google search how to vibe with the work itself
cravings, chasing the little beast, & corndogs for some reason
hey — may is half over! I am really relishing in the amount of free time I have in the summer. it actually makes me really dread thinking about my future work days! it's weird to think that this might be the last long stretch of time where I won't have some kind of job that takes up most of my week. that being said I guess this is a really good incentive to work somewhere where I don't dread spending a lot of time and energy.
I've done my typical nearly-obsessive tradition of writing out a summer bucket list, and planning out how exactly I'll accomplish the items on the list for each month of summer. most of these items are art-related in some aspect. I know it's weird and sometimes counterintuitive to operationalize so much of this art-making, but the structure makes me feel less overwhelmed with this huge stretch of time and possibility and good weather. at the same time having time in the days has made me jump into a bunch of internet rabbit holes, namely, ones where I look at artist's careers and daydream about how I might be like them someday. the good news is I've found a bunch of bodies of work and artists who I really admire. the bad news is this is not time I'm spending doing art and also I feel a bit discouraged. which I get is natural — we r social and you need to inhale in order to exhale, but I think I'm spending a lot of time scared to draw. and also looking too much at what people are doing instead of actually just engaging and vibing with the work itself. I think the trick is, now, to put in the work even if I can't maximize the time I spend putting in the work. it's not a curse to not be efficient when making art. I need to shed this efficient-or-bust attitude, because it stops me from working on projects I'd like to work on just because I don't feel equipped to work on them. the reason guitar has been fun for me since I picked up the instrument for the first time last year is because I didn't go into it with any expectations of how good I should be at it, or a set timeline by which I wanted to be able to be good. I just wanted to practice and make music.
the studio
i read some chen chen poems and talked about them very quickly. check it out here:
now that I've tried to do other things I realize this weird, fraught relationship with drawing is pretty unique to the act of drawing and painting itself. I recently found a new resource for drawing (yes…my go-to habit on the internet before I start anything is crawling around looking for resources and then trying them out for like 2 days. I am reading lori gottlieb's maybe you should talk to someone and I am right at the part where she is talking about how people need to spin on this hamster wheel many times before they can change. maybe that is me and I should be less frustrated when it takes me a long time to do something I say I'm going to do) called drawabox, which is the only resource about drawing I've seen so far that talks about the fear of drawing in as much detail as, like, how you should move your shoulder when drawing a line:
Our entirely natural obsession with drawing things that look good - to impress ourselves, to impress those around us, and to impress people on the other side of the planet whom you've never met - is above all else what holds us back. It stresses us out, and puts us into a state of creative paralysis. It pushes us to focus on nothing but practice, on training, on exercises, and leaves us drained. And worst of all, it makes us fear doing precisely the things for which we're learning these skills.
it goes into detail on mental health, burnout, taking the time to play, and expectations for yourself while also providing what looks like a really solid framework for understanding how forms work. here’s some exercises i did from the last week, which was basically just drawing straight lines freehanded hundreds of times:
maybe it's the nerd in me but I always feel really excited when there's a structured layout of work ahead of me because I know what I need to do — I just need to sit down and do it. and it's also reassuring — while I intellectually understand that there's no point trying to maximize how I do something, the weird soft animal part of me hasn't yet caught up with that. but I feel hopeful that things are slowly changing.
speaking of weird soft animals. now that I've moved back home from uni there has been a shortage of junk food in the house. and I have been thinking about wanting to make junk food nonstop. I feel, like, spiritually starving to eat something all the time. I say spiritually because my mouth is hungry, and my stomach feels hungry, but I would probably be full if I tried to eat something more than a little snack. still. for the first week of may I wanted to eat something desperately, all the time. cakes, donuts, deserts, cheesecake, pie, sausages, hotdogs, pizza, fries, japchae, kimbap, ddeokbokki, cheese, melted cheese on literally anything, sandwiches, noodles, I think my mouth's hunger trained my stomach to feel that metallic ache. anyway. I am starting to get interested in graphic design again and made a few works, and I actually did draw, too:
the gallery
music for the month, curated by me:
some recent favourite songs:
a reason life is beautiful
because I have silly friends who will let me bring plants into their car and knock dirt everywhere in the backseat. because they will drive me 25 minutes just so we can eat corndogs together. this week I learned that most houseplants actually need a lot of fertilizer to grow, and I don’t want to turn my own struggles into a metaphor about plant growth but maybe I will, or maybe I will just try to be more gentle with myself because who knew it took so much to change. yes, this soft glowy time is limited but isn't that why it is precious in the first place?
CORNDOGS AND TOILETS
CORNDOGS AND TOILETS