Lisa Call

Lines #4    ©2008    8.5" x 11"

A New Project

The above drawing was made during my day job [looks better if you click the image for a larger view]. Each time we start a new project at work my job description is "Go To Meetings". Lots of talk about what the project is about, how are we going to organize and then all the technical blah blah blah. I listen, take notes, think brilliant thoughts, etc.

And I draw. Mostly lines. I’m really good at drawing lines. I used to draw things but I’m not as good at that and I can’t do that and pay attention at the same time. Drawing lines helps me pay attention, because it ensures I’m awake, which is a key feature of paying attention.

Are You Social?

The current work project is interesting. We are looking at social networking. Hence me finally caving in and going to twitter. We are encouraged to have a social networking presence to understand the space. I think they intend for it to be work related. I have, well, zero interest in that. So facebook and twitter and all that - for me it’s mostly art related.

Twitter has been interesting. Kinda fun. It’s a disjointed conversation but more entertaining than I expected. At some point I’ll figure out how to put my tweets in the sidebar (see that Pam - I said tweets). And more importantly I’ll figure out what the true value of the thing might be.

Be My Friend

Here are a few of my social networking profiles. You are welcome to friend me or follow me or whatever the phrase might be.

Lisa Call on Facebook

Lisa Call on Twitter

Lisa Call on Linkedin

All Over the Place

I have a myspace account but completely ignore it as I’m not a musician nor am I 12 years old. I have some accounts on some ning communities but they haven’t taken off yet either and I don’t really have time for them so we’ll see how that goes.

I have a squidoo lens on art quilts with ideas for a more and now we have google knols (I have the outline for one on textile paintings with no content yet).

One of the things on my todo list (ie I have a user story for it) is to get a handle on my web presence and bring some kind of structure and understanding as to the value of each piece and the effort needed to maintain or enhance that value.

What’s your online presence like? Which pieces bring you the most value?

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.

I tried my hand at painting while we were lounging on the beach in Maine last week. I’ve never painted before (except maybe in art class in school when I was a kid) and so I bought some watercolors to take along and play with.

Here is my attempt at doing a landscape. It’s really rather boring although I like the big fields of colors.

Hermit Island ©2006    9"x12":

 
I have to admit it’s a pretty crappy composition. So I might crop it down like this.

I think it’s the quilter in me that feels that the correct thing to do is to paint something then crop out the good bits. Maybe attach something different on the top or sides.

It was interesting sitting there painting, I felt very restricted by the paper as there is no way to make it bigger if I want to add on more later. I suspect this means I should have planned ahead as to what might be a good composition to start with. Clever of me to figure this out huh.

I also was a bit impatient by how long it took to build up a nice big chunk of color. With quilting I create large pieces of color very quickly by dyeing tons of fabric in one day. Then I spend my time cutting and rearranging the color into a composition. With painting is seemed backwards. It felt very odd. I could definitely feel my self wanting to dunk the whole thing into a bath of color and be done with it.

 
But I stuck with it and decided landscapes didn’t interest me as a subject matter, I’m really more interested in shapes anyway. So I painted this and had way more fun:

Unnamed ©2006    9"x12":

 
That should probably look a bit familiar.

Structures #11 ©2002    72"x47":

I took my painting supplies to the beach other days but the ocean was calling me. Digging in the sand is just too much fun to pass up. So I built some large sand castles with my kids and then watched the tide come in and destroy them. It was usually an all day affair building the castle right up at the edge of high tide all day then waiting for the water to come and fill in all the moats in the evening. What great fun.

Here’s the one we built on the last day:

It’s hard to see but I built a bunch of tunnels connecting all the moats. It was pretty cool watching the water come in and fill up the trenches.

From this photo you can also see what the inspiration was for the landscape painting.

 
The animals were guarding the palace but the ocean always seems to win in the end.

 
At the end it was just Mr. Crabs hanging on the stick but he eventually fell and we could finally go get dinner.

Yesterday at work we had our annual summer party. I’ve been through 2 huge corporate takeover the past few years and the quality of the parties varies each year. This year it was decidedly low key. By this I mean low budget.

We went to a baseball game. In the 90+ degree heat.

I don’t much like baseball.

Or heat.

