New Year Wish

Photo credit: Henry Lohmeyer

Weekly Word: Favorite

Next Word: Welcome

Christmas Crafty

So after a trip to the urgent care center for the 103.2 degree fever, we still managed some Christmas Craftiness. Well, at least the 13yo did. I watched. And cheered. Especially for the bead weaving.

Illustration Friday: Home

Well, I'm not really happy with it but whatevs.

I wanted to do hand lettering but I wanted the type style and ornamentation to reflect my home—in Manila, as I experienced it. Hence, the Spanish colonial "ironwork" and tropical palm. Meh. #volume

My mood board...

Type Walk on Christmas Day

Some lovely gothic type and embellishments—more hand lettering inspiration from our afternoon stroll. Photo credit: Henry Lohmeyer

Hand Lettering Practice: Sweet

Sweet Mood Board:

Next Week's Word: Favorite

Penmanship Lesson Courtesy of Martha

We had Thanksgiving dinner last night. I know, those of you who know me know I gave up all that nonsense six years ago, by nonsense I mean slaving away for days and hours making the perfect Martha Stewart Thanksgiving, by the book. But Henry's company gives each of their employees the choice of a turkey or a cheesecake so on Friday, he carried a bird home on the train!

So we whipped up a Thanksgiving dinner last night. Turns out that's possible! No days of prep. We started at 11 and were done at 4. Who knew?

For the occasion, I had to dust off Martha's Thanksgiving issue from 1998 or something. Yes, I actually had a subscription. Guess what I found? A penmanship lesson. Of course. :) So thanks, Martha. For the turkey, cornbread and sourdough stuffing AND lesson on the lost art of penmanship.

Nothing is wasted

That’s one of Jen’s “T-shirt statements.” You know, like the thing you believe with enough conviction to wear on a t-shirt. Like a bumper sticker for your personhood. So if you’re run over by a bus wearing that shirt, you would be okay with that thing essentially being your last words, hanging like a thought bubble—your own personal billboard for people to people to remember what you believed enough to put on a shirt.

Nothing is wasted.

... not my first graphic design internship where for over a year all I used was Illustrator.
... not my first job as a designer where I used Photoshop for 10 hour days and 80 hour weeks.

I do know how to use the tools. I can digitize type. I can use filters. I can make crazy cast shadows  using masks and alpha channels. I can blend textures to get the exact effect I want. I could take 10 years off your face, easy! And prep the file to print on a bus wrap!

But what I don’t know right now is how I want the letters to look and how to draw them. Because this.

So I’ll be over here with my No. 2 pencil.

The Gift

I’m really ambivalent about Christmas. Note: I added that link because ambivalent is one of those words that people commonly misunderstand. And I want no misunderstanding here.

I LOVE THE SPIRIT of Christmas. Adore it! But I am repulsed by the consumerism and use of Christmas as an excuse for people to mindlessly move junk around.

But yesterday, I got the best unexpected Christmas gift! It was a gift of such thoughtfulness and care that I get weepy just thinking about it.

Here it is, a gift from my dear friend, Sharon Derry of Secret Leaves Paperworks: the Speedball text book published by the C. Howard Hunt Pen Company from the 1950’s. Can you believe it?!?!

I have spent hours and hours scouring the interwebs for just such lettering instruction and here it is, in my grubby little hands. It’s a Christmas miracle! #believe

p.s. I'll share

This is the part where I suck.

Have you ever listened Ira Glass’ thing on storytelling?

BTW, I love Ira Glass. I just saw his show, One Radio Show and Two Dancers last month at Wash U. Totally see it if you get the chance. Love the segment where he talks about passion... and that if you are lucky enough to do what you love for a living you get to do it day after day, over and over again until... you beat the life out of it. Or something like that. I may be totally misquoting him.

I digress.

In this video, he talks about how creative people get into creative work because they have good taste. But, when you start making stuff yourself (because you have good taste), what you are able to make really isn’t that good. Your taste is killer and that’s why you think your work sucks because it falls short of what you think it should be. So Ira says, a lot of people never get past this phase because they quit, thinking, I’m never gonna be any good at this. :)

So yeah, that’s happening.

But lucky for me, Ira reminds everyone that this is totally normal and the key is ... volume.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

I think he might also say that it takes a couple of years to bridge the gap so ... you know, don’t look... until 2017, k?

Weekly Word

I've been bitten by the lettering bug and really want to master this skill. What better time to start something than with the coming new year, right? And what better way to learn something than... to do it. A lot. And, what better way to do it a lot than to say, in a somewhat public way, that you will.

So I'm giving myself a once-a-week prompt to draw a word, any word, and post it on this blog. There's nothing like the discomfort of being not good at something... yet. Right? To illustrate, yes, I inked "Weekly Word" eight times. I'm still not happy with it but oh well.

This practice is for hand lettering. I want to stay off the computer as much as possible and really focus on practicing the craft of drawing the letters/words. No digitizing, no adding effects in Illustrator, no colorizing, blah, blah, blah.

Okay, so this week's word: SWEET

Illustration Friday: Sea

Excited to jump back into Illustration Friday with this prompt. I was inspired by the idea of illustrating old fairy tales rendered in a more contemporary way, like this one for The Little Mermaid and a fave KT Tunstall song.

Holiday Hand Lettering Experiments

I'm trying out some hand lettering for this year's card.

Sunrise, Sunset

... and swiftly flow the years...

The days are long but the years are fast. And this girl just had her bat mitzvah this weekend. Whut?! There are no words that can capture the fullness of my heart so I'm just going to stop here.

Your Emotional Wisdom

So awhile back, I was working on illustrations for Your Emotional Wisdom. I posted 12 of the final collection on Fine Art America. Kinda fun to see them all in one place.

