So how has it worked out?

Well, sometimes I’ve cheated. Especially when I worked on the watercolour studies of trees, that lead to the image “Blue Branches”. I spent a lot longer than 15 minutes on these studies, but each time I started working on them, I thought to myself that “I only need to put in quarter of an hour”, and perhaps that got me going long enough to get absorbed and into a state of flow…

It’s been a joy for me to document my creative process and to show it to my visitors. I feel that the creative work I do, even in small blocks of time, was made visible through this project, and it was empowering to see that even when time was short, I had indeed been developing my creative ideas.

I also felt it was very rewarding to prioritise my personal creativity in this way. No, cooking or playing with children or picking a fabric for a sofa did not count although I think all these things are creative activities.

Turning this project into something I blogged about, rather than simply doing on my own, did have an influence on the outcome. On one hand, blogging about it took time too, to add to the actual Creative Minutes. On the other hand, it made me accountable, and helped me stay on track. And it made me feel less shy about showing my unfinished work to the world, the creative process.

It’s been fun to share this process here on my blog, but I think that if I continued blogging about it daily, I would risk that it turning into being “for show and not for blow” so I’m thinking of continuing my Creative Minutes in an offline journal in the future, just to keep for myself. Actually, perhaps I’ll blog about it again, but not on a permanent basis.

My blogging activities are winding down now and I’ll be focusing on completing work that needs to be finished before the holidays, redecorating the studio, migrating to brand new iMacs as well as sending a winter holiday letter to members of Club Marmalade Moon, releasing two winter wonderland wallpapers, and preparing for Christmas. I can’t wait to start the New Year making something with the pattern that emerged in The Full Cold Moon! Wait, did I say something about slowing down?

Blue Branches

I’ve continued my studies of the sky and trees that I worked on last Thursday and yesterday, and something happened with theses shades of blue that I’m very happy with! This is IT! And I’m going to make a wallpaper and a calendar for December with this design. So keep a lookout for the new desktop art!

Today I’ve been experimenting with layers. Trees. Silhouettes. Winter. Paint. Bare branches. Photography.

Shades of brown and a blue. A watercolour sky. A crisp and cold winters day.

One of the dragons from The Nine Dragons handscroll (九龙图／九龍圖), painted by the Song-Dynasty Chinese artist Chen Rong (陈容／陳容) in 1244 CE.

After trying, without success, to photograph birds this Saturday, I’ve still been thinking about them. Birds. And trees. Light and dark. So today I’ve been reading about mythical firebirds with brightly coloured plumage. The Phoenix lives a long life, and then is consumed by flames of its own making, only to rise again from the ashes. This lonely bird (there is only one Phoenix) is a universal symbol of the sun, mystical rebirth, resurrection and immortality and represents a cyclical process of life from death.

I discovered that the firebird is found in many cultures, the earliest found in the Egyptian Bennu (meaning “to rise brilliantly,” or “to shine”), the soul of the sun god Ra. The Persian sacred bird is called Huma or “the bird of paradise” or “bird of fortune” and looks similar to a heron. Compassionate Huma is said to have both the male and female natures in one body, each nature having one wing and one leg.

Death of a Phoenix, burning in the flames.

The Greeks and later the Romans called their firebird Phoenix, φοίνιξ, meaning the color purple-red or crimson and pictured the bird more like a peacock or an eagle. According to Greek legend, the Phoenix lived in Arabia close to a cool well. Every morning at dawn, it bathes in the water of the well and sings such a delightful and sweet song that Apollo (the god of light and the sun), would stop his chariot (the sun) to listen to the enchanting song.

Fenghuang is the Chinese correspondence to the phoenix, a chimera composited of many birds including the head of a golden pheasant, the body of a mandarin duck, the tail of a peacock, the legs of a crane, the mouth of a parrot, and the wings of a swallow. Gentle and immortal Fenghuang brings good fortunes and the expression “Dragon and Phoenix” signifies wedded bliss. And then I started to read about Chinese dragons, with their long, serpentine bodies, a supernatural or spiritual symbol of heavenly power… And all this started with flocks of birds that refused to let themselves be photographed.

Detail of the painting The Nine Dragons, by Chen Rong (active c. 1235–1260), painted in 1244 during the Southern Song Dynasty. The painting was done with ink on paper. It is now located in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

iPhone photography: A bare tree and blue sky.

There has been four hours of sunlight in November… no wonder I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather! I was sort of glad to get it in black and white today, just to know that I wasn’t imagining it! SMHI (the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute) reported that so far, there have been four hours of sunlight in Stockholm during November. The average apparently is 54 hours of sunlight.

But today it was sunny and the sky was blue! So in one single day there was more sunlight than there has been for the rest of the whole month!

Tomorrow a rain and snowstorm is predicted, and the rest of November is expected to be scarce on sunlight, so of course I had to go for a long walk today! I took lots of photos with the camera in my mobile phone, most didn’t come out very well as I was perusing birds, and they don’t tend to pose and smile at the camera!

Today the French theme took off again. First a stop at the absolutely wonderful café and restaurant Petite France, (check out the baker Sebastien Boudet’s delicious blog Un peu, beaucoup, passionement, à la folie) for café au lait and croissants, Pain au Chocolat. Then past the City Hall, through the Old Town ending up at the cinema Victoria and Coco Before Chanel (to see a movie trailer click here).

What an inspiring day!

iPhone photography: The Victoria Cinema

Returning from the café balancing feta cheese sandwiches and coffee for lunch, I had to stop and dig out my camera when I saw this hedge.