I'm a dreamer... happily stuck in the sand

I'm a dreamer... my head stuck in the sand. My sandpile is my oasis of dreams in the middle of the desert of reality. That's where I do my best work. That's where I am happiest.

And even worse, worse than just being a dreamer... I panic when my head isn't stuck in sand. I fall to pieces when I pull my head out and look around, blinking at the bright harsh world of reality. If I don't have a dream to bubbling away in the teapot... I'm lost. If I don't have a dream going I'm depressed and give in to despair... despite even being fully employed. It's illogical, but true. This freelancing can really be a pain. I wished it would surprise me with unanticipated pleasures to the same degree. Or maybe I just have to wait till tomorrow.

Heaven help us useless dreamers!

I should have built log cabins instead. That'd be something you can at least sink an axe into and carve up a big pile of woodchips.

I really don't have any problem with making art... or even trying to decide what kind of art to try and make. It's all the scheming about trying to make money from making art. That's the sticky bit.



I suppose I do wish I had just ONE particular talent... and only knew how to make just ONE kind of painting. That would make things simpler. Generally as soon as I've decided on any one style and have been working at it for a couple months... I then decide to drift over to the polar opposite. If I've been doing really sloppy expressionistic painting... then I think I ought to really change over to doing meticulous realism. If I've been doing traditional paintings on watercolor paper, I decide I ought to be doing hard edged digital cartoons.

So, my artist's life is a never ending charade of foolishness. Silly ostrich... just stick my head back in the sand and enjoy being lost!

Here's a fun painting I did over the weekend... paint therapy. It looks almost like the BIG painting had a baby painting. I need to order more big canvases.

Just like The Little Red Hen...

Just as our miseries are borne in solitude as freelancers... so are our joys. At least mine are... except for this blog, of course, and my 7 readers...

Today is a day for some celebration! I've just finished printing up the first penciled rough dummy to my new book and I am SO thrilled with it! I can scarcely believe I did it all myself.

Thank gosh for crazy ideas that work out... and for happy accidents that make up important directions in life. If I hadn't just happened to check out that particular book from the library that just happened to have the idea for the story that I knew I just had to turn into a children's book... none of this would have happened. It's a story about an early aviator... one who I'd never heard of... one who isn't even in Wikipedia. Hence the secrecy until the date closer to publication. I feel a little like a gold miner who's discovered where the paystreak is hidden. Or maybe I'm all wrong and it's just my talent that makes this story worthwhile. How would I know? I spend all my days alone...

It would be fun to do a series of books about historical characters. Why not? Usually history is far richer than fiction... and it's all there for the picking. I think it's fun to discover historical times and places. And just like the 1,000's of gorgeous buildings in the National Trust of Britain... all waiting to be used for backdrops to movies and PBS mini-series... history is a treasure trove of riches, freely available to anyone who can bring it to life.

I've been fussing over the dummy for weeks... with InDesign & Photoshop. But to finally have all the bits gathered together in one book... printed out and taped up and folded and set into a cover... it really does assume a new magical character. Pages that turn... the story that starts and develops and then is resolved. My own homemade book, soon to be shipped off to the editor.



Of course that's another story, as a whole new avenue of contention might arise. But at least I'll always have today...

I guess every author might always hope that every new book is going to be really spectacular. But this book will HAVE to make some waves! (knock on wood) It's just too big an idea... too amazing a story... all fit into 32 pages. And it's a real 'boy book'. I can testify there's a shortage of those in the girl dominated world of children's books.

And just like The Little Red Hen... I did it all myself!

Grocery lists and Picturebooks

Grocery lists and Picturebooks just seem to go together. I know they go together for me.

"She could illustrate a grocery list"... is a phrase often said about uber-talented artists.
"He couldn't write a grocery list"... is a phrase one hears to describe truly awful writing.

No doubt I've started a dozen stories by scribbling them down on grocery lists... since that's the paper in the kitchen drawer at 4 am when I have to wake up and write down some blasted idea that won't let me alone! The muse of insomnia!

