Hello there!  This is a different kind of post….I’m going to share a project we want to do!

Um.  Oh wait…I guess we usually do that, don’t we?  But this different because this is a project we want to do THAT WE NEED LOTS OF HELP WITH.

Ever since the Collaborations post went viral, people have been asking me to make book.  “You should make a book!” they’d say, and I totally agreed with them because they’re all awesome.  We had a few publisher nibbles, but they all fizzled.  They said they weren’t really sure how to sell it.  (Do you know you have to have a TON of existing interest in your idea and a ready-made audience online before anyone at a publishing company will even LOOK at it?   I mean, how do new things even ever happen that way?)

Anyway, after many trying and much attempts, it occurred to me that I don’t want to make money on a book, I just want to make something that makes people smile.  Yes, of course I’d be happy if I could get it done through a big publishing company to make even MORE people smile, but if not, I’ll just be happy if I can put something good out there!  Something fun and inspiring that gives people a grin and makes them feel good.  Because that junk is contagious.  Especially in kids.

I was going to try to figure out a way to pay for it completely out of our own pocket, until someone suggested Kickstarter.  And so I thought I’d give it a try.  So I’m running a KICKSTARTER TO PRINT OUR OWN BOOK!!!

It’s going to be an 8×10, 96-page, full-color hardcover book with TONS of our collaborations in it, along with pages thick enough to draw and doodle on a few pages yourself!  I am very proud of and happy with it, and excited to (hopefully) share it with all of you.  It’s a lot of money to try to get funded, but it’ll all go directly into the project, and I think it’ll make for a wonderful and inspirational keepsake.

It’s not a “just for kids storybook,” but a collection of the drawings with the funny little sayings I add to them on my facebook page.  More of an inspirational art book, and will include some pages that are partial doodles from Myla and me that you can add to yourself.

I’m including a lot of rewards for pledges.  Like postcards…

Gift tags…

And doodle pages to draw on and get creative with by yourself, or with someone else…

At the higher levels, I’m offering CUSTOM DOODLES!  One face, drawn onto a print of one of Myla’s dinosaur doodles–$150 for 5×7 simple and $250 for 5×7 more detailed, and 8×10 for a pledge of $500 or more.  (I didn’t want to offer a handmade drawing from her, because–you know–she’s a kid and I don’t really want her to be chained to an art table at the age of 4…)  I’ll hand draw a face for you and blend it to the print so it looks like one of our doodles!

I am nervous about everything–it’s a LOT of work trying to get funded, along with fulfilling the rewards if we DO get funded, but you know–my husband (who’s the biggest fan and strongest supporter of our artwork, even from a billion miles away) reminded me that if my goal is just to put something GOOD into the world, then it’s totally worth it.

So please check out our KICKSTARTER PROJECT!  I’ll probably mention it a lot on Facebook and Twitter.  Sorry.  It’s only temporary.  And if you can’t support it, could you PLEASE at least share it?  I just want to fill the world with a little more “weird.”

Thank you so much for all the encouragement and support!

Wow!  Last week on Facebook, I posted some of the napkin doodles I do for Myla’s lunches, and it got so many positive comments!  So I thought I’d share some other lunchtime doodles with you.

But first, let me go back a bit….

For some reason, when I was pregnant (and then later when our daughter was a baby), I was obsessed with the idea of bento box lunches.  I don’t know why–but I thought they looked like so much fun!  How exciting to be able to be creative with your kid’s food, to have them open up their lunch to a nice little creative box of sunshine!  But sometimes as a new parent, the things you THINK you’ll do and the things that actually WORK for you are two very different things….

…AND THAT’S OKAY!

For example, one of the first times I made a school lunch for her, I put together a super-sweet, super cool bento box (a frog that I had gotten when she was still a baby and had no use for it)…a fancy fru-fru one, just like I had seen on Pinterest, with all her favorite foods in it:

And you know what?  She only ate the grapes.

Seriously?!?  I asked her why not the rice–she loves rice!  She said, “Yeah, but not at school.”  Okayyyyyy.  And the bottom compartment hadn’t even been opened!  And it was then that I learned another lesson:  If you’re going to use fancy bento boxes, be sure to SHOW THEM HOW TO USE THEM first. Hehehe.

