Quinn McDonald's Blog, page 62

Fixing Your Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes. When we make them, we often hide them, lie about them, or cover them up.  Instead of  spinning, hiding, or rationalizing a mistake, make it serve you. It’s not easy, but you can face and fix mistakes, then grow from them.

Here’s the step-by-step to face and fix mistakes:

1. See the mistake. This sounds obvious, but the reason we make mistakes is  we don’t see it for what it is. We notice a mistake and immediately stop thinking about it, and focus instead on hiding it. That’s the dangerous part. See the mistake for what it is–a slip up you made because you drew the wrong conclusion, thought something wrong was right, or raced ahead too fast. If you don’t know what you did wrong, there is no second step.

2. Acknowledge your mistake. This is your mistake. Own it. You can’t fix it if you don’t own it. What is the root cause of the mistake–shortcuts, overwork, the wrong process? Find how it went wrong and you’ll know why it went wrong.

3. Develop a solution. Once you know how and why the mistake happened, figure out a solution that solves it. You are the only person who can do the best job of fixing your own mistake. You have more information than anyone else about your mistake. This should take minutes, not days. The solution may have several steps that need to take place over days, but you have to have a reasonable fix in place quickly.

4. Alert your boss first, team members second. Your boss needs to know about major mistakes before your team members. Smaller mistakes that your team members can fix in their normal workday can be fixed at that level. Going to your boss isn’t a fun task, which is exactly why you developed the solution before you left your office. If you dump the problem on the boss’s desk, you will be creating a panic situation and you will be responsible for using the boss’s fix. Your answer, because you are closer to the problem, is going to work better.

5. Know how to prevent the mistake. Besides acknowledging responsibility and knowing how to fix the mistake, you have to know how to prevent it from happening again. If your mistake is an emergency, this step needs to happen after the emergency is over. Preventing mistakes is the part where overwork– too many projects to be completed in not enough time–comes in. You can point out that you are concentrating on too many priorities and ask your boss to prioritize your workload. If you think everything is the same level of importance, you are headed for trouble. And you’ll be wrong. Not everything is equally important. That’s the short answer that leads to a big failure. Whether you need training, better communication, more responsibility, more authority and less responsibility, this is the time to point it out in a clear, tactful way.

—Quinn McDonald has made her share of mistakes. She developed the process of fixing them from experience. Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment, says Mullah Nasiruddin.

Filed under: In My Life, Links, resources, idea boosts Tagged: creativity coaching, fixing mistakes, making mistakes

Undermining Overwhelming

To-do lists are my energizing principle. Where there is a to-do list, there is a path of action. This week is lining up to be busy. With a class last Saturday, and class coming up in Madeline Island, the to-do list was getting long. The class on Saturday was the same one that kicks off the week-long retreat, so I couldn’t sent the packages ahead. They needed to be packed on Sunday and shipped on Monday. Today, as you read it.

Meanwhile, I’m teaching all day on Tuesday, and have to create two flyers for upcoming in-person classes, put the finishing touches on the poetry class, write the ad for that, too. There are coaching clients this week, a doctor’s appointment to get a prescription I need for the trip, I have eight articles due this week, nine if you count the new one for Somerset Studio.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. And for a while, it looked like I would. That’s the job of a to-do list, too. It’s not just what you has to happen, it also helps me know when each step has to be done. What looks overwhelming when you see the length of the list can look different from another perspective.

The other end of my logo.

The key to not panicking is to do one thing at a time, and focus on that. Today’s task was creating the final schedule for the class, day by day. From that, I created a packing list, then put all the items on the kitchen table, checking them off as I go, and packing them. It did take six hours, and every time I began to wonder how I’d get through writing the articles, I reminded myself to focus on what I was doing right now. Tomorrow I will tackle what needs to be done tomorrow.

No worrying about what isn’t done tomorrow while I still have work to do today. Tomorrow is set up, and I need to work through the list. Feeling overwhelmed comes from thinking I have to do everything at once. As long as my focus is on the task at hand, I can stay in action and move ahead.

True, there is not much wiggle room. But then again, if I move in a straight line, it should work. And that makes me feel . . .not overwhelmed.

-–Quinn McDonald needs to cook hummingbird food and then she can go to bed.