So let's check today's shopping list... if I can find it for all the pockets I have to search though. (It's a special talent of mine that I can actually lose a grocery list between the parking lot and the door of the grocery store).

milk,
eggs,
butter,
green onions,
yogurt.... and the starting first sentence to that next book idea.

And usually after I've dummied up a book, the printouts get recycled and cut up into grocery lists... that once again return to the kitchen drawer. Hence the 'grocery list' cycle is complete.




I've long thought that I need a 1-800 number to call whenever I get some fool notion about a new story. It would be sort of a help line to talk me out of commiting to this ponderous new idea.

Why? you might ask? Because I know that I'll have to spend the next 7 weeks dummying it up in my spare time. Just the writing it is fine... but when you're an artist also, drawing the pictures can turn writing a story into something that's a bit more of a long lasting commitment.

Pictured in this weeks post are an actual grocery list story idea from my pile of golden ideas. Also there's one of my ideas for a painting that I made up as a collage in photoshop. Haven't got to that one yet... but there's something there... something mysterious... hmmm....

6 Things of Oddity

1) My name is weird... no two ways about it.

2) My real last name ought to be Knez... but my father dropped the K because people pronounced it as if they were sneezing. My grandfather came from Slovenia, which is a gorgeous province in northern yugoslavia near the alps. There's a village there where everyone seems to look a great deal like a Nez.

3) Apparently Nez is about like Smith in Navajo. Lots of Navajos used to dial me up from the phone book... usually collect from out of town. People refused to believe I wasn't Navajo.

4) I once studied to be a violin repairman. I play the viola... or should I say I played the viola. Haven't touched it in years... alas.

5) Brahms and Tschaikovsky share my birthday... they played the viola too. Weird!

6) Being an artist is weird. Making the art isn't weird... but all the scheming that goes along with making a living at it sure as heck is. It's weird to be so insecure about everything even after all these years. Why wake up at 3 am and wonder if I can even paint? That's gotta be weird.



This week's picture at the top is a sculpture done by my big brother... David Nez. He's an artist too... a fine artist. He's also an astrologer. Once he tried fixing his computer with a dowsing rod! That's weird!

Picture down below is one of mine... from a fun book idea I worked up.

Instructions Not Included

One of the real pitfalls of being self employed is the simple fact that oftentimes you just don't know what to do next.

I know it sounds simplistic and dumb... but it can really be an obstacle sometimes. Sometimes it gets so bad that one literally walks around in circles... getting nowhere, but meaning to go everywhere.

90% of the time it's easy to get through a day. Something easy, something hard, something different... a little painting, a little computer work... a trip out for sketching.

BUT... the other 10% it seems direction is harder to come by.

Don't want to draw.
Don't feel like painting.
Don't want to work on the computer.
Don't ask me to clean up the studio!
Can't start on that new project...
Nothing!

I'll find myself so undecided I might finally actually decide at least to go somewhere... but then I can't decide where exactly. It even gets to the point where I'll find myself at a traffic light and not know if I should turn left, right or keep going straight ahead. I still can't decide if I'm going to go to the park by the lake for a walk along the water... to the bookstore for a look at books and art supplies... to the library... whatever!



It can drive a person nuts, but it's only that 10% that's like that. However it does point out the fact that freelancing is a self motivated venture without any rulebook or instructions included.

The grannies at tea picture, above, just arrived in the mail. I'm real pleased with my new technique. Fast, simple, effective, colorful and easy! But it looks like it took hours... very foxy!

Spoilt by all the fun...

That's what I was... spoilt! Spoiled by those two days of whirlwind socializing out in the real world with real people. And that makes the return to the 'Fortress of Solitude' all the more difficult. Freelancing means being alone I think. Let's not forget, the ultimate punishment in prison is serving time in solitude... it ain't easy.

I know, I know, I can leave any time I like... I can go out and about... but in fact, there are hours and hours and days and days when the freelancer is basically stuck at home alone in their studios.

