Tag: art

Sucking it up for arts and crafts

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

What was a difficult decision you had to make?

https://thecoffeemonsterzco.com/blogs/midnight-blogging/journaling-prompts

I’ve been struggling for years with the mental hurdle of “I’m not going to do it if I can’t do it perfectly the first time.”

Recently, I had to escape that mental trap while working on one of those DIY “book nook” dioramas that have become popular in the last few years. I had assembled one before and really enjoyed the experience even though I knew that one was far from perfect. That’s because that particular book nook was designed similar to those wooden “puzzles” that are basically just a kind of advanced LEGOs where you need to snap the pieces together. It also had most of the scenery pieces pre-painted, so to speak.

But none of that was true of the second one.

Here’s the deal with the second one. It was a delivery mistake, and I hadn’t actually ordered one of them for myself. I had ordered a handful of different DIY book nooks as Christmas gifts for my siblings, each one lovingly picked out to match something they enjoyed. One sister was magic, the other was photography. My older brother got one themed after a Sherlock Holmes-esque detective agency. My younger brother, with whom I share a lot of personal tastes in hobbies (more so than my other siblings) got one that was supposed to be cyberpunk themed.

Well, imagine my surprise and delight when I eventually received TWO of those cyberpunk themed ones! I’m guessing there was an error in the inventory system that caused the company to ship me two identical items. My original order, which had been split based on where inventory was available, was sent from two different warehouses.

Since I hadn’t ordered a book nook for myself (I ordered and assembled something else that actually WAS the snap together kind) I did the right thing first and contacted the company to let them know of the error. They were very kind about it, and, since it was around the holidays, they told me to keep it as an extra gift. Now, I will freely admit that this was the result I was hoping for, but I totally would have shipped it back had they requested it.

I had ordered all these items closer to Thanksgiving, so we’re going to fast forward to about a week and a half ago when I discovered some problems. Those problems being what I’ve been hinting at so far.

So, I’m sitting down in my newly cleaned and reorganized hobby space, and I crack open the box for the kit. I pulled out several bags of different sizes, all filled with various kinds and sizes of wood pieces and random stuff, the instructions, and these huge sheets of paper that had all kinds of decals on them. My heart sank a little at the last parts because I started having flashbacks to cutting out things for the first book nook. Mild regret setting in, I decided to look through the instructions and make sure I had everything that they said I would need.

Imagine my dismay when the instructions (which had a section at the very beginning that details out EACH piece that should come in the kit) say I should have some glue in one of the plastic zip bags AND THERE’S NO GLUE TO BE FOUND.

That’s okay, I’ve been collecting hobby tools and adhesives for other projects, I should be fine.

After that initial investigation, I put everything away and decided to start over the weekend.

I should have looked closer at the instructions, because I completely glossed over the fact that I didn’t see the little nibs and holes on pieces that indicate they just snap together.

So, come the weekend, I get started and that’s when I realized what the glue referenced in the instructions was ACTUALLY for. Glueing together hundreds of little tiny wood pieces AND the paper decals that covered most of them. (Okay, maybe not hundreds, but there was definitely more than one hundred.)

Regardless, I had already resolved to work on it, so I dove in.

I cannot tell you how many times throughout this project that I had to stop and remind myself that it’s not going to be perfect and THAT IS OKAY. I also had to stop myself from giving up and just throwing it all away a couple times, but that’s partly because one of my roommates cats snuck into my hobby space while I was at work and made a snack out of some of the tiny electrical components that came with the kit.

Ultimately, I powered through the irrational feelings and finished the book nook, and even though it isn’t perfect I’m actually happy with the result. Making it through those kinds of difficulties also gave me a chance to learn something new about the experiences people go through when they custom build cool art things like these from scratch. If I ever get another one of these DIY kits, or something similar, I’ll have a better appreciation and understanding for them.

Artistic Inspiration

Taylor Burian1 Comment

What are your sources of inspiration? Why?

Apologies for the lack of a post yesterday. I spent Wednesday evening through today (so far) with my dad as he was getting some surgery and I just didn’t have the mental faculties necessary for most of my usual daily habits.

So, for today’s prompt I decided to pull from the official DayOne app website where they have a post for Journal Prompts. As I was scanning through I ended up on the Inspiration section and decided to combine a couple prompts, but I wanted to focus specifically on the artistic side of inspiration.

When it comes to painting miniatures I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from several mini painters that I’ve discovered on Instagram over the last few years. I see the different styles and techniques that they showcase, thinking about how easy they make it look, and I feel like I want to give them a try myself. Obviously, those styles and techniques of theirs have been honed over years of practice, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try them out to see where I might shine or need more practice. I’ve been good about not being discouraged when I don’t “instantly master” what I’m trying to imitate because I remind myself of these facts, but it also spurs me on to watch them again and again, to repeatedly dissect what I’m watching in different ways to see what I can glean.

In recent months I’ve taken to more general creative hobby crafting through the YouTube channel Nerdforge and the mind blowing things that they create. I find it not just inspirational but also refreshing when a wild new video is uploaded to their channel and it turns out to be something incredible like the full sized Warhammer “mini” they made. The ideas that get pulled together from different sources to create the final result is absolutely amazing and stretches the way my mind thinks about how to approach different situations with techniques that may not have been originally intended for the scale they were working on.

That’s where I’ve been getting a lot of my artistic inspiration these days, and as long as I keep watching these amazing people work, I believe I’ll always be able to find inspiration.

Favorite art with a pixel twist

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Who are your favorite artists?

Rather than go on a great long tangent about multiple artists that I would consider favorites, I’ll just stick with one because I find their style fun and unique.

If old-school/retro pixel style art is something you enjoy, then I highly recommend checking out Luiza Niechoda.

While not strictly “pixels”, the idea is there. Per their About page:

“Now my work is a mix of sharp lines and haziness, balancing between realism and hard-edged geometric abstraction. There is no digital process involved. Everything is made with paint, on canvas.”

For starters, green is my favorite color, and most of their works are in shades of green or accented with greens. Aside from that, what really draws me to their work is how a lot of it looks like you’re observing a pixelized world made real, or through some kind of magical pixel portal into a different reality. It’s like a combination of my love for digital media (video games) and science fiction/fantasy. The edges of reality, instead of going fuzzy and blurring, are made of hard edged lines that overlap in a way that might look almost like a whicker basket, but because of the colors it comes across like pixels. It’s almost mesmerizing!

I’ve purchased a print copy of one of their pieces, but someday I hope to be able to acquire an original piece. Although, I’d like to have a home to put it in first.

One word of many

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What is one word that describes you?

I’m glad this prompt doesn’t say “what is the one word that describes you?” One word alone is not enough to describe a person in their entirety, and someone might choose a different word to describe you versus the one you choose for yourself. Which is precisely what happened in a Leader Outing I was part of a long time ago when I worked for the “Big Red Circles” store.

I was a new Team Leader for the overnight shift, and at some point we did a group activity outing to a pottery store where we all got to paint our own mugs. The activity also included us passing our mugs around to have each person write a word or two that comes to mind when thinking about the original owner of each mug.

So, pick a word! Except “Hi”, the gaming controller, and the upside down surprised face for obvious reasons.

I’d like to think that all of these still apply, except for “puppy” because I never had one (it’s my roommates dog.)