Filed under: Links, resources, idea boosts, Opinion, The Writing Life Tagged: overwhelmed, time management, to-do lists

Saturday Link Hop–on Sunday

Due to the power outage, I couldn’t get the Link Hop out yesterday. Starting the week with a good dose of creative expression is the best way I can think of to get a week started.

 

Painting © Sylvia Ji, 2012.

Sylvia Ji creates art based on Mexican textiles. But the women in the acrylics on wood panel paintings are overlayed with Day of the Dead skull themes and figures. The mixture of bright textiles and haunting skull lines makes our minds work in two different directions.

Ji’s first solo show, “Interwoven,” opened in San Francisco at the gallery FFDG on July 10, 2013.

Paolo Cirio tackles issues of privacy and accidental publicity. In his exhibit, “Street Ghosts,” Cirio finds people accidentally caught by the Google Street View camera, prints posters of them, and  sticks the posters (with wheat paste) in the exact location where they were photographed by Google.

Paolo Cirio creates Street Ghosts from images of people caught in Google’s street view.

He does it without authorization as Google does as well. I’ve seen airplanes caught on Satellite view, passing over a neighborhood, but have never seen a person. Cirio uses thin papers, printed in color, to create these ghostly images.

Chris Ballantyne paints images based on the emptiness of corporate landscapes. He focuses on the stiffness of coldness of the corporate “campus,” and creates landscapes with elements deliberately missing to force the reader to consider color and shadow first, then fill in what is important to them in the painting.

Three unusual artists toying with unsettling ideas and art. The times are right for questioning meaning.

--Quinn McDonald thinks it is art’s job to involve the viewer to ask questions and become curious, which may be useful in other aspects of life.

 

Filed under: Creativity, Links, resources, idea boosts Tagged: curiosity of life, Google Street Views, privacy, Unsettling art

Losing Power

Last night, while I was packing up to teach this morning, the light blinked, the fan died, and the room was suddenly lit only with the last glow of the sunset. And then it was dark.

The Valley at night, with lights

We have underground utilities, and no ice storms–and certainly not in July–so it took me a second to realize the power was gone. I glanced outside, and noticed the neighbor’s lights were off, so it wasn’t just us.

Over the next six hours, I discovered how much I depend on electricity. There was no way to figure out what happened–no TV, no radio, and no internet. Yes, even with wireless, if your moden and cable connection goes, you are without power.

The idea of “being powerless” became metaphorical. The clothes washer stopped, mid-cycle, and I was immediately grateful that the no-sugar, no flour seed and nut bars had just come out of the oven. No creative play, no searching the internet for creative inspiration, no answering emails. I felt sorry for restaurants and stores with freezers, for people in hotels and hospitals who were suddenly on emergency power and feeling helpless without elevators and TVs to keep them calm and moving.

I keep the house at 83 F degrees during our scorching summers, and the temperature began to edge up. It had been a “cool” day–it had been 98F at 5 p.m. but it was humid, so the doors stayed closed.

We went outside and chatted with neighbors, and then came back inside. There was nothing to do–packing requires light and a fan, and the one lantern we have wasn’t enough light. We would move toward an activity, only to remember, again, in the dark, that the power was out.

Forced relaxation and inactivity takes some skill. We started by jumping in the pool and listening to sounds we almost never hear–neighbors outside on their patios. Birds settling in for the night. Children laughing and running. The dreamy summer outside-living that most of North America enjoys in summer is our delight starting in October. After the pool, we went to bed, grateful for an early night.

I woke at 2 a.m. to the cool breeze of the ceiling fan reviving. A small flurry of activity to shut off lights, turn the air conditioning back on, set the alarm for early enough to finish packing, and go back to the deep sleep of cool, circulating air.

We depend on certain expected powers to make life comfortable. When it’s gone, it forces a new way of thinking and behaving. Not bad for six hours, but I’m glad the power is back. I’m teaching a class today and I need all the power I can get.

—Quinn McDonald is grateful. And busy.

