Clara Lieu's Blog, page 7

Quiet Moments of Drawing

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When you work on site in a public space, it’s common for people who pass by to make comments about your drawing, sometimes to the point where it’s so distracting that you feel like you can’t be productive with your drawings.  I lived in Italy for 9 months during my junior year at art school, and many of the sites I drew at were so packed with tourists that frequently there would be far more foreigners present that native Italians. It was rare for me to be able to draw at these sites and not be interrupted continuously by commenting tourists.

By contrast, I can probably count on one hand the number of times that people have commented on my drawings here in Taiwan over the past 2 weeks.  The few comments I’ve gotten are extremely minimal and barely even noticeable. I can work in complete solitude in almost every site I visit which has been lovely. A large part of that is that most of the sites we’ve visited are in small towns in Taiwan, and so they aren’t quintessential tourist destinations the way the Colosseum in Rome is in.  I’m also traveling with my parents, who are from Taiwan, and so we’re able to visit much more obscure areas that I know I wouldn’t make the effort to get to on my own.

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I love being able to draw in silence on site, immersing myself in the drawing process without an audience, it’s such a completely different experience that I’m grateful to have. The most “touristy” site we visited was the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum, and the space was so grand that I didn’t feel inspired to draw the site. That on top of the crowds of tourists taking corny poses and using selfie sticks wasn’t exactly motivation to site down and draw!

Happy Accidents

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When traveling in a foreign country, so much of what happens is completely out of your control.  Which means that when you’re trying to draw on site, pretty much everything is out of your control, even when you think you’ve found a relatively “stable” site to draw.

In the B&B we stayed at in Taitung, there was a house with a pile of random clutter on both the left and right side of the house. I was excited, because if I sat on the steps of the B&B I had a perfect view of the site and could work on the drawings during down time.

My family left one afternoon to go to the hot spring down the street, and I had the rare opportunity to stay behind and work on drawings by myself. I sat myself on the steps of the B&B, confident that not only would I have plenty of time to draw, but that the scene was a stable one that wouldn’t change.

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How completely wrong I was!  I went to get my brush pens, only to realize that my family had taken my small travel bag with them, the one that had the set of brown brush pens I usually use!  I brought many brush pens, but the ones that were left behind were super bright colors that I didn’t want to use, and black ones, which I don’t like as much because they are very bluish.  I was annoyed about not having my brown brush pens, so I settled for the black ones and a warm yellow one.

After drawing for about 30 minutes, I realized that it was starting to get dark, so my “stable” site for drawing quickly turned into a completely different scene.  All of the objects I had spent time articulating disappeared into the darkness and I couldn’t believe my bad luck between this and not having the brush pens I wanted!

I’ve learned to accept that this is just the way it’s going to be when drawing and traveling, so instead I embraced the darkness of the scene and created two night scenes:  one of the house and another of a street lamp which was a few feet downwards.

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Looking at these 2 night drawings, I’m actually glad things turned out the way they did.  I don’t think I would have elected to 1) use my black brush pens or 2) draw a night scene on my own. Most of the brush pen drawings I’ve done on the trip so far have been pretty light, or had a full range of tones.  Being limited to so many dark tones was a challenge, and I’m glad that I had this experience!

Finding a Different Kind of Beauty

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We were in Hualien the last few days, which has incredible mountains in Taroko Park with breathtaking views. The landscape is so completely different than anything I’ve ever seen, and it is amazing to see.

You would think these views would inspire me in terms of drawing, but I’ve been finding that I don’t have any interest in drawing these quintessential views of the country.  Perhaps because I feel that my drawings cannot compete with the real thing?  Either way, I’ve been much more attracted to small moments that I’ve discovered down the road from where we are staying, or somewhere across the street.

Compared to where I live in the US, the small towns we’ve been visiting are pretty run down.  The streets aren’t maintained at all, and it’s not uncommon to walk down a road and see a rusty, abandoned bicycle on the sidewalk or random pieces of broken wood and tires. Despite how dilapidated a lot of these areas are, I find them very beautiful.

These scenes are also a big challenge to draw, everything is so cluttered and unkempt that there’s no logical form or structure that you can follow. Although occasionally you can spot a bicycle wheel or a rope in the pile of objects, most of what you see is so cluttered that it just looks like a decrepit pile of undefined objects. I have to squint a lot when I draw, observe the forms really carefully, and be okay throwing down marks that really don’t seem to make any sense in the context of the drawing.