I used to dream about an ideal shared studio. It'd be somewhere downtown or at least in a lively location, with coffee shops, bookstores and lots of things to make one feel connected to the working world of commerce. I'm not sure I could afford to pay rent on such a studio though... and then I'd probably start bitching about someone down the hall playing Led Zepplin and drowning out my Vaughn Williams.


SO... that leaves the one salvation to the equation... WORK! Lose one's self in work... that's it. That's all we can do for most of the day.

I was musing the other day about how whenever someone is truly seeking something, it somehow will appear out of nowhere. This really played out for me last week, as the world seemed to almost be projecting my every thought. I was up sketching in my hideaway cafeteria... working on my usual wonderful productive dozen sketches, when suddenly this woman sits down a few tables away. At once I realized she was the exact perfect model for a character in my new book... and she was sitting in the exact correct position that she appears in my rough sketch! Talk about coincidence! Well I wasted no time in sketching her out... and got just the exact missing touch of reality that I was searching for.



Then on the way home, there appeared another character outlined exactly in a cloud in the sky... standing in the exact pose I had been struggling with in another scene in the book. It all seemed quite providential. This picture isn't the same cloud, of course... though now that I look at it, I see a very fun character's face in this cloud. Can you see it too? Sort of a Voltaire type fellow with a big nose looking up towards the left?

Ever notice how clouds seem to try one's patience... never changing... then you look again and they're totally different?

Books, books, books, books, books...

Just back from ALA mid-winter... and was that a trip! Books, books, books, books, books.... and editors, editors, editors, editors.

Believe me, here in Seattle it's only once every blue moon that they hold a national book event, so I wasn't about to pass up this once in a lifetime opportunity.

I got to meet tons of editors from most all the places I've been sending in work. So it was flattering to have them recognize me and have a face to go with my drawings and stories. There's nothing quite like a face to face meeting, instead of just letters and emails. I even discovered that the editor of my new book for Penguin was there! So we got to meet and go over some of the basics of my new book.



It was very cool to see all the books by all the illustrators and authors I know from online, in just about every booth I visited. It's a small world of bookmakers. I also met some authors and artists from my online groups. I even met a local artist one who lives right in my neighborhood. That makes it even a smaller world.



I got to chat up all kinds of famous publishing folks... Cooper Edens, who is republishing classic picture book illustrators, Alexi Sherman the star of native american writing.. and I even met Grover from Sesame Street! I used to do tons of work for Children's Television Workshop.

I kept wandering down new aisles and discovering new publishers that I'd scarcely heard of before. From the looks of it, there are hundreds of publishers churning out children's books by the thousands.



Anyhow, it was fun... even if I did start feeling like a homeless person lugging 45 pounds of book catalogues by the end of the day. Note to self... next time bring a rolling wheeled suitcase. I now have dozens of catalogues, half a dozen freebie booklights, bags, card decks, water bottles, pins and generally about all the 21st century trinkets that they traded the island of Manhattan for.

Hummingbirds in the Snow

Now here's a wonderful natural metaphor for hope... the brilliant flash of hummingbirds in the cold of winter. Even in the depths of snowy winter, these flashing brilliant creatures arrive like magic.

The amazing Anna's Hummingbird lives year round here in the Pacific Northwest. Even after watching them for years, their wonder never fails to delight.

They are such otherworldly creatures... so magical... buzzing around with aerial acrobatics. The humming of their wings is amazing in itself... you can feel it on your face when they're close. Sorry my digital camera doesn't have sound... (and that it's out of focus for part of the movie).

Trying to catch them on film requires either total luck or reams of patience. Basically they only fly down to challenge the intruder (me) on the first visit out each day. After that they mostly ignore me. And they only feed once every 15 minutes or so... since they've evolved to wait that long for their flowers to 'refill' with nectar. So that can be a difficult thing to time.

Day glow neon colors flash from their head caps and necks. The colors seem as unreal as the rest of their magic tricks. It is explained that this supernatural sheen is created by microscopic bubbles in their feathers that act to reflect light by the same means as a highway marker. This little film just barely manages to capture a bit of it.