So, yeah.  Bento boxes, as cool and amazingly creative as they are, just don’t work for us.  I really wish they did.  Not to mention the fact that she’s developed a super-picky kid palate and I’m lucky if I can get her to eat a PB&J.  (Seriously have you SEEN some of those bento boxes?!?  As beautiful as they are, I often think, “do those kids actually EAT that?!?!?  Our kid won’t eat ANYTHING!)

When we were kids, my mom used to leave little notes in my lunch, and I have VERY good memories of them.  …Okay, honestly I can’t remember what a single one said, but I definitely remember the smiles and warm fuzzies they gave me (thanks, Mom!).  It was like a little reminder that even if you were having a rough day, there was SOMEONE on your side.  Even after I got “too old” for them, I still couldn’t open a lunchbox without thinking of them and secretly hoping a little note was tucked in there.

I mean, uh–NO!  Teenage Me was waaaayyyy too mature for that.  Ahem.  🙂

So when our daughter started full day Pre-K last year, I wanted to leave her something sweet in her lunch, too, to let her know I was thinking of her.  She’s an only child–and a very social one–so she ENJOYED the idea of going to school and didn’t have a problem leaving at ALL…but a full day away seemed like such a long time!  I just wanted to put a little something in her lunch to remind her that I loved her.  She’s in Pre-K, though–which means she can’t read.  So what better than to doodle on her lunch bags?

Sometimes I kept to a theme.  The first one I did was Star Wars–have I mentioned she loves Star Wars??    Hehe.

Also inspired by the Lunchbag Dad, I did goofy little monsters and bugs and dinosaurs.  All things that she likes.  As I said, she can’t read, but she does know that hearts mean “love”…so I tried to always put hearts in there somewhere.

Sometimes the doodles would be related to the food inside, like this heart-shaped sandwich (I used a cookie-cutter to cut the bread), and the monster eating the popcorn.  Or from books we’ve read…the “good apple” at the bottom was from a book about teasing called “Bad Apple” that she really loved at the time.

More little monsters, animals, bugs, and critters…

I even used my trusty ol’ Sharpie marker on some reusable plastic containers…

I often visit her at lunch (which she loves), and for her birthday, I decorated her bags with little birthday alien monsters:

But as fun as they were, after awhile I started feeling a little guilty for using all the disposable ziploc bags…So I decided to make some reusable lunch bags, and drew on them with Sharpies.  I even did a little blog post about it, ages ago…

So now that our bags are fabric and already have doodles on them, there was no need to really draw on anything anymore….which kind of took the pressure off every day (those doodles don’t take long, but DARN!  Sometimes you just run out of time!), but I also kind of missed them.  So my solution came to me when I visited her at lunch one day and saw all the kids wiping their faces on their sleeves, including my daughter, whose face had become covered in peanut butter and jelly:  Napkins!

No, they’re not reuseable, but hey–one half-napkin a day isn’t too shabby.  I like to doodle little things that pertain to whatever she’s into at the moment.  And if it’s nothing in particular, I just make a goofy monster of some sort.  She gets a kick out of it, and loves showing them to the kids at school at lunchtime.  And from what I can tell, she gets the warm fuzzies from them, too…

Still, even after all of this, she rarely USES the napkins.    I find them in her lunchbox after she’s thrown all the other trash away, when she brings them home nearly untouched….

I mean, who needs a napkin when you have sleeves, right?  🙂

So, yeah.  Pretty pointless, right?  Why go through all the trouble for something that she’s not even using?  Well, simply because it doesn’t take much effort at all, and I know it makes her smile.   …And really, there’s nothing pointless about that, is there?

Some readers on Facebook have shared that their parents used to write notes, draw drawings, use special stickers, or write math problems that needed to be solved when they got home, little “secret messages,” or just smiley faces.  So do you have any good lunchtime memories?  Do you have anything special you do for lunchtime?  I’d love to hear about it!

Okay, so I’ve been really sick lately.   It was bound to happen.

I was lucky enough that when my husband was deployed the first time and our daughter was in her Terrible Twos–with tantrums, teething, and terrors at night, and all sorts of terrific things–to have avoided the plague that crept around other peoples’ houses.  If someone had the sniffles, I avoided them completely, and my efforts paid off:  for that entire year, I was lucky enough to have avoided injury–either from roller derby practice, or the calamities of the common cold.