 

Filed under: In My Life Tagged: electricity, lights out, power

Color Distraction

Spectrum Noir makes an alcohol marker that will give Copic a run for the money. Copics cost about three times the cost of Spectrum Noir. (At Dick Blick, a six-pack of Spectrum Noir is $8.95;  a six-pack of Copic costs $33.61.) For my uses, the quality is similar enough. Spectrum Noir is a little wetter and the blend is a little more subtle, but that’s the only difference in application.

Pricing varies greatly. The website for Jo-Anns sells a six-pack of Spectrum Noir for $14.99 and a six-pack of Copics for $49.99).

What I don’t like is that you can’t buy them individually, you buy them in sets or not at all. There are 12 sets of six color-coordinated ones, and larger sets of “brights” or “pastels” in packs of 24. If you buy all the six-packs you have the same markers as in the 72-pen set.

I’m fond of their instructional videos which teach you to put down the darkest color first, then blend with the lighter color, creating a smooth transition.

While packing materials  for the Madeline Island  class, I came across an interesting exercise that works for collage or just an interesting abstract.

Using Golden’s Glaze (in iridescent gold), open the squeeze bottle hold it over a sturdy sheet of paper (this was Stonehenge paper from the spiral block). Make a complicated squiggle, making sure to cross over the pattern several times. Allow to dry. Glaze takes longer to dry than acrylic paint. Expect days, not hours.

Once the glaze was dry, I used the Spectrum Noir markers to color in some of the spaces. Because there was just one package (Turquoise), I used Sparkling H2Os in other spaces, and two sparkle markers (in black and white) for the last two blocks.

You can see the blending on the bottom, right space. The top, left space shows two colors unblended. The oval to the upper right of the black sparkly piece shows blending–my first try.

This technique looks very different in different lights. It’s the same piece, but in the bottom one, you can see the sparkliing inks and the iridescence of the gold glaze.

You can also try the technique using black gesso in a squeeze bottle. Mustard bottles work well, and the Dollar Store sells sets of two (red and yellow plastic) for, yes, a dollar.

--Quinn McDonald is thinking of cutting up the piece to use in a collage.

Filed under: Creativity, Journal Pages, Links, resources, idea boosts, Product Review Tagged: creativity coaching, Sparkling H20s, Spectrun Noir

Having Your Cake and Being Slammed for Eating It

We are a crazy, schizophrenic, confused culture. We talk out of both sides of our mouths, and need a simultaneous translator into nonsense while we do it.

We criticize fat people we see in the mall, but the food court is packed with choices of fried, sugar-loaded, and crispy-salty calories.

A cronut is croissant dough, fried like a donut, filled with sweet, flavored cream, and iced.

Gluten-free diets are touted, restaurants highlight menu items; the same restaurant will have nothing safe for a diabetic to eat. Point it out, and the waiter may well say, “Gluten free is much healthier, you should try that.”

The news stories decry the horrors of our sugary, fat-laden diet, and the infotainment section segues into an article about the popularity of the cronut.

I’m really surprised at how many restaurants have one or two menu items that are safe for diabetics, in a menu that runs six pages. Salad dressings contain honey, maple syrup or simple syrups, or, “just a touch of sugar.” When I asked how much a “touch” was, it turned out to be two tablespoons in a cup of vinaigrette. Yep, vinaigrette. That’s about 26 grams of carbs in the salad dressing–roughly your whole carb intake for a meal. yes, I know, I’m not drinking a cup of it all at once. It’s still way too much sugar for a salad dressing.

Tomato sauces are loaded with sugar, and almost every meal comes with a carb-heavy side–rice, polenta, pasta, potatoes, bread. It’s possible to make a diabetic-safe dessert, but you’ll never find it in a restaurant. And yet, 25.8 million adults in America are diabetic and 79 million more are pre-diabetic.

We love our frozen margaritas, nachos, pasta and pies. But realistically speaking, with almost 2 million new diabetics being diagnosed each year, we need to start offering sensible food choices to at least provide an alternative to pancakes for breakfast, french fries with lunch and pizza for dinner.

–Quinn McDonald no longer eats food with added sugar or more than 25 grams of carbs per meal. She’s surprised how hard it is to eat a healthy, low-carb meal while traveling. KentCooks stocks a diabetic friendly fridge in their house.