At night they puff up into balls of fluff... yet I still feel sorry for them sitting out there in 15 degree weather. Apparently they go into a state of torpor, so I guess nature provides a way for them to bear it. The reason they can live here year round is that they also feed on sap from pine trees... and there's no shortage of those around here.

When two or more hummers get together, their antics are truly extraordinary. They go whizzing straight up 40 feet into the air, in tight twisting circles... and then come buzzing straight back down. Each trying to drive the other out of their territory. But the lucky winner sits faithfully outside, almost like an outdoor pet... and can usually be found on the same two or three branches.



The painting is one I did up thinking to try a new market niche... along the lines of Cicely Mary Barker. Just one of those tangents that never quite worked out... but maybe someday.

Scraps & Jam

What is art? I've decided it's mostly escapism... at least for me. It's either escaping TO someplace or escaping FROM someplace.

It's creating pictures and stories to escape from the world I'm in... or it's drawing or painting a picture of a place I'd want to escape to.
Imagination is the band-aid of comfort in a painful world of reality.

I suppose the proof that this is so is to just see how much more work I seem to get done the miserabler things are in my 'real' life. Just a little imagination can smooth a bit of jam on the hard burnt toast that day to day reality hands out.

Obviously it's easy to draw the conclusion from all this introspection that the artist must be spoiled, precious, overly sensitive... a whiner, a hopeless dreamer and afraid of the real world. To all of which charges I plead guilty.

But enough philosophy!



Here's some of the new books I'm working on. Looks just like a pile of scraps doesn't it? That's because it IS just a pile of scraps. This is how I luv to work... just drawing bits and pieces... at a tiny size or any size I like. I just draw what I feel compelled to draw... whatever feels fun and right to draw. Later on I'll patch it all together effortlessly and effectively in Photoshop and InDesign.

And the best part of working like this is I can ride my bike up to a cafe and hang out and draw away for hours and hours. Escaping the penitentiary of the old studio every now and then feels like a working vacation... believe me I already spend enough time in that room. Happiness is an empty cafeteria table by the window... with a pile of blank tissue paper to draw on, a 2B pencil, eraser and a good book. Oh... and a cup of tea. The hours are filled with the joy of creativity.

Turns out I get to go the ALA midwinter meeting here in Seattle next week! That ought to be a nice day out from the padded cell. I've never been to one of these book events, as they are rarely ever held in Seattle. What fun!

Freelancing & the Puppies at the Pound

It occurred to me, halfway through my Cheerios, that the puppy pound is am entirely apt metaphor for freelancers as a whole.

I mean here we all are at the pound... all trying to entice art directors or editors to notice us... and take us home to a cozy warm little book.

Some of us are just naturally charming... some have to impress the prospective owner with our ability to do tricks and roll over on command. Some of us are Noble and Heroic... some are Silly... but we're all basically kind of beggin' and at the mercy of the whims of our prospective owners.

Wooof! Look at me! I can do a backflip...
Wooof! Look at me! I have a shiny red collar and cute pink nose
Wooof! Look at me! I have a cute ear that flops over my eyes and I'm really nice

We mail out cards with our pictures... we take out ads in expensive datebooks with more of our pictures. Hoping all the while that someone will fall in love with the shine on our nose and take mercy on us and invite us into their nice warm kitchen. That's where we've heard we might expect bowls full of canned food and our own special doggy bed and we get to lick every nose in sight... and get taken to the park twice a day.



So every now and then a publisher might pick us out from the pound and take us home for a few months... just till the book is done. But then we most always have to go back... back to the puppy pound... back barking along with the rest of the pack. But thankfully there is a white truck that pulls up with bags full of educational kibbles and magazine kibbles and other kibbles that get poured into trays and pushed under the door every now and then.

Or... the sly pound puppy can sneak out of the pound altogether... and sneak along the avenues to find a home of their own... by writing their own book and drawing pictures for their own stories. That's what every pound puppy always wanted in the first place anyhow... a home of their own as an artist and not just beggin' for scraps.

