My Rough Draft for “Starry, Starry Playground” is Done!

When I started this project, it seemed easy enough: write a goofy story, draw a couple pictures and there you have it -- a children's book. Well three months on and I have just finished the rough draft of my book called “Starry, Starry Playground.” The story is done, the rough sketches make me smile, getting the tone right was a challenge since this IS a book about art, creativity and mental illness.

In the end I decided to focus on something many of my friends and I know all too well: depression. In the book I call it a dangerous sadness since loneliness is a dreadful disease. Umm. did I mention this is also a book about joy?

The tone I meant was charming, funny -- a kind of celebration of people who are just different. Diva is taking a psychology class in college and is upset that mental illness in the text book is treated so unsympathetically. It is a list of damage. My book is a list of possibilities.

To get to this point meant I was a monk hiding away studying things I never imagined I would be studying. Just today I picked up a plush toy as the best model for Tippy the Cow. It has great body language as it sits and a fantastic hoody. Yes, a grown man playing with teddy bears and such -- or Tippy Cows. But they are models who I don't have to pay and will assume any position and hold it patiently as I sketch and paint them.

I decided not to show you my whole rough draft right now. I was working on the final sketches for my paintings until 2 AM this morning (no, I’m not obsessed) and then I will attempt the finished watercolors. When I am happy with each of them in turn I will show you the doodle I scrawled out when I had the idea, the final sketch and the finished work.

Here is a list of what I have read and watched in the last three months as research:

I bought or made toys so I can see how plush toys sit and flop about. It was kind of a casting call in a toy store. I got Nicole the Tree Frog and Priv the Tiger at Savers for a couple of bucks. Being tall, I also helped a lady by getting to plush sea turtles off the top shelf. I got Tami the Dolphin at Dollar Tree. In Toys-R-Us I found Hockney the Hedgehog for about five buck -- he makes funny noises when you squeeze him -- just like me. I saw a scanner for price checking. It didn’t scan so I pushed a button which I thought was for price checking. Nope.

I noticed too late that it was for calling for assistance. Over the loudspeaker: “Customer needs help in plush toys.” I ducked behind the hot wheels, jogged passed Hello Kitty and checked the hell out before I pushed any other damn buttons. This casting of characters is hard -- but now they sit on my table. I have live -- er plush models to patiently assume the position and let me draw them for hours on end.

I could not find a blonde, blue-eye squirrel for Jill or the right cow for Tippy (until today!) so I had to make them. But that’s another article.



Animal Reference (Yep, method drawing. Know the hedgehog -- be the hedgehog):

Hedgehogs by Pat Morris (Everything you want to know about that varmint and much more. Diva‘s mother adores hedgehogs so I am putting one in the book for her -- but she tells me that they are the worst pets in the world.)

Squirrel: The Animal Answer Guide by Richard W. Thorington Jr. and Katie Ferrell

Squirrel by Jessica Holm

(Jill the Squirrel will be a real squirrel -- that wears a pageboy hat and stripes.)

A Cat in the Family (A Complete Authoritative Guide) by Uschi Birr

The Natural Cat (Understanding Your Cats Needs and Instincts) by Helga Hofmann, Ph. D.

Beautiful Cats by Uschi Birr

(Pete is a real cat of my friend Jeanne. I want Pete to move and act like a real cat. I have had many dogs in my life but don’t know cats as well so I need to study them. I love the fluid grace of cats and am already fascinated. Diva has own cats and loves them so.)

My Puppy is Born by Joanna Cole

I have also visited people with dogs or cats and nip into pets stores to sketch those pets from life. I have been doing a lot of gesture drawings of people -- which are turning out very well. I hope to get the same simplicity and grace in my animal drawings.


Art Reference:

I hope to use Van Gogh’s art and Impressionism as a stage for my plush drama so I need the images to study (I wrote that about a month ago -- little did I know then that the paintings would find their way into my book and become a child‘s playground):

Impressionisms:

The International Movement 1890-1920 (Great very rare works from all over the world)

Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

Vincent by himself edited by Bruce Bernard

The Treasures of Vincent Van Gogh by Cornelia Homburg (Thank you again, Tom -- It is a gift that I uses a lot.)

