When I was growing up, we had a big plastic bag filled with crayons. It was a Kmart bag or something similar and we were always adding stray crayons to it. When my sister Karen was in college, she would bring home the green and white dot matrix printer paper– stacks and stacks of it– so Denise and I were never without scrap paper to draw on.
But somewhere along the line, I stopped drawing, I stopped using crayons. And then I stopped using markers. As it was with sewing, I guess I just thought I was busy doing other things and really didn’t give it a second thought.
When I started Chelle Summer four years ago though, one of the goals was to start creating my own fabric designs. This meant, yes, that I had to draw and paint and create. For some reason I found this hard and while I would travel with markers and paper (I stopped taking paint and canvases to Los Angeles, much to the relief of Greg who was glad we had the extra space in the car) and yet I drew nothing. I set small goals, like an hour in the evening of just doodling. Still nothing.
What was this block? I finally realized it had something to do with the freedom that I give myself in my head to do things. While I’m good about writing five days a week, about spending some time each day working on sewing projects, I was having a harder time getting my visual creativity of drawing on paper to emerge from my head.
Finally, one afternoon in the middle of the week, I told myself to take some time and do some creating. From there I started doodling on the church bulletin during the homilies (shhh, don’t tell anyone that– but as I do the church’s social media, I’m also writing quotes down from the homilies so it gives me a better focus than of the crying child that’s keeping me from hearing everything). I spent several hours yesterday working on paintings, something I typical only can do on Sundays otherwise I end up going somewhere with paint on my hands.
Slowly but surely, that side of my creativity is emerging again. The hardest part– like my writing and sewing– is that there is much I want to do. And yet I know that if I spend time on it when I’m not doing other things or even just a few minutes a day, that is moving forward.