The 4 Questions Quiz

4 Jobs I've had:

Custodian... or how I got through college, truly a philosopher's profession
Custodian again... I had 17 different custodial routes actually... long dark hallways late at night
Tour guide...
Substitute teacher... started me thinking about art for children's books

4 Movies I could watch over and over

Jeeves & Wooster
Amadeus
Sense & Sensibility
Cold Comfort Farm
Or any movie with a pastoral estate basically... for escapism's sake.

4 Places I have lived (apart from where I live now)

Denver... that's where I grew up and it still seems as close to home as anywhere, though I've lived in Seattle longest.
2 Manhattans: Manhattan Kansas where I got a driver's license at age 13... and New York City's Manhattan, where I could lean out my window and see the Museum of Natural History down the street.
Washington D.C... that's where I went to high school. Fabulous museums! I'd bus down to the Mall every weekend...
Salt Lake City... that's where I got my degree in English. A part of the world that seems forgotten, fabulous and forbidding....

4 TV shows I love

The Reclaimers (history, travel, antiques & commerce)
Ask This Old House (useful information!)
Mystery... Morse, Miss Marple... anything tweedy & chintzy & intriguing with crunchy gravel drives
Seinfeld. Seinfeld's TV address (West 81st street) was just 2 blocks from my old NYC address.


4 Places I have been for vacation:

Yellowstone National Park, Glacier National Park,
Banff, Lake Saranac, Arches, Zion, Escalante
Dinosaur National Park (rafting down the Green River)
Olympic National Park

Hmmm.... do I detect a pattern here?
I like wild places? I can't afford Paris?

4 Websites I visit every day:

I visit way more than that!

4 Favorite foods:

Cheerios
Mandarin oranges & green tea
Coffee
Salmonburgers with red onions
Anything easy to fix... preferably with a toaster.

4 Places I would rather be:

In a log cabin in the woods
In a log cabin by a lake or snow capped mountain
I always wanted to try one of those gated suburban Shangri-La's... just out of curiosity... island kitchen... decks galore... gigantic yard... 2 acre cedar roof... woods for my backyard.
A farmhouse in Tuscany or Bordeaux... 18th century preferably

Painting at the top is one I did about 10 years ago...

The Halcyon Days

Here we have it, the famous windstorm of '06. You'll note that the 100 foot tree is snapped rather than uprooted. Just imagine the force that must have taken! 8 hours of non-stop tree-toppling-nerve-wracking-up all night wind. This was preceded by a deluge of 2" of rain for an hour which had me sweeping 200 gallons of water across my basement floor to the drain for 2 hours. It needed a good mopping. I'm lucky my power didn't stay off more than 20 minutes... since 1/4 of the city has gone 3 days in freezing temperatures without any electricity.

And today's main problem?... finding a parking spot at the shopping center... not to mention finding the elusive perfect gift.
Xmas! Such a pain! Who needs it?

Best rule I've discovered... "Buy the first thing you see". It works about the same actually. This whole Xmas illusion is created by advertising.

How about a Holiday devoted entirely to engaging in irritating and expensive tasks to be performed in overheated, overcrowded spaces... with a ticking deadline and multiple impossible obstacles to overcome before finally making it to the finish line whereupon in the emotional spotlight of the season one is rewarded with a feeling of personal failure and the impossibility of things being the way you'd wished they might be?

No wait... they already have a Holiday like that. They call it Christmas...
LOL! At least the brandy & eggnog ought to be spot on.

So there... Scrooge has spoken.



Actually I'm very much looking forward to the timeless days of the Holiday. Working on a great new book... which will relish all the timeless days it can find.

The Halcyon Days, my favorite... that time between Xmas and New Years. The Halcyon Days encompass the fourteen-day period centered on the Winter Solstice when the sea is commanded to be calm and the wind light by none other than Aeolus, keeper of the winds and one of the lesser Greek deities.

Whew! I'm ready for that...