and button onto mine. 
Happiness is making crafty projects with my sister and son.
(Unless maybe those projects involve bike trickshaws...)

School Visits in Malaysia

 I've officially made two school visits while in Malaysia.

 Both were at my son's school; once with 3-to-4-year-olds and once with 5-to-six-year-olds.

 SO MUCH FUN!

 I love, love, love working with kids 

(In a parallel universe somewhere I'm probably an art teacher).

I've held back on doing school visits back home because I'm an unpublished illustrator. But now that I think about this, why does that have to stop me? Artists do school visits. I've been a professional artist for a long time.

 So this has got me thinking and dreaming. I hope I get the chance to make paper with many more classes in the future.

 These pictures are of the board about my visit that the older kids put up for Family Day (didn't want to put the actual close-up pictures without permissions; I figured the board is far enough away for blog picture purposes). Below is the beautiful thank you card they made me.

SCBWI Malaysia

I finally connected with the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) in Malaysia!
They put up a booth at the Kuala Lumpur Book Fair that I attended several weeks ago (I went knowing they would be there). The top photo is of the SCBWI booth, the next two are random pictures from the book fair.
I chatted for quite a while there with the wife of a renown Malaysian Illustrator, Yosof Gajah (fun fact: Gajah means elephant in Bahasa Malayu, the Malaysian language). Yosof's wife, Zakiah, is an artist in her own right and offers batik classes. It was lovely to chat with her. Hopefully I'll get to try one of her classes out while I live here.
 
Then, last Monday, the chapter had a special get-together (they are just starting to organize regular meetings and haven't officially started having them yet) to greet Steve Mooser, one of the co-founders of SCBWI!
It was a fun get together and I'm happy to have mingled with some other artists and writers from KL as well as Steve and Sally.
Thanks to Linda T. Lingard, the local Regional Advisor, for organizing.
Cheers to SCBWI!

The School Of Hard Knocks

My sister and her husband have been visiting us the last few weeks.
 They just left yesterday. We had a super fun few weeks together.
When Kelli and I get together we tend to make crafty stuff.
So it isn't surprising that we had a few crafty adventures while she was here.
Like visiting the Royal Selangor Pewter visitor center (touristy? YES!).
We took a tour and watched craftspeople work away at making pewter objects.
Then we participated in something called "Whack and Snack" at the "School for Hard Knocks."
We got to fashion our own pewter bowls by hammering on a flat round sheet of plain pewter.
Too bad I didn't have any pent up anger to hammer out or anything -- this would have been the perfect place to do so.
I pounded my bowl into a nice partial orb and then opted to ornament the bowl with...
A knock knock joke.
Cheesy touristy goodness at it's finest, especially when you get to share the whole experience with your sister!
Oh, and kudos to whoever came up with the idea of decorating the walls with pewter hand prints of all people who work for Royal Selangor. I loved those walls.
FYI: the snack part of "Whack and Snack" involved tea with croissants. Yummy.

The Songkran festival in Bangkok

 Our recent long-weekend trip to Bangkok happened to overlap with Thailand's famous Songkran festival.
 It's a festival to celebrate the Thai new year. 
But it's also a festival where everyone and everybody throws water on each other in the streets for several days on end. 
I think the tradition originated in people trying to symbolically cleanse themselves for the new year.
But it's kind of evolved into a big nation-wide water fight in the streets. 
 
People get drenched, but mostly it's all in good fun.
We avoided the most popular areas to celebrate (figuring it was a bit much for Oscar, our 4-year-old son).
 Instead we joined in on some water play with the neighborhood kids near our hotel (luckily located in a residential area).
 My son had the time of his life.
 He even got the hotel staff in on the act.
 They got me drenched too.
 But I steered clear when they brought out the "powder water." I think it's just dish soap, but ummm... yuk? Does that mean I'm getting old?
 Hey, at least I took one for the team and blocked my whole family from being sprayed with a hose while we rode a tuk-tuk. Of course this meant that I was the one soaked by the hose right before dinner.


Don't these trees look like cheerleaders?

Maybe you don't see it.

Picture a cheerleader holding a pom-pom high.

And here's a cheer -- HOORAH! -- for any who need one.