When your spouse is deployed, being sick is sort of like getting shot in the back as you’re running away from the enemy.  “AUUUUGH, they got me!  Save yourself!” you scream, as you fall dramatically to the ground, like in a scene from a Vietnam War movie.

Okay, well.  That’s a little dramatic, but you get the idea:  when you’re the sole person having to take care of the kid and the dogs and the bills and the house and school and appointments and everything and you’re suddenly out of commission…things can go from bad to worse really fast.

Our kid is an only child, and because she is, my only complaint about her has ever been that she has trouble playing on her own.  It’s not her fault, really–being isolated indoors in the frozen temperatures of Alaska for most of her early childhood, I was her constant companion.  I get it.  So I worried when I was sick, that this would be an issue.  But this kid is CONSTANTLY surprising me.

“Mama is very sick,” I croaked, because my voice would only allow a raspy whisper (another dangerous disability when you’ve got a small kid who usually needs constant vocal supervision).  “Can you help me by playing on your own?”  And to my surprise, she did.  And there was much rejoicing.

And here’s where you have to “let go” a bit, and take care of yourself.  Forget what the house looks like right now.  Forget the mess, forget the dishes.  We dragged out the Legos, and dumped them on the living room floor.  I put a tablecloth on the coffee table, and dumped a bunch of crafts on it.  Things that didn’t need much supervision, like stickers and elmer’s glue and washable paint, kid-scissors, and construction paper.

Also, a friend had just cleaned out her craft room and sent us a LOT of craft things, so that kept her busy awhile, too, and required minimal supervision…

I let her drop the Alka-Seltzer Cold tablets into water and watch them fizz, which made her feel very important.  And she had fun giving me a spoonful of honey (especially when she got a little spoon for herself).

And OH!  The TV!  Our daughter will only watch two movies right now (she’s going through a phase where she’s afraid of “bad guys,” and won’t watch anything with bad guys in it.  Um…they ALL have bad guys), so all she’ll watch is the Croods and Frozen.  So we watched them over and over and over.  And I didn’t really mind, because she was busying herself doing crafts, singing the songs, and keeping herself occupied while I lay all day on the couch and rested.

When I was feeling a bit better, I kept her busy with another project:  I printed off some photos (mainly of myself, because hey–I can take a joke) on cardstock and told her she could paint whatever she wanted on them.  Her eyes lit up.

I drew a little with her to sort of give her some ideas, and turned myself into a strangely decorated peacock or something (not at all influenced by my foggy flu delirium, I’m sure).  She turned me into a purple cat.

Didn’t take much energy on my part, and I was still spending time with her.  I only did one, and she got the hang of it herself.

She asked for more, and entertained herself for a couple of hours, just painting and drawing on the printouts while we watched movies.

When it’s just me and her, I can’t really lie down and take a nap.  But I found I can let myself rest a little as long as she’s touching me somehow.  So I lie on the couch or in bed, and she sits near my legs and plays Ipad games.  This works for as long as I have physical contact with her–unfortunately, as soon as she’s up, I’m up.  That’s how my mama brain works.  Thankfully, the kid was WONDERFUL this past weekend and I was so very grateful for it.  I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have worked when she was two…

I have some issues with feeling like I need to have a handle on ALL things ALL the time.  But I can’t help it–with military life, I often HAVE to, so I have trouble letting that go when I’m sick.  But I forget sometimes to take care of myself.  For example, it took a call from my husband from Afghanistan to remind me to get a specific medicine, since I often get overwhelmed and forget it.

But being sick, it’s OKAY to let things go that don’t matter:  that laundry can wait.  No one cares what your dishes look like.  So your kid’s been in her pajamas all day?  I’m sure she doesn’t mind.  So we spent the whole weekend with the TV on?  We’ll live.  There are worse things out there than Sprout TV.  Are you feeling guilty for not spending quality time with your kid?  I’m pretty sure, with all the things in our life that we do, this one weekend of laying around the house will not affect her in a negative way.  Even Supermom needs some rest.

I tell myself all this stuff because when I’m in the moment, I have trouble believing it.  But it really is OKAY.  Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do just to get by.  As long as you’re not neglecting anyone’s basic needs, the rest can wait til you feel better.

Anyway, that’s what happens in our house when Mama’s sick and it’s just us.  What do you do?  Do you have any special magic tricks for feeling better and keeping the kids entertained?