Sargent Portrait Drawings and
John Singer Sargent both by Trevor Fairbrother

100 Masterpieces of Art by Martina Vaizey

The DK Art School: Watercolor Still Life (in Association with the Royal Academy of Arts) by Elizabeth Jane Lloyd Pub by Dorling Kindersley 1994 Great technical information on paint, paper and brushes.

Classical Life Drawing Studio (Lessons and Teaching in the Art of Figure Drawing) by James Lancel McElhinney (Sterling 2010)

Picasso and The Human Comedy (a Suite of 180 Drawings) by Michel Lewis (Modern Library Paperbacks - Random House 1954) I love the way Picasso drew.)

Picasso’s Picassos by David Douglas Duncan (Ballintine Books New York 1968) The painting in Picasso’s own collection.

Picasso (from the Musee Picasso, Paris) by Martian Friedman (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 1980)

Van Gogh by Gerald E. Finley (Tudor Press Company New York 1966)

Seurat by Pierre Courthion (Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York 1988)

Degas (Impressions of a Great Master) by Gerhard Gruitrooy (Todtri Productions Limited, New York 1994)

Step by Step Art School: Nudes by Jack Buchan and Jonathan Baker (Hamlyn, London 1994)

Matisse by Jean Selz (Crown, New York 1969)

Magritte by Daniel Abadie (Distributed Art Publisher, Inc. New York, 2003)

Eyewitness Art: Monet by Jude Welton (Dorling Kindersley Inc., New York, 1992) Great information on Monet’s methods of painting, colors he used, pallet, brushstrokes -- the works.)

Eyewitness Art: Van Gogh by Bruce Bernard (Dorling Kindersley Inc., New York, 1992)

Monet Water Lillies by Charles F. Stuckley (Park Lane -- Random House, New York, 1988)

Painting the Impressionist Landscape ( Lessons in Interpreting Light and Color) by Lois Griffel (Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1994) A wonderful instructions on how the impressionist worked.

Paint with the Impressionist (A Step-by-step Guide to Their Methods and Materials for Today’s Artists) by Jonathan Stephenson ( Thames and Hudson New York 2010) Showing the methods of Van Gogh, Monet, Manet and Degas.

Chinese Watercolor Techniques (Painting Animals) by Lian Quan Zhen (Northen Lights Books, Cincinnati, 2005)



Great Picture Books:

You may know many of the books I have listed but the works by Patrick McDonnell are recent and brilliant. Hug is charming and South tells the story without dialogue. I love McDonnell’s drawings that remind me of Chinese ink drawing.

Art by Partick McDonnell

Just Like Heaven by Partick McDonnell

Hug by Partick McDonnell

South by Partick McDonnell

Wag by Partick McDonnell

The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne with the original charming drawings by Ernest H. Shepard

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll with drawings by John Tenniel

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, Illustrations by David Jorgensen as read by Meryl Streep

The Inferno by Dante, illustrations by Dore (Well, I read it as a kid -- or looked at the pictures -- but I was an odd kid.)


Poetry:

I hope to have a poetic tilt to the work and have been listening to the artists performing their own works on CDs.

T.S. Eliot The Love song of J. Alfred Profrock, The Wasteland, Quartets, Practical Cats (Yes, he wrote a children’s book)

The Voice of the Poet: Sylvia Plath Random House Audio

Dylan Thomas reads “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”
Sylvia Plath reads her own poems

The Caedmon Poetry Collection (A Century of Poets Reading their own Work)

Bob Dylan The Witmark Demos 1962-1964 (Dylan’s original demos -- hear Dylan becoming himself.)

So, you were expecting Dr. Suess? It may seem like a odd and cheerful lot for picture book inspiration. But theses are the ones I love. To listen to a poet speak their own work is like hearing a composer play their compositions. Just looking at it on the page won’t cut it.