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and the time that the tide will turn." --Harriet Beecher Stowe

Batik factory visit in the North

Painting detail by Yusoff Abdullah, a Malaysian artist
During my recent trip to Kota Barhu my family and I also visited a batik factory.
I've watched Batik being done before,
and have even tried it myself.
But this was a neat experience because the Batik being made at the factory I visited is the kind that I often see local women wearing.
It's not made for the tourist market, in other words.
It's fun to watch how fast these women paint.
And how fast they draw with the wax tool. I tried that, it's not an easy thing to draw with.
I love these open spaces where the women work, even if it was really hot in there. It was fun to watch my son's surprising interest in the whole process, too.

I gotta say it, I love traveling with a kid.

Kite Maker or Collage Artist?

Last week my family took a short trip north to an area of Malaysia called Kelantan.
Many artists around one of the main cities of Kelantan, Kota Bharu, are especially known for practicing several traditional Malaysian handicrafts. The painting above and detail of it below, done by a Malaysian artist named Yusoff Abdullah, hung in the airport at Kota Bharu. The painting depicts many of the local handicraft traditions*.
One of my favorites of these traditions is known as Wau, or kite making.
Kite makers use large wooden frames that they bend out of thin sticks:
And the patterns on most traditional kites are intricately cut out of colorful papers and layered over one another.
Here's an artist at work cutting a pattern using an exacto blade on a folded sheet of foil.
I watched him use a blade sharpener. It made me pause because most paper artists I know back home throw out their blades rather than sharpening them. (I personally most often use a scissors, FYI).
Here's a close detail to give you an idea of the layers of paper. Every color below is a different colored paper, glued on top of one another.
Inspiring!



* The signature here is from the painting at the top of this post. I mentioned that the artist's name was Yusoff Abdullah, a Malaysian artist who I could find little information on, which is why the uncertainty and the lack of links. Please accept my sincere apologies if I've given credit wrong! Also, please correct me, if someone out there knows better, I'd prefer to properly give credit and links if they exist.

Malaysia National Craft Day

I live just down the street from Kuala Lumpur's craft complex, called Kompleks Kraf Kuala Lumpur (basically that means Kuala Lumpur Craft Complex in the local Bahasa language). 
Recently they had a big festival full of artists and craftspeople from all over Malaysia, selling their wares and also offering demonstrations.
 
I only took pictures in the demo area, but my favorite tent to walk through was the tent full of colorful batik clothing.

Picture an entire gymnasium crowded with booths of swirling bright colors and floral water-color like patterns.
Many of the artists offering demos weren't around when I took these photos, but I was able to go back and watch others later in the day.
I especially liked the kite maker, who cut impossibly intricate designs out of foiled paper and layered the designs onto paper stretched over a frame.
Hmmm... it just occurred to me that it might be fun to make an illustration sample with one of those kites included.

Did I get that idea from the craft complex or by blogging about it? Either way, I'm grateful. It's fun to be inspired to make an illustration sample that's a perfect match for your medium and your current adventure.

The Crafty Lady vs. Ms. Snobby


One of my many Crafty Cousins (I’m talking real cousins here, I come from a very crafty family) recently put a blog post up wondering if she could call herself an artist. She likes making stuff (mighty fun stuff, I might add) and yet she was wondering if what she made was original enough to call Art. She asked how other people who make stuff come to call themselves artists or their work art. I like how vulnerable and real her post was. She got me to thinking in one of those raw, sincere ways that you’d share with your best friend, but might hesitate to share with your rough and tumble inner critic.

I was thinking, specifically, about this famous art critic person I heard speak in Chicago when I lived there, let’s refer to her as Ms. Snobby. Ms. Snobby claimed there only a few dozen true artists in the world at any given time in history and right now they were all living and working in New York City – because that is the “salon” of the current times.

I remember the amused, playful thoughts I had during this woman’s lecture. My first thought was, dude, this woman is full of herself! And not only has she discredited her own city and most of her country’s artists, she’s discredited entire other cultures and countries and traditions. What a freaking’ joke! Who died and made her the matriarch (although she sounded patronizing, not matronizing) of ALL ART OF OUR TIMES.

The feelings I had then could be compared with the feelings I have now when I hear a wing-nut politico speak wing-nuttery. I felt kind of aghast but at the same time amused at the sheer ridiculousness.

