The Creative Muse

I haven’t worked on my photo book project for six weeks. And I was beginning to wonder when I would feel the urge to come back to work on it. I’ve been feeling a bit discouraged and lost and not sure what my next steps would be. Yesterday I talked a bit about how I lost my enthusiasm for the project with my Artist Way group. Apparently that’s what I needed to bring back my curiosity and interest in the project. I feel like I’ve once again found

The Creative Muse.

Last time I worked on the project I tried an experiment where I printed the pages on 5×7 photo paper and then glued the photos to handmade watercolor paper.

I wasn’t totally happy with the results of that experiment. Though I liked the feel and texture of the watercolor paper I didn’t like the look of having a photo glued on each page of the book. I also didn’t like the thickness of the resulting pages.

So today I set up a template that would use the 13×19 inch Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique II paper that I bought for this project to create two two-page spreads on a single sheet of the photo paper.

I laid out the pages in Photoshop and though my layout was not perfect, it was good enough for this experiment.

What I Learned…

After I printed the page spreads, all I needed to do was cut the two page spreads apart and then fold them in the middle. Here’s what I learned from that process:

1. I like the look of the photos printed directly on the page
2. Laying out the pages will take great care. I will need to check, check again, and check one more time that everything is as I want it to be
3. Cutting the pages with a rotary quilting cutter does NOT work well. It takes many repeated efforts to get the paper completely cut and leaves little uneven squiggles where the path varied slightly between efforts.
4. When folded, the photo paper cracks in the middle, creating an unsightly fold. This means I need to look at a different construction technique. I’m back to creating single pages and connecting them in the center. I’ll need to revisit one of my online book-making classes and buy additional supplies to make this work.
5. Because the photo paper is coated on only one side, if I used this method I would either have to glue pages together which would create problems because of the thickness of the paper would make the edges uneven. Or I could have blank pages between each two-page spread—I don’t think I would like that. The changes I plan make to deal with issue 4 above will also address this issue (I think).
6. I love the Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique II paper for this project! I had intended to get the mat version of the paper but mistakenly ordered more of a semi-gloss version. It looks even better than the mat version that I tested earlier. It is sharper and has more dynamic range, definitely a happy mistake.

Why am I sharing all these details?

It’s not that I think all who read this blog will go out and try to create a hand-made book. I don’t. But I think that too often we imagine other people’s creative process is easier than our own. It’s not. Everyone has times when they “lose” their creative muse and enthusiasm for creating. And everyone gets stuck and makes mistakes.

Sometimes you need to take a break, like I did. But I think what really got me over the hump of resistance this time was talking with my Artist Way friends about how I was stuck and why I felt so stuck. No one gave me advice on how to proceed or what to do next. They just listened and that was exactly what I needed.

When it seems that the obstacles to creating are too big for you to overcome I suggest…

1. Talk to a creative friend (or friends) that you trust about how you’re stuck and how you’re feeling.
2. Think about one little experiment that you can do that will move you forward. Then make that experiment.
3. Intentionally make mistakes or do something that you expect will fail. Sometimes doing something (anything really) can help you get unstuck.
4. Above all, be kind to yourself.

A poem for today…

This poem is not at all related to today’s topic. I just discovered it this morning and loved it. Perhaps you will also enjoy it…

The Blue House

It is night with glaring sunshine. I stand in the woods and look towards my house with its misty blue walls. As though I were recently dead and saw the house from a new angle.

It has stood for more than eighty summers. Its timber has been impregnated, four times with joy and three times with sorrow. When someone who has lived in the house dies it is repainted. The dead person paints it himself, without a brush,  from the inside.

On the other side is open terrain. Formerly a garden, now wilderness. A still surf of weed, pagodas of weed, an unfurling body of text, Upanishades of weed, a Viking fleet of weed, dragon heads, lances, an empire of weed.

Above the overgrown garden flutters the shadow of a boomerang, thrown again and again. It is related to someone who lived in the house long before my time. Almost a child. An impulse issues from him, a thought, a thought of will: “create. . .draw. ..” In order to escape his destiny in time.

The house resembles a child’s drawing. A deputizing childishness which grew forth because someone prematurely renounced the charge of being a child. Open the doors, enter! Inside unrest dwells in the ceiling and peace in the walls. Above the bed there hangs an amateur painting representing a ship with seventeen sails, rough sea and a wind that the gilded frame cannot subdue.

It is always so early in here, it is before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. I am grateful for this life! And yet I miss the alternatives. All sketches wish to be real.

A motor far out on the water extends the horizon of the summer night. Both joy and sorrow swell in the magnifying glass of the dew. We do not actually know it, but we sense it: our life has a sister vessel which plies an entirely different route. While the sun burns behind the islands.

   — Tomas Tranströmer