Sometimes I see a project from another site that I just can’t help trying myself.  This one comes directly from Molly Moo Crafts, and when I first saw the little wooden bead necklace she made for her daughter I did an inner squee, and had to give it a try.

To begin, here is a picture of Molly Moo’s super adorable necklace:

Isn’t it super cute?  I TOLD you it was super cute.

So I showed the munchkin, and she liked it a lot…but, as usual, her imagination got carried away as she started making mental customizations.  “Maybe you could make me a Batman one,” she said.  “Or Robin.  Or some monsters or creatures or something.  Could you make me a pirate giraffe?”

Uh…  What?

As is often the case, a simple idea, when presented to her, goes in a multitude of directions.  So, following her creative lead (as I often do), I gathered my supplies (wooden beads, string, and paint), and made her a gosh-darn pirate giraffe (she requested the additional neck bead, which is a pretty cool idea, actually), although his face & nose don’t really lend themselves well to a sphere-shape…

On Molly Moo’s tutorial, she glues the beads in place, but I thought it’d be pretty cool to leave them all separate and have fun interchanging them each day.  I basically just took a strand, tied a knot in the end, and you can slip the different ones down each day.

We made a panda for a friend…

And the munchkin requested her own version, but as a pirate…(I don’t know what the deal is with pirates lately.  She’s really not THAT into pirates.)

And, as always, the obligatory C-3PO.  Have I mentioned our daughter is madly in love with C-3PO?  She is.  Which is probably why she wasn’t so impressed by this one.  “Um…Mom, he’s too round and he doesn’t have arms & legs.”  Jeesh!  Everyone’s a critic. 

So it seems like a super easy, super fun project, right?  Well, if there’s a way to mess a project up, I can find it.  At the craft store, I accidentally bought the beads that already have a shiny gloss on them, which I painted on top of, and sealed with varnish spray.  I didn’t think it’d be a problem, but after one day with a 4-year old, that thing looked like it had been battle-born and bruised, it was so messed up, scuffed, and dirty.  I finally went back to the store and got the plain ones…

These new beads required a smaller string, since the holes were smaller.  Worried about the knot slipping through the bottom bead hole (it happened with the thicker rope, too), I put a button down first.  I’m sure you could do way cuter bead things, but this is what I came up with about 10 minutes before we had to leave for school.  I also didn’t get a chance to varnish it.  Surprisingly, though, it came home with her from school fairly unscathed!

So there you have it!  A wonderfully simple project directly inspired by Molly Moo Crafts!  There are so many fun things you could do with these, and the kids in her class have fun looking at the different sides of the faces of the newest one.  The teacher even asked about it, so I’m sure they’d make GREAT teacher gifts!  So grab some beads and some string, some paint or some markers, and see what happens!

I have a new favorite hobby:  I’ve been pausing the shows I watch.  That doesn’t sound like much, right?  Well, I’ll tell you a little story about that…

Once upon a time, a million ages ago, when I was an artsy kid, I didn’t have much for artistic references besides what I found in my local library and Teen Beat magazines.  This was the Stone Age, so I couldn’t just google what I was looking for; there was no internet.  Can you imagine the horror?

I remember really once wanting to draw Kiefer Sutherland from one of my favorite movies at the time, Lost Boys, and not having much to go off of besides the cover of the video (Yes, I said “video.”  For you young’uns, that’s like ancient technology, pre-DVD, streaming video, and BR…).  I often rented movies from the library only because they kept the actual cover jackets to the film tucked in the case (unlike movie rental stores, who just printed the title with their own blank logo).  THIS meant that if I strained my eyes very very very carefully, I might be able to draw one of the pictures or characters from the movie that was printed on the back.

Another fun task was trying to pause the movie at a particular scene, hoping to catch the actor in a certain pose.  Here’s a funny thing about pausing a movie in the 80s that is pretty much irrelevant these days:  imagine when you pause a show, there is about a 5-second response time from the time you push the button to the time it actually freezes…which is a long time when you’re trying to pause it right in a very specific spot.  Imagine not being able to get the right spot, and rewinding (also with a delayed response) and playing and pausing.  Rewinding, playing, pausing.  Over and over again until you get the right spot.  All delayed, all very very frustrating.  But say you finally are able to pause the film in just the spot you like….You grab your sketchbook and holy COW you’d better start drawing FAST because not only will the flimsy nature of VCR tapes only allow for a single minute or so of pausing before completely shutting off the VCR on its own, but also: the already low-res image will start to get shaky and warbled after a very short while before it turns itself off.  So once you finally overcome pausing a movie in the right spot, you’d better grab & draw like a madwoman, because you’ve only got a minute.

