My daughter Maggie and I have a Mother Daughter Art show coming up in April 2017. We are both showing our work at a local Park District building in Deerfield, Illinois. The facility is called the Patty Turner Center and has a lot of meaning for our family because my dad is an active member of this senior center.

As people who read my Studio Notes know, I am an artist who makes abstract art with fabric. My daughter Maggie is an artist proficient in many different media.  She is an illustrator who draws animals and their environs.  Her wildlife photography is wide-ranging from birds in local prairies to cuttlefish in Australia's Great Barrier Reef to turtles on Florida beaches. 

My next series, Four Corners, is loosely based on a painting I saw by Helen Frankenthaler. My Instagram friend Brianne of @briannealves posted about Helen Frankenthaler last year and I have been hooked ever since. I have decided that whenever somebody mentions an artist I'm not familiar with, it's in my best interest to check that artist out. In this case, Brianne has a fantastic sense of color and design and I've been following her since I started the 100 day project in April 2015. We share a love of the color blue. So I knew I would most likely be fascinated by Frankenthaler's art. 

This week's article takes a meandering route from the pendulum swing from neutral colors in my last series to bright colors in my upcoming series to Kona clubs to get the tools I need for designing series color palettes to the professional mindset from Steven Pressfield to minimalism of getting only the supplies you need and will actually use. All these topics come back to respecting your self expression and finding ways to support your creativity and make it easier to stick to your specific creative practice. Let's get started.

I am in the middle of creating the 25 day Compassion series. The color palette is neutral greys and tans with an accent color of pink, red and magenta. When I choose a color palette, I usually stick to those original colors. Rarely do I throw another color into the mix as I am creating day by day. However, for the design parameters, I usually make it my mission to break the self-imposed rules constantly. This appeals to my forge-your-own-path kind of thinking.  

I am stuck with this Compassion series. I think I may need to stick to the design parameters. 

I have been thinking about writing a guideline for people to use to create their own improv series. In a way, I want to share how working in a series with some color and design guidelines can be a liberating way to create art using your imagination and intuition. Since Spring of 2015, I have been creating a 6.5 inch daily square within the framework of a 25 day series. I pick a theme and title for the series and explore within that theme with each daily square for 25 days. Then I sew all the days together into a large square like a visual diary exploring the series theme from Day 1 through Day 25.  

Last week, I started drafting a "How To" for making an improv series based on a selected color palette and design parameters. I realized how difficult it is to explain in words what I just do intuitively. But I continued to plug along after I realized photos could tell a lot more of the story. Now the guideline includes photos. The guidelines will be available next week.

My Studio Notes blog started on January 19, 2016 with my first post titled Very Relaxed. In many ways, it seems like it was not so long ago. I truly had no idea what I was asking of myself to write an article every week. It was oftentimes very hard and time consuming. Writing is not something that comes naturally to me. I am rather a reserved person and sharing some of my deepest thoughts can still be challenging. But seeing that people continue to read them and find something helpful in them is a constant motivator to keep it up. 

When I read some of my old posts, I feel like the message is still the same. Start a creative practice and begin a journey of self-knowledge, growth and ultimately self-care. 

I find it easy to get overwhelmed by big goals you want to accomplish when you're wrapping up your last year and looking forward to the upcoming year. My strategy this year is to use a weekly process flow to keep me on track. So I set up a weekly template in Evernote to visualize all the moving parts. It helps me to know what I want to accomplish every day. 

Over the past two years, I have found that over time, I vacillate between intricate series with many colors and complicated designs and minimalist series with minimal color palette and more sedate designs. This is a common human trait to start looking for the “other” and search out new experiences but only to repeat patterns from the past. We all have seen this happen with fashion (still waiting for the 1940’s style to come back again), music (Indie California style country rock), architecture (Bauhaus minimalism) and design (Mid-century modern). My seemingly random selection of series has the same markings of a pendulum swinging back and forth.

My family and I drove out of Florida in the early morning a few weeks ago. When I looked out the car window over the swampy area, there was a thick blanket of fog. The palm tree tops were still visible. Most of the surrounding scenery was clear except this small pocket of fog. It made me think about what foggy mindsets do I have in my life. What is blocking my vision? What can interfere with clarity of thought? Things like overwhelm or procrastination come to my mind. 

For the past two weeks, I have not made a daily square. In a way, it was a nice break from the routine.  But honestly, I just missed it. Even though it felt awkward to not be creating every day, I plan to take a break over the holidays every year though for two reasons. First, it helps to have a focused time to not only look for inspiration for the next year but develop themes I want to pursue. Second, taking a break from making daily squares helps me appreciate the practice of daily creating. I will admit sometimes I don't want to make a square if life is just busy that day. This happens very rarely. Mostly because I have realized that usually walking into my studio is the perfect way of pushing that mental reset button. But when I may feel some resistance to the work, now I can remember that feeling of absence. Like something was missing from my day. Absence can make the heart grow fonder, I guess...

When you look at your creative life through the lens of a year, it can make you more productive and more consistent. Consider a Creative Calendar...