Find time for creativity

While I’m specifically taking about drawing and painting in this post, I’m really referring to any creative process you want to count, be that crafting, writing, making music… whatever! I’ve found myself needing a creative outlet a couple times recently, the first as I was preparing a bid to co-chair next year’s Capricon with a theme of Let Your Geek Flag Fly. The image below was me thinking through what could fall under that theme and which of those I could represent as meeple. It is certainly not all-inclusive, given how much different material falls under fandom. That said, if you’re not sure which fandom is meant to be represented by a particular meeple, take a moment to read through the ALT text.

Starting at the top left of the image, a Tree of Gondor with a unicorn meeple below it, a Stargate with a meeple bearing a question mark in front as something resembling a Godzilla meeple approaches, a TARDIS with a meeple outside. Arrayed at the front of the image are the following meeples, starting at the 5th(ish) row: Wonder Woman, Transformer, Death, Spider-Man, a furry creature of some sort; the 4th row features an Eevee, a figure wearing a Star Fleet emblem, Aang (the last Airbender), someone in a red & white striped (could be Waldo if Waldo were a meeple), and a little green alien with 3 eyes; the 3rd row has a cylon, an Among Us figure (with a flag that says "sus" pointing to the cylon), and a vampire; the 2nd row has Yoda and a figure wearing a "CHB" shirt; the first row has a goat holding a flag that reads "Geek".
A mini canvas being held by a green figure. The canvas depicts a sketch (black & white) of a unicorn in a clearing facing an open box.

More recently, our local library kicked off a Tiny Art Show, distributing mini canvas (3 by 3 inches) with a matching easel, along with a small paint set and pair of brushes. My initial plan had been to draw a person, a phoenix, and a dragon, based on a book I recently reviewed, but I didn’t really like the practice sketch I made. I didn’t even make it to the phoenix, as people – faces in particular, though hands are a difficult spot too – are not my strong suit when drawing. Then it occurred to me that I could draw something based on one of my stories. My most recently published story, “The Box”, in The Spaces In Between, provided the inspiration for this piece. The little green guy holding the sketch (second draft, I drew one on paper first) is a cell phone holder I picked up at the work conference I attended recently.

A mini canvas on an equally mini easel. The canvas depicts a painting of a pink & purple unicorn in a clearing facing an open box.

Happy with the sketch, I proceeded to attack the canvas with an eraser, reducing the lines to mere outlines to reduce how much pencil might show through in the final image. I then painstakingly painted it over three different sessions one dot at a time. It has been many years since I tried my hand at pointillism, and I’m fairly sure this is the first time I’ve tried it with paints rather than markers.

I deviated by making the unicorn pink with a purple mane and tail; she’s specifically mentioned as white in my story. I thought white would look too much like unfinished canvas.

Overall, I’m happy with both results, acknowledging that they’re very different stylistically. What’s your current creative outlet?