Thanks for confirming!

Thanks for confirming! I know, I know... I'm totally hacking this email list subscription thing. But yes, this is Ria from The Printable Letter and I'm thrilled that you stopped by the shop and made a purchase! I hope you love it as much as I enjoyed making it.

xoxo,
Ria

Idols and Phantoms

Everything changes.
Nothing stays the same.

That's the truth that Jen speaks out loud here.

I'm amazed at the tug of certainty, at the lengths I will go to in order to land on some conclusion, to be able to weave a story that makes sense, even if I'm aware that the knowing is only for now.

As a little girl, I would spend hours and hours reading The Picture Bible. And like all the other little girls and boys in Sunday School, I would scoff at those Israelites when they convinced Aaron to make them a golden calf because Moses had left them at the base of the mountain to commune with God.

But now I read the story with different eyes -- through eyes of compassion for the poor souls who were left without a guide for forty days and forty nights. Who could stand it, after wandering all that way from Egypt already? Even though he sent the plagues, even though he parted the sea, who was to say that God would not abandon them in the desert after all... isn't that what they grumbled amongst themselves?

Certainty is a golden calf. It's a thing that, although it will not last, is at least something I can feel and sense, that gives me comfort and lifts the burden of an unknown tomorrow.

Certainty. How much energy or or money or time have I invested trying to secure it? How much of my life have I wasted running from ambiguity?

I'm beginning to understand that it, along with peace, and ease, and a stress-free existence -- these are the idols that I bow too. They are not real. They are phantoms that disappear as soon as I think I have them in my grasp.

When I think I know, when I am absolutely certain... everything changes.

What are your golden cows? Feel free to send them to me. Let's put them all together and build... a piñata! :)

This too shall pass

And then the sun rose, without my willing it to.

The shadows lifted. Unexplicably.

Life wasn't such an affront to me anymore.

Just as I was getting used to the dark, it too passed.

This too shall pass.

The message made several appearances among the stacks and stacks of letters for the hope jar. It was meant for me, to highlight that acceptance isn't just about the darkness but the coming of the light, too.

Just as Jennifer and Melissa promised in Your Emotional Wisdom, the sadness flowed through me. I was feeling sorrow but the sorrow was not me, as much as in the midst of it, that's what it felt like.

I stand on the other side of it, on a beach washed clean, like a newborn blinking at the bright light, not quite knowing how to be so tender in the world.

cozy

Since my last post, in which I was kicking and screaming and moaning, I'm pleased to report that now... I am not. I'm finding a certain exquisite beauty in the dark.

It's fascinating, this observing of myself as I swim around, upended by loss and grieving -- not just the physical death of people I love -- but other, psychic deaths. Letting go of seasons of my life, letting go of the life I thought I was creating for myself, letting go of expectation, dreams, ambition.

So stripped of those things, what's left?

Does that frighten you? To think that there is a place as dark as this, where we are brought to our knees to contemplate our bare selves? I suppose it's optional. You don't have to sign up for that program. Really.

I'm a little fuzzy about the exact moment when I myself placed the order for this much suffering. It might have been that time beginning years back when I started asking perilous questions like, who am I? And what am I doing here?

So here's some advice for the faint of heart. Keep the lights on and... don't ask!!!! lol

But if you just can't help yourself, perhaps it will bring you comfort to hear that after being stripped of those things, I discovered that I am not those expectations and dreams after all. And even having been stripped of ambition, it turns out, I can still get up in the morning and make a bowl of oatmeal. And breathe.

It may not seem like so much to you, especially if there is still some unachieved goal you are driving toward. But for me, this experience is profound... it's like crawling into a womb, a naked, barely alive thing. In the womb I was not my resumé, or my roles, or even my dreams and ambitions. In the womb, I was no more than a pulsing heart and a breath, quite cozy and content to stay in the safety of this darkness, accepting of this world just as it is. And held.

And that's what I'm discovering in this state of darkness as well. Acceptance -- of myself as I am, of the conditions of the world as they are. Just breathing.

In the dark

I avoid painting at night.

In the dark, the colors inadvertently get muddy, the contrast gets all flattened out, making it difficult to tell where one thing ends and another begins.

But for this piece, I watched the sun set beyond the trees at the seminary down the street, it's last rays momentarily blinding me with their grasping light through the western studio windows. I decided to keep on.

I was struggling with it anyway, wrestling with the forms that I so wanted to keep in the dark: fear, doubt, worry, danger... all the "UN" words... UNworthiness, UNloved -- the exact opposites of my dreams and desires. But is it really so binary? Black and white? Shadow and light? Inside and outside?

One of the very first exercises I was given in my freshman drawing class was the relationship between positive and negative spaces; the rendering of one defining the other. Is it the same with worry and ease, unworthiness and worthiness, doubt and certainty? It seems rather obvious and simple but truly... what is one without the other? What would happen to my experience of ease if every one of my days were spent sipping mai tais by the pool?

It's a common exercise in the self-development circles these days, to clearly delineate between what you want and don't want. To know. To be certain what's inside and what's outside of your boundaries. That was my intention when I started this mini-project and shared it with you. But what do I inadvertently lose when I put up a hard edge against perceived danger? And is there something I gain from embracing it all? When the contrast gets all flattened out... all of it begins to seem like part of one big thing.

Waaaaah! Say it ain't so!!!

I've been struggling so much lately with acceptance -- accepting that what I want to run from could turn out to be a blessing. And that trying to sift out what I want from what I don't want could be a form of trickery and manipulation on my part. That in fact, there is no form not shaped by it's shadow.

It all starts looks the same in the dark.

I read this quote from Janet Connor: "To feel really safe, you must first step out into the unknown, experience fear, and discover all is well."