I love writing and sketching with Pilot Bravo pens because the ink seems to glide across the page. The only catch is if you want to add some watercolors to your sketch, the ink runs. So I usually stick to Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens for that purpose. My new favorite blank books for sketching or writing are 5 1/2  x  5 1/2 Hand Book Artist Journals. They’re small enough to carry in my purse, I like the binding and they lay flat when opened. And I just plain love buying new tools. What are your favorite tools, accessories, gadgets?

I can’t remember where I read about doing a 15 minute task in the morning — meditating, drawing, playing music, etc., but I’m trying to do that when I come home from work. Because I can’t think straight in the morning, and I can’t get up early enough to add creativity to shower, breakfast, make lunch, blow dry hair, pack workout clothes, get dressed and find keys. I like drawing and painting at night because it totally occupies my brain and hands. It’s a little transition from work and worry to being home, being sheltered, being the most me. This is the chair in my living room, which in real life is covered with a beautiful aqua-colored fabric from Maine Cottage with a tiny faint red wine stain on one corner. Just to keep it from being too perfect. I love drawing the fat contours of it, the curls and swirls — one day I hope to get it right.

At the art center  in Virginia where I took a wonderful workshop this weekend, rows of these artists’ carts were lined up in the hallway. They reminded me of hospital carts — so appropriate since I was definitely in art intensive care for 2+ days. Drawing and painting was the object, but most important was learning to see things in a different way. My brain felt squeezed dry by Sunday night, but I’m looking at the world more closely. In Creative Sparks, Jim Krause suggests picking a part of your daily routine where you’re in the same place over and over, viewing the same things day after day, and then the next time you’re there, look around until you see something that you hadn’t seen before or had forgotten about. Do it every day, he says, and make it a ritual. You’ll be amazed at what you haven’t been noticing.

This week, I’ve been working on the October issue of Skirt!, and since the theme is Smile, I’ve been writing about playfulness. In the process, I’ve realized how little I play, what a drudge I’ve become! That’s why I’m really enjoying Free Play, which is all about the creative process and its relationship to improvisation. Not a new book, but new to me and coming into my life at just the right time. I’ve purchased several copies for friends who are starting new projects, because I think it will give them courage to go forth. And don’t we all need that?

Do you want to lower your heart rate, decrease your blood pressure and increase your learning ability and productivity? No, it’s not a new wonder drug, but some studies suggest that listening to Baroque music with its 60-beats-per-minute pattern may do just that. So next time you’re working on a poem or a Powerpoint presentation, turn on some Bach, Handel or Vivaldi. This Glenn Gould recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is one of my very favorites.

Lots of good points in this…find the background on the post/manifesto on this blog.

Instead of shooting arrows at someone else’s target, which I’ve never been very good at, I make my own target around wherever my arrow happens to have landed. You shoot your arrow and then you paint your bullseye around it, and therefore you have hit the target dead centre. Brian Eno

I love this quote that I found on a creativity blog, and it’s so important for me to remember…get inspired by what other people are doing, but not distracted by it or worried by it or inhibited by it.

When I was in San Francisco last month, I passed a window display which stopped me in my tracks–tape, sponges, wire, pliers and scissors had all been artfully arranged in color families. At first I thought it was an art supply store but quickly realized it was a Tru Value hardware store in the middle of the city. I didn’t need a pair of pliers or a roll of electrical tape, but suddenly I WANTED it. Why don’t more businesses think about using their windows like mini billboards and displaying their wares, no matter how pedestrian, with a little creativity? We could do more of this in our own lives– make the food on the plate look like art, create a wall display of our jewelry, find the beauty in what’s at hand and what we take for granted.

I love this litte movie and wish I knew how to make one. It seems such a magical thing to turn your words into moving pictures. I’m inspired!

I’m put to shame by these sheep made of old phone sets and cords. Looking at the photo, I think “Of course!” but I would never have thought of it. It reminds me that looking at the world “slant” gives you ideas that just don’t come from viewing it head on through our tunnel vision of preconceived ideas.