Filed under: Food & Recipes, In My Life, Opinion Tagged: American diet, cronut, diabetes

Dejà View

No, it’s not a horrible typo–the galleys for the book arrived and I get to see how the book looks all laid out. There are photos still not placed, but the step-by-steps are there in black-and-white.

What I sent in as a document is now typeset and designed. Reading the words I started to write a year ago can feel like standing in a time machine, or in a tunnel with a strong echo. I am having dejà vue, a feeling of having seen this all before. It looks so different, but it sounds so familiar.

Of course, the inner critic showed up. The book is about him, after all. Who am I to write about ways to confront the inner critic? Who am I to combine writing and art exercises and write a book to coach artists? And who is going to buy a book that is part writing, part mixed media and a large part coaching?

A family member asked to see a copy of Raw Art Journaling when it first came out. I handed it to her, hoping she would like it. She flipped through it, page by page, then handed it back, seriously. “That’s a lot of works in there,” she said. And this one has a lot of words, too.

Most people buy new art technique books and flip through them, back to front, looking for images they like. If they find a few, they buy the book. Will they like this book–with all those words? It’s a coaching book with writing and art exercises. Will this work?

I don’t know. But in reading through the galleys, I found a sentence that rings true, even a year later. “We don’t know if our efforts will work. But we do know that if we don’t get started, nothing at all will happen.”

Everyone has an inner critic. That makes a big potential audience for the book. I have no control over how many people will like it, but as i read through the galleys, changing phrases to make them clearer, smiling as I remember the photo shoot, I am giving it my best shot.

–Quinn McDonald is entertaining her inner critic.

Filed under: Coaching, Creativity, Inner Critic Tagged: book galleys, writing a book

Learning by Heart

Corita Kent was a nun who taught art for more than 20 years in Los Angeles. Jan Steward knew Sister Corita and became the biographer using an interesting concept to create to create the biographs, Learning By Heart, Teachings To Free The Creative Spirit.

Sister Corita Kent early in her career, when she still wore a habit.

Jan would write down an idea, a sentence, a memory, or a quote she remembered from Sr. Corita, and toss it into a box marked with the name of a course Sr. Corita taught. The two women wrote back and forth about the book, until Sr. Corita died unexpectedly. But Jan didn’t quit or give up. She finished the book, which has become a cult favorite. The chapter titles were taken from courses that Sr. Corita taught: Sources, Structure, Connect & Create, Work Play, Celebration.

I’ve met Jan, and just finished reading her book again. I love the determination of both Corita Kent, who met considerable resistance in teaching art her way, and Jan Steward, who brought the book to completion.

Some quotes from the book for inspiration:

“Limitation is what differentiates a flood from a lake. In th emaking of things, limitations allow ou to choose from something rather than everything.”

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Image, © Sr. Corita Kent. Quote by Albert Camus: [I] “should like to be able to love my country and still love justice,”

 

“Everything is a Source: There are two objects to my left on the table where I am typing. One is a purple plastic ink bottle . . . the other is a photoraph of a bronze statue of Lord Shiva. . . Either could be a source for my drawin The content of the object will not determine the success of my work.”

“Artists are people who have developd their seeing muscles in much the same way as weight-ifters develop thelir lifting muscles–by constant, disciplined use.”

Jan Steward’s book about Corita Kent., from amazon.com

“We tend to think of play as abstract, without a goal, and somewhat irresponsible–while work suggests a goal, is specific and honorable. Because of this, play can be more challenging–even though we have been taught to perceive work as that challenge.”

“There are moments in the creative process when one is aware of great things happening, but I never feel that is the Creative Process. It is only a punctuated moment of excitement in the larger process. The hard times, too, are prt of the creative process; for example when I can’t sleep at night or lose the meaning of what it’s all about.

It can be a time of drudgery–a dirty, collecting time when I sharpen pencils or clear work space, but we know that somehow these things are necessary . . .”

—Quinn McDonald is amazed at how Jan’s book and Sr. Corita’s wisdom still rings true, decades later. She takes comfort in that.

Filed under: Coaching, Creativity, Links, resources, idea boosts, Quotes Tagged: Corita Kent, creativity coaching, teaching art

Ink, Gloss Gel, and Paper

Here are some results of some fun I had today demonstrating Splash Inks. The inks are pigment inks and come in Cyan (blue), Magenta, Yellow and Black.

