by Susan Lobb Porter | Choices, Food, Life |
Three weeks ago the universe slapped me upside the head with the ultimate AHA! moment.
Universe: “Stop eating sugar. And crap. No more junk food. Or processed food. Except for chocolate. Because every girl needs chocolate.”
Me: “Mmm’kay.”
And I began eating like this… Real food. Nom nom. Stuff that grows in the ground or on trees or in a pasture. Lots of good fats. Nothing that came out of a box from a factory. Imagine that! And no grains. Seriously, no grains.
And no weighing. No measuring either. Just eat when I’m hungry, as much as I want. Which is usually quite a bit.
In the beginning, the first week or so, it sucked. I was cranky and out of sorts and all I wanted to do was sleep and take my arguments to the dark side with Mr. Spouse. But that phase passed before one of us could ask for a divorce and soon enough and an interesting thing happened . . . I realized I was . . . relaxed. She who was once the queen of late night found herself going to bed early, falling asleep right away. Without the adrenalin fuel of sugar and simple carbs, she whose heart and mind were always racing found herself settling into a slow easy rhythm. Things that had once been important weren’t that important anymore. Less time online, more time in the studio.
Settling down in the evening with lapdogs instead of laptop.
These are the changes I’ve seen in three weeks. I’m sure there’ll be more:
- My formerly reptilian skin–and I’m not exaggerating when I say reptilian— is now smooth and soft. I mean before this, moisturizers didn’t do a thing. WOOT!
- The mirror shows weight loss–how much, I don’t know. I don’t weigh myself so I can’t say.
- Cheekbones! I has CHEEKBONES!!!
- Better sleep. Much better. OMG, yes!
- Slower heart rate
- Less anxious. In fact, not anxious at all.
- No desire to waste time on email and facebook
- More quality time in the studio
- A general feeling of well being
I know we’re all different and not everyone would find this way of eating right for them. But it works for me, better than anything I’ve ever tried before. Three weeks into a change of lifestyle I never thought I’d do. Now I see it as the most natural way for me to eat, for me to be.
And it’s a good thing.
I’d love to hear your thoughts about this in the comments below. And remember:
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Process, Work in Progress |
You know sometimes you hear something and it resonates as an AHA! lightbulb moment and all of a sudden you UNDERSTAND? You know what I’m talking about?
Well, I had one of those AHAs! today.
It revolved around the work-in-progress I showed you last week.
This puppy. It’s a big canvas, 4 x 4 feet. The image is based on an iPad painting I created back in January for a 30 paintings in 30 days challenge. I let it sit all week because I was busy. And when I made it to the studio yesterday, I found myself having way too much fun with landscapes and oil pastels. That canvas was soooo last week.
And today there was FaceBook. And e-mail. And all sorts of interesting stuff on the interwebs. And Facebook again. And all the other stuff I had to catch up with…including an online interview between Catherine Just and Rita Rivera Fox about being connected with ourselves. And how we find distractions to keep from feeling what’s really going on.
Ohhhhhhhhhh…LIGHTBULB!!!
So I sat and asked myself if I was really hungry for those chips. And my body said, Hungry? Helloooooo– you’re just scared shitless of that painting. What if you screw it up and it isn’t any good?
Well, logically speaking, that’s not a big deal. Screwups happen all the time in the studio, I just paint over it. Not worth eating that whole bag of potato chips over.
So I said, Hey fear, here’s some breath for you. Then went into the studio and painted. Spent a few hours putting paint on, scraping paint off. One step forward, two steps back in search of the creative voice this image wanted
I couldn’t find it but I wasn’t eating chips either.
Just when I was getting ready to stop for the day, I said what the hell and began smooshing the paint around with a rag and my fingers. And got just the look I didn’t know I was going for.
Rough. A little edgy. One hundred percent listening to my gut, not my head.
It’s a start. Perhaps there’ll be a finished painting to show next week. And if not, that’s okay, da Muse is happy and life is good.
Even without potato chips.
(But I didn’t say anything about chocolate!)
As always, I’d love to hear what you have to say about this in the comments below. And remember—
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Cool Apps, Work in Progress |
Oh my sweetums, something has come over me. Once upon a time, like last week, I was totally disorganized. Disorganized as in scattered, running around like the proverbial chicken sans head.
Like these folks.
Sigh of relief. You didn’t think I’d show a dead chicken video, did you?
The point is, I was running around flapping my wings and squawking (yes, squawking) about doing S.T.U.F.F when in reality very little stuff was getting done. Except the squawking. I’m good at that.
And then Alyson Stanfield, the Art Biz Coach and author of I’d Rather Be in the Studio, began having her way with my bad habits via her ecourse Organize Your Art Biz.
BTW, it’s a great book and no one’s paying me to say that. Buy it.
Back to being somewhat organized…I now have a office separate from my studio. And a clean inbox. And files, both electronic and paper that are shaping up and starting to make sense. Best of all I have discovered the elephant in the room…Evernote. And I am in luvvvvvvvv.
I will not go into all the details of Evernote here. Let’s just say it involves NOTEBOOKS! OMG, do you know how much I love notebooks? And those legal pads? I bet there are at least four on the kitchen table right now. But my EN notebooks are free from coffee rings and kitty puke because they only exist in cyberland. You can have as many as you want, give them each their own names, group them in related stacks and fill them with things you clip from the internet. Or notes you write. Grocery lists. Everything syncs between desktop, cloud and mobile. So if you’re out and about and want to save someone’s business card but don’t want to clutter up your wallet, take a photo with your phone and file it instantly in the right notebook in Evernote. And you can have Evernote send you reminders when something is due. So far my art ‘stack’ has notebooks for expenses, inspiration, artists to follow, ideas for classes, reference photos and submission deadlines. The notes within these notebooks had previously been all over my desktop and archived in email. Which means they were all but inaccessible. Forgotten.