Life Drawing and Art Techniques:

Yoga for Dummies (Priv the Tiger is from India and uses Yoga to relax)

The New York City Ballet Workout by Palm Pictures
Understanding Ballet by John Gregory

Body Parts (a practical guide for artists) by Simon Jennings

The Figure in Watercolor: Simple, Fast and Focused by Mel Stabin

Chinese Brush Animals by Lucy Wang


DVDs and Videos:

Great Courses: A History of European Art taught by Professor William Kloss, Independent Art Historian The Smithsonian Associates, Smithsonian Institute 48 lectures, each 30 minutes long. (The Teaching Company, 2005) A college course, Kloss clearly enjoys his work -- I wish more college professors were as fun.

Great Courses: Museum Masterpiece - The Louvre, taught by Professor Richard Brettell, University of Texas at Dallas, 12 lectures, each 30 minutes long. (The Teaching Company, 2006)
Great Courses: Museum Masterpiece - The National Gallery, London, taught by Professor Catherine B. Scallen, Case Western Reserve University, 24 lectures, each 30 minutes long. (The Teaching Company, 2009)

Vermeer: Master of Light -- narrated by Meryl Streep Microcinema 2001. Very detailed explanations of how he painted -- fascinating.

Magritte: An Attempt at the Impossible. DVD by Kultur International Films. Magritte was once asked what was behind his paintings, “The wall,” he cracked. Unfortunately the makers of this film don’t get jokes. A very serious art film about a man who spent his life making fun of serious art.

Vincent, a film by Paul Cox. Docudrama DVD 2005. Using Van Gogh’s letters and paintings Cox takes us on a life’s journey and obsession. The document on Cox is also amazing. I admit that I felt a kinship with Cox, So many of his statements hit home, “Loneliness is a dreadful disease,” he says and it feels like the theme of my own book.

Van Gogh, Brush with Genius. A Camera Lucida Production,. Imagine DVD 2010. Having Van Gogh’s ghost show up to narrate the film is pretty funny, having him introduce the director as if they hang out at the bars nightly is jaw dropping. That said, the images shot with an Imax camera are amazing. The film makers were allowed unprecedented access to glide their lens inches from the paintings to pick up incredible detail. Also wonderful were scenes showing Vincent's paintings that fade into the present day location where Van Gogh himself stood -- unlike the cheesy narration, I did feel a chill of a ghost passing by at moments like that.

Van Gogh’s Van Goghs, directed byJackson Frost, Home Vision Theater/ WETA Washington 1999

Portraits in Watercolor (a complete video course) by James Kirk

A Place I Can Go When the World Falls Apart

As I was talking to Diva, she made a tiny comment that floored me. She found an old award she had gotten and was going to put it on her self esteem wall. I don’t know what the normal people of the world do, but me and my posse of the depressed often have really bad days when we get very down on ourselves and can dig a very deep hole. It had never occurred to me to put together a wall or a notebook of the things I have done right or the nice things people have told me.

I really shouldn’t beat myself up -- the world will do that for me. I am starting such a book. In the past I would have looked at it as being too proud of myself. If I put my head up -- someone is bound to take it off. I grew up the youngest kid in a Catholic family and have the bruises to prove it. I also went to public school when they graded on the curve. The other students have a way of hunting in packs and attacking anyone who they thought was ruining the curve. Mediocrity will always protect itself.

That is why I don’t brag -- but that has hurt me ever since. I now realize something: I have depression and on those days when the world falls apart I can haul such a book out and run through my own Bedford Falls realizing that it is a wonderful life.

17 Ways to Avoid Depression Relapse

My friend Tippy posted something I thought was very important, “17 Ways to Avoid Depression Relapse,” from Health.com by Kristin Koch. (By the way, I just found out that November 20 is National Survivors of Suicide Day.)

1. Staying healthy
Recovering from depression is a long and difficult journey.Unfortunately, 50% of people who have one major episode of depression will relapse, and the likelihood goes up if you’ve had more than one episode, says Eve A. Wood, MD, medical director of the Eating Disorder Center of Denver and author of 10 Steps to Take Charge of Your Emotional Life. Your relapse risk can vary, depending on the severity of your symptoms and family history.The good news is that there are some steps that may help you avoid depression relapse.

2. Don’t take on too much
While staying busy isn’t a problem, doing too much, too soon could be.Feeling overwhelmed creates stress, and stress is a risk factor for depression, says Nancy Irwin, PsyD, author of You-Turn: Changing Direction in Midlife. What’s more, stressful experiences can make the symptoms of anxiety and depression additionally severe.“Thwart stress by creating balance and knowing your limits,” Irwin says. “If you are prone to depression, this is your responsibility—just like brushing your teeth or obeying the speed limits.

For the rest please follow the link.
17 Ways to Avoid Depression Relapse

National Survivors of Suicide Day

Echoes of Winter

It is my greatest fear -- I wake up one day and the fire has gone out: I can no longer create. My dream has died. Superman has become Clark Kent forever. Creativity is a superpower after all, it allows me to fly. It allows me to go to worlds no one else even knows of. I am so happy when I create. Yet every now and then a monster attacks -- a thing called depression. Last week he tapped me on the shoulder.

You see, my inner world is a pond at the peak of spring. It is full of life, speckled sunlight and the smell of roses. Manet is my interior decorator -- most of the time... other times, without warning, I go to my lake and everything has changed. The water is frozen, the sunlight is gone, replaced with a gray, creepy light. There is no life. I am numb. I can not create in such a place, no one could. I just sit motionless. Lying on my couch, I watch movies and fall asleep. Food doesn’t taste good and everything is boring -- particularly me. I want to do something -- anything, but I can’t. It is winter in my head and I am ugly, lost and hopeless. Nothing will ever work out. I will never be happy again.


Going to work, everything feels odd and out of sync. I grab scraps of paper just in case an idea flutters by and I want to write it down. It does. Before I know it, I am in a flock of thoughts and I jot them down as quickly as I can: bright monarch plans, dragonfly darting ideas. I realize it is spring in my head again. My pond is buzzing with life and I am so excited -- a kid with a butterfly net trying to catch everything I see. I couldn’t be more alive.

My inner world only knows two seasons -- they come and go on a schedule I can not fathom. Luckily, there are far more springs than winters these days.

Susan McKeown "Singing in the Dark, Bringing Drepression to Light"

A great article on Susan McKeown (www.susanmckeown.com) in the Spring 2010 issue of The NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Advocate (www.nami.org/miaw). (Click on article to enlarge.)

Nike Drake: "Clothes Of Sand"

I come alive in moments like these. I am intensely curious. I always need something new to occupy my mind and keep me full of wonder. I picked up a CD from the library entitled “Where Are They Now?” about one hit wonders of the 80’s and 90’s. It was full of the usual suspects: Big Country, Bow Wow Wow and the Dream Academy. I loved that song of theirs, “Life in a Northern Town.” I suspected there must be a great story behind it. There was. It was about Nick Drake, when I looked him up on Wikipedia it noted that he “...ranks among the most influential English singer-songwriters of the last 50 years.”

The hell?! I admit it, I’d never heard of him. Oh, that was at first depressing -- but than exciting. The Strange Light detective agency had a new -- more exciting case to work on. The miseducation of Vincent Blackwood was underway. I completely dropped figuring out that whatever-happened-to-the-Dream-Academy thingy. After all, I had begun with “Where's Fluffy?” and ended with the Maltese Falcon -- with Rosebud.

I was able to get a hold of Nick Drakes albums: Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1970), Pink Moon (1972), along with some non-album tracks. This morning, I listen to them for the first time.

What I heard, took me off guard. His voice had a deep, gentle woodwind like sound. I wasn’t really making out all the lyrics at first. I have been conditioned to think of singer/songwriters as being all about the lyrics. But I began to realize that wasn’t what he was after. He wasn't trying to be the next Dylan. He was using string and a variety of other non-rock instruments in very original ways. They didn’t feel tacked on at the end as a cheap way to tart up the sound and make it feel classy. They were part of what he wanted to say from the beginning.

My expectations were black and white musical drawings (where the words are the thing), what I was getting was impressionistic sound paintings. His oboe like voice was another sound color in the mood he was depicting. Sleepily, I listened, but that was the best way to hear it all. Lyrics like: “who dressed you in strange clothes of sand” and “look through panes of shaded glass, see the stains of winter's grass” drifted into my drowsy consciousness. It was a beautiful, sad dream. One I will return to again and again.

I thought, as I stretched and got out of bed to write this, that I couldn’t wait to hear more from such a brilliant, original artist. But I won’t. Nick Drake only release three albums before his death at 26 from an overdose of his anti-depressants. There won’t be anymore songs from him. Clothes of sand have covered his face.



Clothes Of Sand
Nick Drake

Who has dressed you in strange clothes of sand
Who has taken you far from my land
Who has said that my sayings were wrong
And who will say that I stayed much too long?

Clothes of sand have covered your face
Given you meaning but taken my place
So make your way on down to the sea
Something has taken you so far from me.

Does it now seem worth all the colour of skies
To see the earth through painted eyes
To look through panes of shaded glass
See the stains of winter's grass.

Can you now return to from where you came
Try to burn your changing name
Or with silver spoons and coloured light
Will you worship moons in winter's night.
Clothes of sand have covered your face
Given you meaning but taken my place
So make your way on down to the sea
Something has taken you so far from me.

Video for Clothes of Sand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5xJbaYBIwE

A great site if you wish to know more on Nick Drake

http://www.michaelorgan.org.au/drake1.htm

Strange Light

I was reading an article about Susan McKeown (www.susanmckeown.com) in the Spring 2010 issue of The NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Advocate (www.nami.org/miaw). Susan wanted to know about other songwriters who also suffered from depression, but her search on Amazon.com only revealed Leonard Cohen. Well, he's the one who admitted it. There are millions of others who don't want to deal with the world's meanness, misunderstanding and the whispers as they leave the room. The world has made them feel ashamed to be themselves.

I know that for a fact. I've been ashamed. I am an artist with depression, so it is possible that I am seeing this problem through my own experience and not as it is. I've been known to do that -- a lot. One thing I do know: mental illness is today's civil rights battleground. I'm not crazy. Other artists I know with mental illness aren't crazy either. They are sweet, sensitive and so alive.

I should write about them. THESE are my people, my heroes, my friends. They are me. I have pretended for too long that I am like everybody else. I have... what is the phrase? Been in denial. Been a coward. But that really hasn't worked for me. A bird makes a really crappy gopher. I must be what I really am, even if it frightens the gophers.

I know some people will never understand, but I must explain what it is like to be us. Too many people assume "mental illness" equals crazy. I must have a mental defect and a low IQ. People begin to talk slowly and in small words, so I can understand. Others say I am too sensitive, I feel too deeply. God help me the day I become insensitive. Feeling too deeply (having both mental illness and creativity) can be a curse and a gift. They are a strange light that illuminates the world in frightening and thrilling ways. Being a mentally ill artist is not for the faint of heart.

The stories that I write for Strange Light (Adventures in Mental Illness and Creativity) will not be dry, clinical, serious or painted with a fake smile. They will be funny, tragic, silly and real. Now and then, as you read them, you may mutter, "I can't believe he wrote that!" Believe it. I am out to change minds.

If you want to chime in and tell me your take, please do. I need the interaction with like minded people. You know, us crazy artists. Understand, this is just a personal view from one artist with mental illness. When I write about an artist, I am not insinuating that they too are mentally ill... or particularly creative, for that matter. In the end, I worry about pleasing the toughest critic I know: me. I simply write about what fascinates me. My essays begin and end in my own delight. They are the expression of my own rapture with the world around us and the world in my head -- that mental landscape, the inner playground where creativity is the best swing set ever.

Shine on,
Vincent Blackwood

Written July 4th 2010 (Independence Day)