Anyway, when I left the lecture, I realized most others did not take the lecture the same way I took it. I remember fellow art student friends looking rather bummed out. They were commiserating in frustration, expressing gloom and doom. Like it was impossible to be an artist. Nothing they could do mattered.

This is my apron.
My eye-brows knitted. I couldn’t believe what a different take-away I was getting from Ms. Snobby. I felt light-hearted almost. She had somehow in one hour’s time given me complete permission to write off super high-brow snobbery forever. Because, really? Who made her the judge? She could go ahead and have fun with her obviously and impossibly narrow view over in her stuffy academic office while I left her stuffy lecture to check out an interesting drawing show at the coffee house down the street, not giving a hoot whether she thought those drawings were REAL ART or not. She could be the expert dressed in black, while I continued to be the “non-artist” enjoying other “non-artist’s work” all the while with my apron soaked in color.

And I guess that moment was somehow a switching point for me. I knew then that I was an artist, and it didn’t matter what any Ms. Snobby thought. It’s not that rejection doesn’t suck. Believe me (if you don't already know it yourself), rejection sucks. But grand sweeping rejection of entire swaths of artists and their work is flat out ridiculous. And from that day on I knew that no matter what rejection came my way, it wouldn’t change the fact that I’m an artist.

Why?

The floor of my studio the day I wrote this post.
Because,
Artists make art.
It's as simple as that.
And there's no way I'd ever stop making art.

Critics can try to make some kind of exclusive club for what’s art or not art or what’s good art or bad art while the rest of us can go on “loving what the soft animal of our body loves”  (to quote Mary Oliver in an out of context sort of way).

“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh.

Or, as I suggested to my cousin, if one really can’t handle the baggage that comes along with the word, "Artist," just don’t worry about the label and go on making stuff. Make what you feel like making. If you must give yourself a label, consider the label “CRAFTER,” or, my personal favorite, “CRAFTY LADY.” Because crafters craft. And that even includes doilies. Which is awesome.


Truth be told, even though I do consider myself an artist, I have a shirt that says “CRAFTY LADY,” and I’d rather wear it than one that said artist, any day of the week.

But either way, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m someone who makes stuff and attempts to bring a bit more color and heart into the world by doing so. No matter what any Ms. Snobby calls me.

Serendipity

This is one of my favorite pictures I took in Sri Lanka, just because it caught such a serendipitous moment of color -- the kind of serendipitous moment of color I'm constantly on the look out for and love to find. I just love the stripes of the guys shirt with the stripes of the tree and the red hat and the shorts that match the tuk-tuk perfectly. It may not be fine art or whatever, but it was a happy color moment.

My wish for you today? To dwell upon any happy accidents -- fortunate accidents. They happen more often than we notice. Or maybe someone who needs it most can have a little happy accident today. Is that a strange thing to hope for? No one hopes for accidents. But what about happy ones? Those surprises in life that are unplanned. If we never had happy accidents, we might never fall in love. So I hope for a little happy accident for someone who would appreciate it today. A good one. A moment of serendipity.

"Serendipity is putting a quarter in the gumball machine and having 3 pieces come rattling out instead of one -- all red" ~ Peter H. Reynolds.

Paper made from Elephant Dung

Did you know paper can be made from elephant dung?

 Indeed it can. 

I learned all about it earlier this month at the Pinnawala Elephant Dung Paper Products center in Sri Lanka.

 Elephants apparently have very inefficient digestive systems. 

 They eat tons of plant material (literally), but much of it goes straight through them. That is, after being chewed and pulverized in their stomachs (essentially beaten like one beats paper in a paper beater or blender). So paper-makers gather elephant dung, boil out the "impurities,"rinse the fibers, 

 beat the fibers (as I mentioned, the elephant got this process started in its stomach) using traditional paper-making beater machines, 

dye the fibers, 

 and strain them through moulds just like I do with my handmade paper.

 The paper-makers let the paper dry on the mould and then, depending on the desired texture, either leave the paper as is (rough) or ring it through a paper press.

 Then craftswomen and men make the paper into all sorts of handmade goodies: journals, stationary, picture frames, etc.

Who knew that *waste* could be so useful, interesting and lead to such crafty goodness?

So there's a *fresh* perspective on recycling for you.

(Note: did I really just write that and leave it for the world to see?)

Back to cleaner subjects next post.