Especially submission deadlines. I can’t tell you how many shows I’ve missed because the call to artists disappeared somewhere in the belly of the beastly laptop.
But not any more!
One of my newfound notes was a call to artists for large scale figurative paintings. Bingo! Some of those Women in Red that I did back in January on the iPad have been begging to live large on canvas. Well, now they will.
Which brings us to today’s work-in-progress. Ta-da… It’s a big puppy, 4×4 feet. This is early days, just blocking out the shapes.
I started with a canvas that already had some preliminary layers. I sketched out the figures with charcoal.
Then added the first of the color. Acrylic. Got a long ways to go but it’s a start.
Love to hear your thoughts on this. Have any great apps or productivity tips you want to share? Let’s get a discussion going in the comments below.
Meanwhile, remember this:
It’s turning into my new signoff, like Roy and Dale’s Happy Trails.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Blogging, Work in Progress |
You may have noticed things look a bit different over here at Arty Life. You may be thinking to yourself that woman changes the look of her blog more often than she changes her underwear. And you’d be right, sort of. I mean, about Arty Life. But as for my personal hygiene, well…I’m NOT gonna discuss that on the interwebs.
WOOT! So once again Arty Life has a new doo. She is an ever evolving work-in-progress. Be sure to click the home tab up above–that’s where the change is more dramatic. Like red shoes dramatic. It’s still not completely finished, still has some quirks but I’m getting there.
Meanwhile, here’s what I did in the studio this week–besides all the cleaning, sorting, putting away/throwing away I’ve been doing under the fierce organizing-your-art-biz whip of Alyson Stanfield, that is. Yes, I made time to paint. To finish a few small oils.
Remember this?
work-in-progress
I showed it here a few weeks ago. Well, maybe it was the country playlist blasting from itunes today that inspired the change. This is what it looks like now that it’s done.
Southwest Impressions # 1 oil on cradled wood 10″x10″ 2014 Susan Lobb Porter
YEE-HAW! Back in the desert again, the place that feeds my arty soul. Oh my sweetums, there’s something about the light, the color and the harshness of the landscape that gets those creative juices flowing.
Today’s work was completed via palette knife. I like the way they smoosh the paint around. And they’re a heckuva lot easier to clean than a brush.
Got a couple more little works-in-progress to show you. These are little bitty things, 6×6 inches.
works in progress
All of these will be for sale soon on my big girl I-am-an-ARTIST!!! website. That’s also a work-in-progress but it’s next on the list and coming along.
As always, I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments below. And if you like what you see, please share with your friends.
Most of all, remember this…because it’s true!
by Susan Lobb Porter | Clutter challenge, Life, Studio |
Do you remember a couple months ago when I was bitten by the Tidy Fairy right on my tidy bum? Bit so hard I actually blogged about it throughout the month, showed photos of the resulting spartan simplicity of my-life-as-tidy. 
Do you remember that?
I kept up my little tidy spree until one day…LIFE happened. The Tidy Fairy was kicked in the corner with some errant dust bunnies when the it’s-not-the-flu-but-it’ll-knock-you-on-your-ass-for-a-month bug came a callin’. And as I slowly recovered from not-the-flu I found my tidy motivation was belly up under a pile of crumpled tissues.
I. Did. Not. Care. The rooms I dealt while drunk on the elixir of cleanliness have maintained–to a certain degree–their new found sense of order. But the long abandoned kids’ rooms upstairs along with my studio out back, those places the tidy fairy never made it to, remained magnets for clutter.
In fact the studio became positively frightful. Things mysteriously appeared where there was no space for them to appear. Except for things I needed, those disappeared who knows where. And then the walls closed in. Overnight. Poof! Just like that. My once spacious studio took on the proportions and feel of a gnome hole in the side of a hill. I was ready to shut the door and walk away. Seriously. Take up knitting or something. But when I heard Alyson Stanfield was running her Organize Your Art Biz class again, I took it as a sign from the Universe.
Universe: Don’t quit painting. Clean your studio. Organize your art biz.
Me: Umm…okaaaaay!
After just a few days I can honestly say this class is where I need to be right now. Not only is my desk–including drawers–organized–they even close now!!!— I had a major AHA! about the studio and how it functions…and how it can function MUCH BETTER!
Universe (via Alyson): Studio and office should be separate.
Me (thinking of the empty kids’ rooms upstairs): Riiiiiiight!
So in the next few days I’ll be moving all the non-painting, non-art making stuff out of the studio. Shipping supplies, matts, prints, books. Canvasses–yes, all those blank canvasses I buy by the case, especially those huge suckers that take up so much room. And the finished ones that aren’t sold or hanging anywhere else–all that will go to Firstborn’s room, my soon-to-be new office. Which means I have to organize that room first.
But envisioning the studio as a fully functioning work space is all the incentive I need. Room to move around. Throw paint. Teach classes. Shoot video. Ohhhhh, I am positively swooning! Come back next week to see how this goes. There will be photos. Maybe even a swoon selfie…. As always my sweetums, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this in the comments below. And by the way, has anyone told you this yet today— 
Well, you are!