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Drawing, Traveling, Shooting, Editing

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I’m a workaholic, and although working is incredibly satisfying to me, I’ll also admit that it makes me a little crazy at times.  Which is why this trip to Taiwan is exactly what I needed in terms of stepping away from my life and trying to reset.  In terms of Art Prof, this past year has definitely been the most stressful of the entire project; the site launch alone I think took 10 years off my life, and then figuring out how to keep moving forward and keeping the project alive from there was an immense challenge.

I hadn’t even thought about creating any Art Prof content while on this trip until Tom (my Art Prof partner) mentioned that the trip would be an amazing opportunity to film a tutorial here. I had been experimenting with Tombow brush pens for some time and had been thinking at the back of my head that I wanted to eventually do a tutorial on their brush pens.

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That’s why this trip has become the best of both worlds:  satisfying my compulsive need to work, but under the best, most exciting circumstances possible. I’ve been able to shoot a lot of Broll footage on my own, and my husband Alex has been filling in the gaps an setting up shots of me drawing. In the evenings, I’ve been editing the footage, photographing my drawings, and trying to come up with a narrative for the tutorial.

At first the footage I shot felt totally all over the place and I couldn’t quite figure out how I wanted to format and present the content.  While I wanted to highlight my personal experience, I didn’t want it to turn entirely into a personal video about me. After a few days of editing, I think I’ve finally figured out a balance between a tutorial and personal stories.  It’s definitely a unique tutorial, I’m weaving in stories of my experiences here with technical advice on the brush pens, while also speaking about what frame of mind to be in when you’re traveling and drawing.

Initially I didn’t bother doing any editing, but once I started editing, it really helped me recognize where I was missing footage and what content I hadn’t talked about yet. Perfect because I won’t be able to come back and re-shoot any missing footage!

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Editing on the go has also been important because all of the tiny details of the trip are really present and fresh in my head.  Although I am taking detailed notes in my sketchbook about what’s been happening, it’s great to be able to tell a story the same day that it happened so that the details are a lot more vivid.

Taiwan Trip

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My parents immigrated to the US from Taiwan, and yet I have never traveled to Taiwan before, until now!  Ever since Art Prof started, I’ve been on hyper drive trying to get it established, and this past year was by far the most intense year in terms of the work load and commitment the project demanded.  Which is why this trip is a good “excuse” to not work and enjoy my time here.

A few months ago, I started an effort (albeit a very small one) to sketch on a more casual basis.  My colleague Casey Roonan sketches from life daily, to the point that if he and I sat down for more than 2 minutes, he would have whipped out his sketchbook and started drawing me. Inspired by his sketching practice, I realized that it had been years since I last sketched on a casual basis.  All of my projects since art school (over 20 years ago!) have always been working towards finished work intended for exhibition.  For this reason, I had completely forgotten about sketching on a casual basis.

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Which is why Taiwan is the perfect opportunity to start a sketching practice again. I brought my laptop with me, thinking that I would want to work on Art Prof in the evenings when my kids were sleeping, but surprisingly, I have no desire to do so. I guess when you travel to a foreign country you completely switch gears and it’s impossible (in a good way) to stay in the same work mode as when you’re at home. Instead, I’ve been exploring my Tombow brush pens in great depth, drawing not only sites that we have visited, but also quiet moments at our hotel, like my daughter and dad playing Go on the bed.

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I am usually not a fan of the latest innovation in art supplies, most seem really gimmicky and are just glaringly inferior to the classic art supplies that have been around for centuries. The Tombow brush pens are a definite exception, I got interested in markers from watching Lauryn Welch, (who works on Art Prof with me) draw with them.  I was really surprised by the potential for layering, and the wash-like, painterly quality the pens seemed capable of.

The more I experiment with the brush pens the more I am realizing how much I can very closely replicate the look of a Walnut Ink drawing.  Walnut ink is by far my favorite ink to sketch with, but the hassle of carrying around several little containers of ink gradients, a large one for washing brushes, brushes, and paper towels isn’t really worth it considering how quickly we are moving on this trip.  If I were traveling by myself I could do any media, but not while traveling with my entire family.  Which is why the brush pens are absolutely perfect, they closely replicate the look of an ink drawing but are crazy convenient. All it takes is a sketchbook, and 3 brush pens in my pocket.  That’s it.

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Tombow makes all different kinds of brush pens in tons of colors, but after some troubleshooting, I’m finding that all I need is the darkest brown, a medium brown, and a colorless blender. I tried drawing with a pack that was about 8 gradients of brownish tones, but I actually found it really inefficient because I had to keep switching markers really often.

