Likhain

creations in ink

Spaces for working

March 31, 2012 by M. S. Sereno | 0 comments

I live in a tiny — tiny! — apartment unit that doubles as my studio, and since I moved in my workspace has been a major concern. Just making enough room for myself to draw without bumping my knee into drawers, or a suitcase, or the corner of my desk, is a little bit of a challenge.

Arrayed on the dark surface of a desk: a sketchbook open to an ink drawing, a magenta card printed with white floral patterns, a red-orange teacup and saucer, a bright fuchsia teapot, and a small lip balm container.

So when I start working on art, there has to be some shifting involved. It’s not a lot, but enough to make procrastination look very attractive. I move my laptop from one end of the desk to another, then remove everything from the desk — organizers, calendar, trays — except the essentials: the artwork and references, a pen, and–

Well. Tea, of course.

Every time I feel my fingers stiffening or cramping up I take a sip of tea. It works like magic.

On a dark desk against a bare white wall: a sketchbook, a printed card, a pen, a teacup, a teapot, a laptop, a pad of paper.

I’m always really curious to see how other artists have set up their studios; some are arranged like works of art themselves, something I find both inspiring and rather pull-your-head-down-from-the-clouds sobering in terms of unattainability. To me the most important aspect is the space: not just the physical reality of it, to give your hand and arm and the whole of your body enough room to move, but the sense of it as well, lightness and a capacity to expand. I couldn’t do with walls hung with references and images — they would distract me and give me headaches, my own work is headache-inducing enough — or without windows or high ceilings. In this sense I’m very blessed; my apartment is ridiculously small but when I work I have a window to my left and nice high ceilings above me.

And half a desk. Actually, despite the small surface area I have to work with, it’s probably the best setup I’ve had in a long time. I used to work on the floor. Or the dinner table. (Crumbs and inconspicuous food stains, my worst enemy.) Or on my knees. Or on tables in Starbucks that I’d hog for hours, until my neck finally gave up on me. This is pretty luxurious, all in all. Which probably accounts for why I’m sounding a little more smug than I should.

Besides, it has room for my teacup and the coffee press I’ve shamelessly requisitioned as a teapot. I don’t need much, really.

Reconciling incompleteness

March 26, 2012 by M. S. Sereno | 0 comments

I’ve tried to put up sites for my art many times in the past. I would get to the stage of installing WordPress, picking out a theme, compiling images, making an introduction post — and then, nothing. For some people, blank sheets of paper and notebook pages are terrifying; for me, it’s a blog that’s just about set up and only needs my words, images, and regular updates to make it work.

I think — especially in art — my high standards tend to defeat me. Which is not to say that I don’t want high standards, but they’re such barriers to even just starting something, sometimes. Or, well, completing it. I remember when I was still in graduate school, I missed a lot of major submissions because I was so obsessed with fine-tuning my papers and problem sets to perfection, and would rather not submit at all if my submission wasn’t going to be all that excellent anyway. I feel the same for many illustrations; I have quite a few that I’ve left unfinished, because it obviously wasn’t going to match the image I was holding in my head.

And yet, when one thinks about it — what does? There is always a gap between what one thinks a work should be, and what one can actually make. With patience and practice the gap narrows, but it never really closes. So perhaps it’s unrealistic — not to mention harmful — to hold oneself to the expectation that things should always be perfect; that it’s only when they’re complete when they have worth.

Because even incompleteness can have value. I’m trying to learn that, so as not to toss so many of my efforts aside. Even incompleteness, even flawed work, can mean something. Maybe I can learn to call it potential. Growth.

The image is of an illustration I’ve been working on for several months, on and off, whenever my hands and my eyes can manage it. Not a long time compared to some of my other work, but it’s more demanding than the others because of the way I need to do the strokes.

And it’s not perfect. It’s still incomplete. That’s fine, though — I’ll keep trying. And I won’t say that I’ll hit all my marks. But to not disregard what I’m working on; to respect it and to esteem it because if nothing else, imperfect and incomplete as it may be, it means work and patience and time, means learning — that in itself is enough, I think.

It isn’t everything. But incompleteness doesn’t necessarily mean inadequacy.

November 2, 2011
by M. S. Sereno
0 comments

“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities