Are you a quilter?
Lines #2
When I’m in meetings at work my mind tends to wander if I just sit there and try to pay attention. I need to keep my hands occupied or my eyes start to close. Not that 1-4 hours a day of meetings with my coworkers isn’t exciting and stimulating but it does get to be a bit much at times.
For a while I was drawing during meetings but I found that it occupied too many of my brain cells and I had a hard time paying attention to what was being said. This isn’t a good thing if they are dividing up unpleasant tasks. So I needed to find some doodling that I could do without the right side of my brain taking over and therefore getting the yucky jobs to do.
So for a while I was just doodling. Making random lines and squiggles in the margins. Then one day I started drawing parallel lines all over the front page of my pad of paper and as the days went on the lines started taking over all of my notes and next thing I knew I covered up the entire page of paper with lines. It looked pretty cool so I started on the next sheet of paper in the pad and for the past 3 or 4 months I’ve been entertaining my coworkers with my skills at drawing lines.
The other day while working on the above drawing a coworker asked me "are you a quilter?". I thought that was interesting. Is it that obvious looking at this drawing I’m a quilter?
Anyway, the above drawing is the 2nd of these I’ve actually finished. The first I tacked onto my cubical wall a few months back without scanning it in first. I have a few others in progress as I have several notepads (not being the most organized sort at the day job) and I add a few more inches of lines every week or so.
Most of these drawings are scribbled over the top of my notes for work. Most of the time you can’t read what I’ve written underneath because I purposely draw the lines to make it unreadable. But in the detail below you can clearly see it says Reqs, short hand for requirements, my main job as a requirements engineer for several projects.
In other news this post marks my 300th post to my blog. I’ve been blogging now for 2+ years and still enjoying it. I’ve tried to remember to mention my annual anniversary for when I started blogging (because this seems like the thing people do) but I can’t seem to remember to say something when it occurs in February so this is what we get instead.
I’ve been blogging for about 782 days so that is new post every 2.6 days on average. In addition there are now 1675 comments on my blog, for an average of 5.6 per post. Now I’m sure your day is complete.
Posted by Lisa in: Being an Artist, Drawings
Ed Terpening said,
April 16, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
That’s a beautiful doodle. interesting how you may come up with some intuitive designs that way. Congratulations on the 300 blog post accomplishment!
Diane Clancy said,
April 16, 2007 @ 8:05 pm
Yes! that drawing says you are a quilter!
Congratualtions on your 300th post! You make my world richer with your words.
I posted something tonight on my blog that I thought might interest your readers …
Quote
This painting “Conundrum III” is from my collage series that is inspired by my former quilting. There are many actual fabric pieces in this collage besides paper and paint.
I think some of your readers would appreciate seeing my series that evolved out of my own quilting.
~ Diane Clancy
http://www.dianeclancy.com/blog
ritasteffenson said,
April 16, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
Ooh la la, what a wonderful design! Who would have thought you could create great depth with straight lines. It seems you could spend a lot to exploring these. And yes it would make a fabulous quilt.
Nellie said,
April 16, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
300! Happy Dance! I beieve I’ll be checking back into your archive over the next few weeks.
It seems to me that your mind would be working overtime figuring out construction techniques for that intriguing doodle. What an amazing quilt that would be.
paula said,
April 17, 2007 @ 7:25 am
Hi Lisa,
Congratulations, you won a Thinking Blogger Award. Check out this link for what it means.
http://www.thethinkingblog.com/2007/02/thinking-blogger-awards_11.html
I’ve written about your blog here: http://selftaughtartist.blogspot.com/2007/04/thinking-blog-award-with-grimmace.html
Lisa Call said,
April 17, 2007 @ 3:57 pm
Hey Paula - thanks for the award. I’m going to pass on continuing the meme but I appreciate the mention.
Diane - I can see the quilt influence in that piece on your blog.
And thanks everyone.
These types of drawings are part of the inspiration behind my markings quilt series. They aren’t as complex as this yet - okay probably never. But I love the lines.
Miriam Badyrka said,
April 17, 2007 @ 7:20 pm
I love the doodles. I think doodles are the drawing equivalent of dreams.
I have been poking about your site for quite some time. Quilters like you make the foolish divisions in the stupid Is Craft Art? debate obsolete. Beautiful, beautiful work! Keep ‘em coming.
Congrats to you on your 300th post.
Kristin said,
April 18, 2007 @ 8:54 am
I like to do hand sewing during interminable, but necessary town council meetings. As a student when I tried this during science meetings, colleagues (male, of course) would tell me they had pants that needed mending.
Congratulations on your 300th blog!
ritasteffenson said,
April 18, 2007 @ 10:16 am
Visually, I see the long straight forms as your pieced lines or markings, and the bent lines as the quilting. if you were to make it med to large in size, use light fabrics for the background and a heavy black thread for the quilting, I’m sure your skills are up to the task. And what a quilt it would be. I hope you go for it!
Stacey Peterson said,
April 18, 2007 @ 4:31 pm
I just cracked up when I saw this, because I used to do the exact same thing during my engineering meetings and everyone thought I had some sort of OCD for drawing so many lines. I usually make checkers and alternate the direction of the lines in each box, with some variations - pretty boring, but then I’m NOT a quilter. But I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who can cover a sheet of paper with lines…
Lisa Call said,
April 24, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
Stacey - your comment had me laughing - made it’s the engineer thing not the quilter thing!
Rita - interesting ideas. It would make an interesting quilt to do something like that.
Miriam - thank you so much - that is quite the compliment. But you are right that argument is just silly.
Kristin - I should try quilting at work - that would freak out quite a few folks I suspect.