Now that I’ve settled into an approach to the brush pens that I like, it’s been great searching for what to draw.  What I’m discovering is that I don’t tend to like drawing an entire site. We visited a temple the other day, and I didn’t want to draw the entire temple, not only did it feel overwhelming, but I also felt like I would practically be replicating a generic postcard version of the site. Instead, I really enjoyed finding small moments in the building, like the butt cracks on the stone lions, the turtle that was embedded in the columns, and more.

I’ve been here a few days, but it seems like I’ve worked out a good system for sketching, and I’m excited to see what else is ahead!

Rare Optimism

Inherently, I consider myself to be be an extremely skeptical pessimist. I think part of it is a defense mechanism that I employ to “protect” myself from bad news. Which is why in the rare instances that I feel optimistic, I know that something is actually happening for real.

I’ll admit that the most challenging part of Art Prof is maintaining my daily faith in the project.  I have never felt such an intense conviction about any project in my life, and yet Art Prof has also been a project that has tested all of my limits in patience and optimism. Some days it’s too easy to feel like no progress is being made, and I’m creating content in my own little black pit.

Which is why due some recent developments (which I can’t talk about just yet!) have been a monumental boost that have given me a renewed confidence in the future. I’ve had countless moments in this project where we were so close to a major breakthrough, only to have things fall apart with a deafening thud.

Last night I had a the final Skype call of the year with the TAs, and it was great to step back together as a group and reflect upon what has happened this year, and where we want to go in 2018. What’s been interesting is that two TAs mentioned that when I show up with good news, they’re excited, but also not surprised. Which is incredible that their faith in the project and belief in what we’re doing is so strong.

When I step back and look at 2017, it’s crazy to me that Artprof.org hasn’t been live for a year yet. (we launched in February 2017) On one hand, I feel like it’s been live forever, on another, it feels like the website is just getting started.  I’ve been really focused in the past year on simply beefing up the quantity of content on the website, and it feels like the content is now substantial enough that I can breathe a little more and redirect more of my energy towards achieving long term funding for the project.

Despite our Kickstarter campaign in 2016, we’ve burned through those funds.  Financially, we are barely surviving on a very thin thread, but we’re still here, and the community we’ve worked so hard to build is growing every day. Creating content and brainstorming new ideas and formats has always been the easy part, getting funding and sponsors is a completely different story.

Despite my struggle to maintain my daily confidence in the project, I couldn’t be more proud of the team at Art Prof.  They’ve lifted me up, brought ongoing energy and innovation to the project, and are the rock that I’ve come to rely on.

When I first envisioned Art Prof in 2014, I always imagined it as a solo project that I would have to carry on my own. Today, the thought of working on Art Prof by myself is inconceivable. Now, the project is so much bigger than one person, and everyday I’m inspired by what we’ve built together.

ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts for people of all ages and means. Artprof.org features video courses, art critiques, an encyclopedia of art supplies, and more.

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Artist Conversations

When I remind myself that I started thinking about Art Prof back in 2014, it seems incredible to think that we’ve been working on Art Prof for 3 years.  Not only has the time passed very quickly, but the project continues to change and evolve so much that I constantly feel like we are just getting started.

The most significant change in our tutorials is we have shifted away from one person tutorials to tutorials that feature two people.  I got the idea from Jacques Pepin’s series Cooking with Claudine, where his daughter Claudine was on the set as a student learning and asking questions during the show. We were amazed that these two people tutorials were a billion times easier to shoot, as all of the pressure of being the only person speaking on the set was taken away.  On top of that, these tutorials also seem much more informative because someone is there to ask questions.

It’s also fun because even though I’m the Art Prof, I get to be on both student and teacher in these two person tutorials.  Not only do I get to learn so many new techniques, but I like that this emphasizes that even when you work professionally, learning is still ongoing!

ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts for people of all ages and means. Artprof.org features video courses, art critiques, an encyclopedia of art supplies, and more.

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Art Prof on NPR!

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I’m a major NPR junkie.  I listen to Morning Edition with Bob Oakes every morning in the car, to the point where I know all of his word pronunciations to the smallest detail.

So you can imagine it was a very, very big deal for Art Prof to be featured on WBUR’s Morning Edition last week!

We loved that the reporter stated in the segment that Art Prof is still in a “punk rock” phase, because that really does sum up where we are.  Despite the fact that we have video content that is polished, curated, and professional, anyone who visits our shooting space can figure out quickly how DIY our production is.

Yes, I wish we had enough funding to have a real production studio, full-time staff, and much more.  Tom and I joke about having our outfits already picked up for when we appear on the Today Show some day, but both of us have been in complete agreement for a long time that we are GOING TO THE MOON with Art Prof.

Looks like NPR brought us just a few steps closer.