So I took along my sketchbook because I think sitting at a ballgame sounded like more fun than staying back at work writing requirements. For new readers, I’m learning how to draw, it’s a slow process given my other time commitments but in the sidebar in the category "7. Another What - Drawings" you can track my progress over the last 7 or 8 months.

Here is the stadium from where we were sitting. You might say we didn’t have very good seats. There were 2 or 3 rows behind me but after that I think the next stop was pluto (if that is still a planet). And I must say it’s been a while since I’ve done any drawing. And somewhere in the middle I lost the US Bank building (a coworker pointed this out - good eyes) and for some reason the box seats behind home plate have drifted off to the right. But it was fun and good to get the pencils out again.

 
Looking around for something else to sketch the back side of the huge screen (which we could not see but I’m sure it had highly entertaining information on it) was very appealing.

If this is what I want to sketch it’s not too surprising my quilts are called “Structures”.

 
After this an adorable 4-5 year old girl came over and asked me if I was an artist and told me she could draw a racoon. So I had her demonstrate:

Then she drew me a rat, a possum (she’s seen a dead one), a horse with her riding it, 2 cats (one is fat with some dirt on it), a skunk (her dad runs over them often in their car), the baseball diamond (drawn as 2 triangles back to back), a rainbow and the sun.

All of her animals only had 1 ear. And she would have kept going all afternoon. But fortunately a few raindrops fell and I took it as an opportunity to bail out of the team building event and head home.

I spent quite a bit of time this weekend working on another drawing in the Plains series. I really enjoy the medatative work to draw the hundreds of lines freehand.

Plains #5 ©2006    12.5"x 9.5"

There are times in life when all the pieces that used to fit together so perfectly no longer seem to work. Something shifted. The cause or problem can’t always be identified, it’s just known that something is a miss. Times like this are very frustrating and there is hope that things fall back into place but the fear is that things will never be the same again.

As I mentioned a few posts back I want to get back to drawing now that my solo show has opened. I’ve been home sick and today I finally got the energy to finish a drawing I started last week.

This one is spikier than the previous ones in the series (Plains #3, Plains #2, Plains #1) . In addition this drawing is on larger paper with some unused margin around the outside so I can mat the piece. The previous 3 went right up to the edge of the paper. I like the not-quite-perfectly-straight edge that results from doing it this way.

For those that are new, these are drawn freehand (no ruler) with graphite pencils on white drawing paper. Click on the image for more detail.

Plains #4 ©2006   11″ x 8″

I completed the 3rd in my “Plains” series of drawings.

Plains #3 ©2006  11″ x 8.5″:

This week’s Everyday Matters Challenge was to draw our TV with our favorite show on the screen and to journal about it.

This was a simple week for me. I don’t have a TV. We’re unplugged and it’s wonderful. I’m culturally clueless. People talk about TV shows and commercials and I sit there with a blank stare on my face. Huh? Who cares. I’m too busy to waste time watching someone else living their life in a small box on my shelf.

My kids weren’t very happy the first few months but they got over it. No more fights about too much TV. They’ve learned to entertain themselves instead of relying on passive entertainment (although admittedly at times they spend too much time on the computer).

Unplugged 8.5″ x 11″:

 
There was a discussion on the Everyday Matters yahoogroup about drawing with pen so you can’t erase. I’m not too excited about pen as it’s too polished for my tastes, I like the rough primitive feel of pencil. I also like the value variation that pencils provide. But I do agree that not erasing is good, as it forces me to slow down and really look at what I’m drawing. So in this drawing I didn’t erase, just went back and added new lines and left the ones I didn’t like.

As I mentioned a few days ago this week’s Everyday Matters Challenge was to draw our entry way. Here is the result of that drawing.

 
A photo of my entryway (from a slightly different perspective) can been seen in my posting about my first art quilt, which is featured above the closet doors.

I really liked this drawing and felt it had more potential than just playing with my new pencils. So just like in my fiber work, my drawings have now entered into series work, and here is #2. Few areas but more complex shapes.

This is all drawn freehand, no rulers involved. I’m going to have to investigate larger pieces of paper as I’m feeling a bit restricted by the 9″X12″ paper pad I have now.

Plains #2 © 2006   8.5″ x 11″