Ahhhh, those were the days!

Oh wait—no.   That wasn’t much fun at all, actually.  Also, I’m guessing this problem wasn’t really much of a problem for most people besides artistic teenagers like me, desperate for movie references to draw from.  Sorry.

Fast-forward (with only a few years’ delay) to the amazing awesomeness of blu-ray, streaming video, and the internet!  Looking for an obscure image to use as a reference to draw from?  Easy, just Google it, and I’ll bet it’s there, along with a million other obscure things you never asked for.  Or you want to draw a specific scene from a movie?  Easy:  if you can’t find the image online already, just push pause and take a quick picture of it with your phone to draw from later.  Boom.

A very cranky Vulcan, from The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen.

Can you believe it??  Of all the comforts of modern times, for an artsy teen of the 80s, this ranks up there pretty high in my world….but maybe it’s just me.

Anyway, this brings me back around full circle my new favorite hobby:  pausing my shows.  I have re-discovered, through AmazonTV, the wonders of the Twilight Zone.   I had seen quite a few episodes from when I was a kid, and they stuck with me for ages.  So many great stories!

I’ve mentioned before that my favorite things to draw are faces from black & white movie photos.  And lucky for me, they have every season of Twilight Zone on Prime (which means no additional fees)!  How exciting for me!   And yes, some of the material may be dated, but the fascination with it, for me, is a new story, a new strange tale in every episode.  New people, new characters, new situations.  Fun little snippets of strange stories that never fail to hold my attention.

So lately, after the kid is nestled in bed, I sit in front of the TV with my remote and my phone, pausing and snapping photos for later.  Compared to what I USED to go through to get references, this is nothing short of bliss.

I’ve done this with some of my favorite movies and TV shows, too: Baron Von Munchausen, Time Bandits, City of Lost Children, Game of Thrones…

So.  You don’t have references?  You need some practice drawing from references, but can’t find anything to draw?  I beg to differ.  It’s SO much easier out there than it used to be, and there are SO many opportunities to learn something new.  There’s a whole WORLD of things out there to use as inspiration!  Sometimes, you just have to work a little harder for them…

If you have an Instagram account, I post a lot of artsy artwork over there (@busymockingbird), especially from the Twilight Zone, so come follow along, and join me in celebrating the weirdness!

Sometimes my little artsy project ideas don’t always turn out exactly as I plan, or don’t hold our 4-year old’s attention span the way I think they might.  Still, though, it’s all about enjoying the time together, right?

So I had this idea about Georgia O’Keeffe.  We had recently found this kid’s book at the library called Georgia in Hawaii.  Despite not being a huge fan of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to read about artists to our daughter.

Innuendo aside (seriously: way, WAYYYY aside), Georgia painted NATURE.  She looked very, very closely at nature, and found beautiful and amazing things there.  I thought it might be fun to see if the kiddo could look at things very close-up and see what happens.

(A quick side story:  Once, when rolling around in the grass as a kid, I rolled over and found myself directly nose to nose with a praying mantis who was very quietly and casually gnawing on the neck of a headless dead cricket.  He was chewing slowly like a cowboy, not even seeming to care if I was there, and suddenly stopped….turned his head ever so slowly….and looked at me, like, “what’re you looking at, kid?”  (Also, in my head, he had a voice like John Wayne.)  Anyway, the point is that I remember it VERY clearly because I was a kid and would never have seen him if I wasn’t staring VERY closely at things in the grass.  As a grownup, I sometimes wonder what magical worlds I’m overlooking because I don’t roll around on the ground as much as I used to…)

Ahem.  Sorry about that.

So anyway, back to Georgia.  The next grocery store visit, I grabbed a few very colorful flowers from the in-store florist.

When we got home, I laid out our trusty ol’ tablecloth, sat the flowers down, and grabbed our sketchbooks.  “Remember Georgia from the story?” I asked.  “Georgia liked to look at plants very very closely and find beautiful shapes in them.  I thought we could try that, too!”