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ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts for people of all ages and means. Artprof.org features video courses, art critiques, an encyclopedia of art supplies, and more.

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Moving on?

I started this blog way back in 2006, that’s 11 years of blogging!  Of course, SO much has changed and happened since then, and in case you haven’t noticed, I have barely written here for the past few months.  A huge part of that is that my commitments have largely transferred over to Artprof.org, which is consuming all of my time lately. (in a good way!)

Working on Art Prof has been the greatest, most difficult challenge of my career so far.  It’s also been the most rewarding and exciting endeavor, where there is a surprise around every corner that I can never anticipate. Art Prof has also empowered me with a number of new skills:  site usability, web development, social media, video editing, shooting video to name just a few.  I’m teaching a Senior Seminar course at RISD this semester in the Printmaking department in which so many of these skills are relevant. We’ve covered artist websites, social media, cover letters, networking, the entire package of skills that I wish I had learned when I was in art school.

This process has gotten me thinking about my own website, claralieu.com, which has been woefully neglected as I’ve moved on to other pursuits. The site is terribly out of date in terms of design (it’s not even close to being mobile friendly) and was designed way back before sites like Squarespace and Wix existed which provide user friendly site templates.

I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but I am seriously thinking about discontinuing this blog.  This blog will still exist in that it still has a lot of content that gets viewed every day, but between Artprof.org, my Instagram, and a soon-to-be revamped version of claralieu.com, I’m wondering if this blog is becoming too much of a dinosaur to continue. I’ve been wanting to combine my blog with claralieu.com for a while, and the WordPress theme I’m going to use is going to let me do that. Times and technology change, perhaps I need to take the leap and change too?

I don’t know, it’s tough to walk away from a blog I’ve invested so much time and effort into, but at the same time, I don’t want to leave one of my sites neglected.

Something Out of Nothing

Lately I’ve been listening to the NPR podcast “How I Built This.” The stories are really inspirational and engaging, but what I wasn’t expecting was to see so much of what my life is like today, reflected in other people’s stories. Listening to the stories from companies like Air BnB, Kate Spade, Angie’s List, and more, I was surprised by what was consistent in all of these stories.

Every person spoke about their venture taking a minimum 3 years to get off the ground, using their home to some ridiculous capacity because there were no other options, and going humbling/menial tasks where you practically have to get down on your knees and scrub the floor yourself while singing for your supper.  Hearing Kate Spade explain how she was at one point, packing and shipping all of her hand bags herself from inside her apartment certainly sounded familiar!

Most of the time I’m too busy to do any amount of thoughtful reflection on Art Prof. However, this week I was at the Goetemann Artist Residency at the Rocky Neck Art Colony in Gloucester, MA and I actually had some quiet hours to think more philosophically than usual.

When I first started thinking about Art Prof 3 years ago, I remember almost everyone who I mentioned the idea to responded with: “Why don’t you just teach a course on Lynda.com?” or “How about trying to teach on Skillshare?” Yes, those certainly would have been the more practical routes, but in my mind, none of those were ever options that I seriously entertained.

This past week I’ve had to say goodbye to an incredible team of summer interns who did amazing work all summer and produced really exciting new content for Artprof.org.  We produced a short documentary on this summer’s interns, and one intern commented how he was fascinated by watching how you “create something out of nothing.”

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Project Idea video on linoleum printmaking with intern Anjali Shankar

There are days where I want to tear my hair out with frustration when things are difficult.  I’ve had a few situations that were really upsetting and extremely difficult for a number of reasons, but for the most part, those are rare blips in the scheme of things.

The rest of the time?  My actions can’t keep up with my mind, and I feel an intense urgency working on Art Prof that I have never even come close to experiencing with any of my other work. I always swore that I would ever go near sleeping the hours of a RISD freshman ever again, but apparently, if the work you’re doing is compelling enough, you’ll do ANYTHING to make it happen.

Art Prof has been incredibly humbling, more so than anything else I’ve ever experienced. I’m not someone who hesitates much about doing what I have to do to make something happen, but Art Prof has brought this to a whole new level. I’ve had to trust complete strangers, ask for favors that I really should know better than to ask for, dealt with people who wanted us to fail, had the doors slammed in my face, (metaphorically) increased my rejection rate about 50000%, and received deafening silence from more groups and people than I can count.

And yet somehow, I’m having the time of my life.  

I wake up everyday with so much excitement for what I’ll do next, to the point where I’m actually bummed out when it’s time to go to bed and I have to stop working.

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ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts for people of all ages and means. Artprof.org features video courses, art critiques, an encyclopedia of art supplies, and more.

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