1. Stencils. Put 2 Tablespoon of regular gel on a piece of parchment. Put four drops of blue Splash Ink on the gel and blend with a palette knife.

2. Divide the gel into three portions, and add three drops of yellow to one of  the blue gels.  Blend to create green. Put two drops of magenta into the other blue gel to create purple. You will now have gels in blue, green, and purple.

3. In a separate tablespoon of gel, mix in Pearl-Ex powder in Solar Gold.

4. Place a feather stencil on a piece of paper that is wider than the stencil. Starting with the bottom of the stencil, drag gel across the stencil with a palette knife. Add blue, green and then purple in different places on the stencil. When the surface is smooth, make sure the blank paper area also gets color, especially the gold.

Remove the stencil and immediately place it in a bucket of water to keep the gel from setting. When the print dries, it can be cut into pieces for cards, or used as a card on its own.

Texture:

Using the same colors as above and a palette knife, swirl the colors over a piece of mixed media paper. Allow the gel to be about 1/8″ thick. Pick up a smaller piece of paper and place it on the first. Tap the smaller piece into place, then carefully lift one corner and pull the two pieces of paper apart. Both pieces will have color and a great texture.

Marbling: I’ll give step-by-step instructions another time, but marbling paper works well. You can use this as a background for a journal page, to create gift tags, or for collage.

As does marbling fabric. This is a piece of cotton. I ironed it to heat set the colors.

You can dye larger pieces of fabric for clothing. I still have some work to do to see how it works with non-natural fibers, and to see how it stands up to repeated washing and bleaching. I’ll be teaching this type of marbling on October 19 at Arizona Art Supply in Phoenix.

What a fun demo it was–thanks to everyone who showed up and filled up the room!

–Quinn McDonald loves playing with inks. She is moving on to suminagashi, just to see what happens.

 

Filed under: Journal Pages, Links, resources, idea boosts Tagged: dying gel medium, marbling with inks, what to do with stencils

Saturday Link Hop

How did Saturday come around so fast again? It’s time to announce the winner for the Featuring magazine: Kristin Freeman is the winner–Congratulations and thanks for reading my blog!

San Francisco may be the City by the Bay, but it is also the city of almost daily fog. When I lived there, I rarely thought of the fog as romantic or beautiful. Simon Christen filmed the fog for two yeas, then edited the flowing, rolling, blowing clouds into a video. Jimmy LaValle composed the music, Adrift, for this piece.

The filming was done in seconds-long segments, and the result is the flowing, rolling ocean of fog enveloping the landscape and landmarks.

Stuart Haygarth is a lighting designer. He collects found objects and recycles them into functional objects–often lighting fixtures. He collects a lot of one object–eyeglass frames, bottles, and then uses one object type to create his work.

He uses only one type of object per sculpture.

On the right is a collection of found objects, sorted by color.

And below  is a chandelier made entirely of eyeglass frames.  The chandelier is made from 1,000 pairs of eyeglasses. There is an interesting metaphor in using eyeglasses to create a light that illuminates the dark.

Chandelier made of spectacles by Stuart Haygarth.

Alana Dee Haynes has taken ordinary doodling into the art world. And she does it in the simplest way–she takes fashion magazines and doodles on the photographs, altering them substantially.

The next step was interesting–the magazines asked her to doodle on photographs they supplied. She creates beautiful and mysterious art that combines photography and simple repetitive artwork. She has a wide selection of work, from designed “gloves” to entire color collages on her tumblr site.

The obscuring veil is beautifully done, and the cigarette adds an odd juxtaposition of humor.

Have a wonderfully creative weekend, whatever you do.

–Quinn McDonald is spending her weekend proofing the galleys of her book. Nothing could be better in the heat than an excuse to be inside.

Quinn will be demonstrating Splash Inks at Arisona Art Supply in Phoenix this morning at 10 a.m. Her next class, on Monsoon Papers,  is also at Arizona Art Supply, on July 13. See the details and register on her site. Arizona Art Supply’s Phoenix store is on the Southeast corner of Indian School and 16th Street in Phoenix.

Filed under: Links, resources, idea boosts Tagged: creative links, doodling art, found art, monsoon papers