Dusting off the microphone and slowly getting back into Podcasts … be gentle, it’s been a long time 🙂
Hello hello! This is Teena Hughes from the Paint On Silk Podcast!
And before you faint, fall off your chair, drop your paintbrushes – yes, I am starting this up again.
I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve done some podcasts, but times change and as we know, it’s been a tricky year for everybody over the last 12 months or so, and a lot of people are still struggling in so many ways.
And I just wanted to talk about how some people are struggling – people that I’ve spoken with – silk artists and other types of artists, many people are saying that they just don’t have the energy to get into their artwork. They’re not inclined, they don’t have any inspiration and they just feel overwhelmed with everything that’s been going on.
Well, I’m here today to say that that happens to all of us at some point or another and to many people over the last year or so in particular. And if you’ve got any tips or suggestions on how to help somebody kickstart their art again, let me know, I’d love to hear.
What I’m going to recommend is that you start small, do something really, really small. If you’ve got a notebook that you normally sketch in or doodle or whatever, I would pick that. What I’ve done – let me share what I’ve done. I’ve got a notebook – I always have an A5 notebook with me wherever I am, and I’ve broken it down into little cubes.
I’ve drawn cubes or squares actually on a page, and then I’ve started just filling in one square each day. The first few days, I just did a little doodle, a little sketch in there, and then I decided to go back and color them in, so I used some pencils. I also use some watercolor pencils, which I could then wet with water.
And I use some pens, texta pens, markers (they’ve got different names in every country), but just that one little action with my cup of coffee every morning of just doing one little tiny weeny piece of art, (that was about an inch square or two and a half centimeters square) just made it less terrifying, I guess is one way that some people feel.
So just by doing one little action, you don’t have to show it to anybody, you don’t have to post it on 50 places on social media – is just for you. And even like what I did when I first did my first one, I was having a cup of coffee, so I drew my coffee cup and, that was all I needed to do. It just made me smile for a second. And that was really good. So I guess what I’m trying to say is just do something really small that only takes a couple of minutes and don’t try and do something too overwhelming.
An artist that I follow online actually has a ton of photos that she’s taken of the cracks in footpaths when she’s been out walking and as crazy as it seems, she posts one photo a day of the cracks, people download it, and then they turn that into their own little piece of art.
So, you know, a couple of cracks could turn into a dog’s face, it could be a cloud, it could be some flowers, it could be anything. So if you’re having trouble just coming up with your first little squiggle or sketch, maybe thinking outside the box, like this in, cracks in the paint in the walls, you know, marks on the floor, just take photos of anything weird that you can then draw on top of.
And some people are using, they, they print it out like I do. And then you can use a pen to do your little sketch. Some people use programs like Procreate on their iPad. I don’t have an iPad, so I don’t use that. But a lot of people that I know absolutely love it. So anyway, that’s just a couple of ideas. So maybe give yourself a couple of days, think about it each day, over your coffee or tea, whatever you have when you’re sitting down and pondering the universe. And maybe that’s a little way to get started.
I had a question this week from someone over email and they were asking me whether they can use H DuPont classique silk dyes for dye baths. Now, I’ll be honest with you. I have not ever done a dye bath with silk dyes, but when I did some research a while back, I found that some of them you absolutely can.
So I’ve just replied to this lady to point her to a page in my website, where if you say I DuPont and dye bath, you will find the page straight away. So basically it’s a few steps that the manufacturer tells you to go through and how to make a dye bath, what to put in it, which is terrific. And then they say that you can fix the dyes afterwards in a steamer or in the microwave.
Now, before anyone writes to me and says, how do I do that in a microwave?
I don’t know because I’ve never done it. And you know, there’s still a lot of things I haven’t done, but also things I don’t need to do or don’t want to do.
So if you have done this, please do get in touch via my website, how to paint on silk.com and share it with us. And I’ll put your information on the next podcast and this as well as the website. So if you’ve done this and you’d like to share some tips, absolutely please go to the website and get in touch. That would be fantastic.
In my last email that I sent out, I put an offer out to chat over Zoom with anybody about silk painting. Well, we had a few fits and starts. They didn’t happen on the days we were planning, but we did have a couple of chats with a few different people.
And, oh gosh, let me tell you, it was terrific. Just connecting with people who love doing silk painting was just amazing and really lifted my spirits, lifted their spirits. So it was really a great thing to do. And I would like to continue to do this – with two other parts of my life, I have ongoing zoom chats. One is fortnightly so every two weeks and the other one is monthly. And I’m thinking that I might just put the dates up and set this up for the silk painting as well.
And then we’l be able to chat every two weeks or whatever you feel like; I’m going to make a link right now that I’ll give you, it’s going to be https://how-to-paint-on-silk.com with hyphens between each word and then a slash at the end, and then the word “zoom”.
https://how-to-paint-on-silk.com/zoom
So if you go to that link, it should automatically take you to the page where you can sign up for any of the chats. That’d be great.
It would be so wonderful to chat with more people about the silk painting.
And I want to hear what everyone’s been doing, what they plan to do.
What do you feel you’ve achieved?
Do you feel you’ve jumped any hurdles or you’ve got hurdles? You want to know how to jump them? Let me know. That would be terrific.
I’m just wondering, do you have any bits of silk laying around that are leftovers from projects, or even if you want to have a bit of a dabble and paint a bit of silk today? I’m not sure if you know, but I have a free online course called “How to Create Bookmarks with Leftover Silk. So if you’d like to get that course for free and you haven’t done it before, pop over to a gum, G U M dot C O slash silk bookmarks.
So I’ll repeat that again – that’s gum.co/silkbookmarks, where G U M dot C O is the website then slash silk bookmarks.
If you do take that course and you enjoy it, I’d love to hear from you. And I’d also love to see the bookmarks that you create – that would be absolutely fantastic. And it would make my day!
Some time ago, I received a delightful message from a silk artist named Rebecca. And I haven’t let her know that I’m going to put this in the podcast, so I hope you don’t mind Rebecca, but I’m sure people would like to hear about this too.
“Hi, I started doing silk again, and I saw your piece on with the bamboo steamer. I had never used it. Actually I had one and I was going to put it in a garage sale. So I brought it back in the house and I’m steaming two scarves right now. So I’m glad I found out about that. Thank you.”
Thanks so much, Rebecca. I really appreciate you sending me a message via the website, which was a voicemail. Woohoo!
Okay by now you will have received my email and everyone will be able to check out that video that I created.
Okay possums, that’s it for today. This is just the first warming-up exercise to get back into the podcast. If you’ve enjoyed it, please do let me know. I’ll be sending out the link for this Podcast in my newsletter and also on the Facebook page. And I look forward to hearing from you soon. I’d love to see photos of what you’re up to. Okey-dokey ciao cio for now!
This has been Teena Hughes from https://how-to-paint-on-silk.com
See you in the next podcast. Bye-bye!
Did you enjoy 006 Paint On Silk Podcast?
I do hope so! Please click the heart on the Podcast to let me know – thanks ever so much!
Teena XOX