She was enthusiastically game at first, really looking up closely at the little red flowers she thought were pretty.  I had paints out, but she preferred her markers.  With us, one of the keys of our art projects is that I HAVE TO DO THEM, TOO.  So I did.  I doodled some flowers close-up, while she doodled on her page.

But here’s the thing I forgot, and I’m sorry:  Um….I don’t really find sceneries and flowers very fascinating.  I’m very sorry and don’t mean to offend if that’s your thing.  I am very happy that Georgia DID, but I personally found myself getting a bit…well…BORED of the little plant doodles.  I really prefer faces and stuff.  And if I don’t like doodling plants, why was I trying to have HER do it?   So I was feeling kind of bad about it.  Like it was a lame idea.  Like maybe this one was a flop of a project for her.

And then I looked over at her drawing…

It was so cool.  She, too, had tried the detail and focus of looking at the flowers as a reference, but then her imagination took over, and she filled the page with dinosaurs.  And you know what?  That’s AWESOME.  Because if something you do isn’t exciting for you, you don’t have to suffer through it…just customize it and MAKE it fun!  Make it into something you feel good about.  Step out of your comfort zone occasionaly, look around & try new things, but know that it’s totally okay to stick with the thing you like most, and go add some dinosaurs to make it fun.

There’s no “right” way to do these kinds of projects with your kid.  I think it was the guys from Freakonomics who researched whether or not reading tons and tons of parenting books actually made you a better parent, and what they found out was that NONE of the information in the book actually improved your ability to parent, but the FACT that you went out and READ all those books or sought out information or researched things online about how to be a better parent means that you’re doing just fine.  Same with doing fun projects with your kid–the end result DOESN’T MATTER.  It doesn’t matter if you have a Pinterest-worth project to show in the end; the fact that you’re actually doing things WITH your kid is what matters.  And it doesn’t have to be in art, either….it can be in whatever it is that you enjoy doing with your kid.  The fact that you’re DOING it is what matters.

So there you go.

I hear ya, kid.  Staring at flowers=not that fun, actually.  But hey–at least we know now, huh?

Heading back to our comfort zone (and because Georgia has a really cool face to draw), we did a portrait of Georgia together.  Because that’s what we like to do.

And her flowers look like flowers and my flowers don’t have any special deep meaning, but you know what?  That’s cool.  We had fun, and that’s what matters.  🙂

I absolutely love when I hear that people enjoy this blog!  I’ve been artsy & craftsy for years, but pretty much kept it in my own little world. I kept hearing friends say, “Oh, you just do all those fun projects because you’re crafty…I could never do anything like that.”  But you know what?  You CAN.  That’s part of why I started the blog: to share all the projects I do, to share ideas and hopefully to encourage creativity.

I’ll tell you a secret about the stuff I do:  I don’t know what I’m doing.  Embroidery?  I make it up.  Clay sculpture?  Just messing around.  The thing is, I have a FURIOUS CURIOUSITY about handmade things.  I find inspiration, I research a little bit about it, and then I just jump in and give it a try.

Like with the collaborations with our daughter, it’s not so much the END result as the process.  That’s where the magic is; that’s where you learn.  You want to try sculpture?  Read a little about it, and TRY IT YOURSELF!

I have found inspiration in a wide variety of things.  I like to look closely at the work other artists do, and see if I can figure out how to do them myself.  At first glance, you might think, “MAN!  I could never do that!”  But if you erase those voices of doubt and just listen to the curious, excited voice, the “work” that goes into figuring out how to do something is not work at all!  The result of my experiments with embroidery isn’t as immaculate as the work that inspired it, but I learned so much, I gained an appreciation for the beauty and detail in what other people do, and as an afterthought, it sort of turned out cool in its own sort of way.

Recently, I joined Instagram, thanks to some encouragement from the host of an interview I did on Design Recharge.  I was quite resistant to it at first, because I’m already involved in Twitter and Facebook and blogging and a separate email account—the last thing I need is another social media, right?  And isn’t it all selfies and cats and posing and food pictures anyway?

Well, I was wrong.  BOY was I wrong.  As an artist, I’m going give you a quick intro to Instagram and tell you why it’s awesome.  (Those of you already on it—sit tight, I’m ‘bout to spread the love…)

Take or leave all the other social media, but for me, Instagram has been the single most exciting form of artistic inspiration I’ve had in YEARS.  (Yes, even more than Pinterest.)  Why?  Because I forgot HOW MUCH I enjoy and learn from other artists.  Not only just by looking at art, but behind the scenes.  Artists on Instagram often post in-progress shots on their pieces.  People ask them questions, and they usually respond.  And unlike FB, where your newsfeed is often bogged down by all sorts of random things, you can find EVERYTHING you follow in your feed.  “Liking” them is easy peasy.  And the good thing about “liking” them is that later, someone can see what YOU liked, and find new artists that way.

I chose to mostly follow only those pages that belong to artists.  Most of my friends & family already keep me up-to-date on their lives through Facebook, so I chose to keep Instagram for the arts.  So I see the pictures that other artists post, and it’s so AWESOME seeing them working on new things, trying new things, and showing everyone else.  People often ask them what tools they use, so artists will often list them.

You can’t use it from your computer.  It’s meant to be “on the go.”  So you can snap something from your smart phone and put it right up there in the moment.

Posted pictures are done only in a square format, so that is a little odd to deal with, for those of us who work more…”rectangularly.”

There are no links.  So you can’t just link to something and have someone be able to click on it, except for one link in your own profile.  This seems frustrating sometimes, but I think it’s there for a reason.

I didn’t realize until AFTER college what a positive thing it is to be around so many other artists and be able to see THEIR way of doing things, being able to try new things yourself, and being able to ASK other artists how they did something.  You sort of take that for granted when you’re busy learning yourself.  But once you grow up & move on (unless you’re in a creative group of some sort), you don’t get to see that anymore!  Artists either keep their process to themselves, or you just don’t get the opportunity to SEE that side.  So for me, in Instagram, I found a way to see that again, and I love it.  And I’m inspired by it.  And encouraged by it to try new things.

As an artist, inspiration is key.  Learning is key.  Practicing is key.  As is trying new things.  For me, I’ve never understood why artists would hide their knowledge from anyone else.  Tattooists are notorious for this—they’ve spent a long time mastering their technique, and have gone through the paces, sometimes with YEARS of grunt work before finally getting to even touch the equipment.  So they guard what they’ve known from aspiring up-and-comers who they think might be trying to take the easy way out..  Other tattooists worry that they’ll take the time to teach someone, and that person will take that knowledge and open a competitive shop, which might eventually steal work from their own shop.

I get that.  I really do.  But if guarding your technique exists only in the spirit of ensuring that you are the only one who can dominate your field?  That I don’t understand.  I propose this idea:  share the knowledge, share the skills, share what you know.  It’s a guarantee that the person you teach isn’t going to have the exact same vision as you.  So why not put more good artwork out into the world?  If they are awful, then it most likely won’t survive.

Suzy Hotrod is a roller derby rockstar, and she said something once in an interview that stuck with me.  Something to the effect of “I can tell you exactly what kind of skates I use, what kind of plates, what kind of wheels.  But that won’t make you skate like me.”  Sounds a little harsh, but what Suzy was saying is that even if you have all the “right” tools, you won’t get better without PRACTICE.  Without TRYING new things.  Without that furious curiosity to improve and learn.

I have often wondered if people are born with artistic talent, or with the right encouragement, if people could be taught.  My opinion varies, but often I think that even if I was taught by the best, the end result will NEVER look the same as someone else’s.  People have their own point of view, and teaching them might help them find a way to express it.  The key to it all is DESIRE.  Do you WANT to get better?  Do you WANT to improve?  Then get out there!  Look at what other people are doing, and instead of getting discouraged, be encouraged by it, and motivated by it to improve.  Share your art with other people!

You can ALWAYS learn new things.  No matter HOW good an artist you are.  Ask questions.  Give answers when people ask you.  You can have all the art supplies you need, but unless you have the DESIRE to create and try new things and change and grow and improve, then you just won’t go anywhere.  You’ll never improve.

So wherever you are, whatever stage of your life you’re in, find that inspiration, and don’t be afraid of messing up!  I’ve taught our daughter when rollerskating that FALLING IS GOOD.  If we don’t fall, we can’t learn how to get better.  Whenever she falls, I applaud her for a “good fall,” but what I’m really applauding is her having the courage to try.  And that’s what’s important.

I post a lot of different kinds of artsy art that I don’t always share on Facebook and Twitter over on my Instagram page, so if you’ve got an account, please come check it out!  I’m @busymockingbird.  Look around you–whatever’s around you, and get inspired!