Creatively Inept

I’ve noticed that depression and creativity have a strong link. When I was depressed, I went to night classes for web development, worked full-time, and wrote and recorded songs during the weekend. The fact that I couldn’t really play any instruments didn’t even faze me, and I borrowed my sister’s synthesizer to make up for my shortcomings. Before my depression ran its course, I’d also used sewing needles to carve strange figures out of chalk and finished sewing a quilt.

Now that I’m not depressed my creative output has dwindled to a mere scarf and hat set I knitted last year, just in time for summer. Last weekend, in an effort to increase my creativity without forcing myself back into depression, I made my first Artist Trading Cards.

ATCs are just what they sound like: trading cards with art on them. I’d been meaning to start these for some time, but I put it off until one day when Chris and his friend Mike went to Michaels to get some spray paint for their terrain. Cardstock was on sale, so I bought 50 sheets for $2.99. All I had to do was cut up the sheets into 2.5 inch by 3.5 inch cards, and then the real work would begin. I was going to create Art.

I borrowed a ruler from Chris and carefully marked off the sections where I wanted to cut. Using my sewing scissors, I cut along my pencilled line slowly. Hmm. I seemed to be going a bit wobbly.

I cut along all the lines and was left with cards of varying sizes and ragged edges. I decided it was time to place a call to an expert.

“Jessica?” I asked. “I know you mentioned using cardstock to cut into ATCs but…how the hell do you get them to be the same size? And with straight edges?”

Jessica, from her home in Texas, thought this over.

“Well, I use a ruler and mark dots where the sections are, and then I connect the dots,” she said finally.

“Yup…yup,” I muttered. “I did that, so okay, I did one part right…”

“Then I use an Exacto knife against the ruler to cut out the sections,” she finished.

“Ahhhhhh….I see. Okay, thank you.”

An Exacto knife! Of course. I should have thought of that. Now all my problems would be solved.

I borrowed Chris’s Exacto knife, and put a cardboard box top between the table and a new piece of cardstock. I measured off the sections, and then slowly, carefully, drew the Exacto knife against the ruler. I lifted the ruler and examined the paper.

“Hey, nothing happened!” I cried out.

“What do you mean?” Chris asked, busy with his own art project that seemed to be going better than mine, based on his contented humming.

“Well, I put the knife against the paper and…oh.” I looked closely at the knife. Evidently the part that looked like it should be the sharp part was actually the dull side, and I’d been holding the thing upside-down.

I’d done the same thing with a kitchen knife a few years ago, and the subsequent cut through my pinky had brought me to the ER where a nervous medical student carefully put one stitch in my finger to stop the bleeding, though only after telling me he couldn’t do anything until I applied pressure to the wound and it stopped bleeding.

I looked at him sadly and said, “I’ve been waiting in the ER for three hours already, applying pressure.” I paused for that to sink in, and then added gently, “I don’t think it’s going to stop bleeding on its own. That’s why I came to the ER.”

Chris, who had accompanied me only because I couldn’t drive while bleeding profusely and was unnerved by blood even on his best days, was not cheered by witnessing this interaction.

The medical student paused to consider this, then said, “Wait a minute,” and walked off to consult with an older man who, as I explained to Chris, was the real doctor.

“I’m gonna punch that kid in a minute if he doesn’t fix your finger,” Chris mumbled.

Normally impatient at waiting, I seemed to have entered into a Zen state. “It’s okay. He’s just a medical student or first-year resident. I used to have to help them find books all the time when I worked at the medical library. They don’t know anything. They can’t help it, poor things.”

The doctor instructed the medical student on using a tourniquet on my pinky to stop the blood flow temporarily (“remember to take it off after!”) and the med student set to work on my one stitch.

He had trouble threading the needle, and then was dissatisfied by his stitch and cut it out to start all over again. I could hear Chris starting to tap his foot impatiently and I wondered if I should offer to stitch it myself. Even with a finger incapacitated, I felt that I’d probably be able to get a good stitch in faster than the student. Hell, at this rate, even Paco the chihuahua could probably do it faster.

Luckily the student was pleased with his second attempt, and sent me home with instructions to return to the ER in one week to have the stitch removed. Upon seeing my primary care physician later that week, he grunted and said, “No, I’m supposed to take it out. The ER doesn’t do that. Humph.”

Back at home, and now holding the Exacto knife the right way down, I cut a nice straight line into the cardstock. Whoops! I must have released some pressure when I got to the end of the line, because the last bits were scraggly. Oh well. I’d just use the other side.

Eventually I cut out enough cards to begin. Art, prepare thyself to be created!

I knew exactly how I wanted the first set. Delicate watercolors depicting the seasonal changes. Winter should be easy–just bare ground, a naked tree, stark black against the white…Hmm…I wonder…maybe…no…how the heck was I supposed to show winter snow when the card was already white? Maybe I should start with a tree.

I drew a black line against the card. Hmm. That didn’t look like a tree trunk. Maybe it needed…branches?

Nope. That didn’t look good either. Maybe if I drew some ground. I dipped my brush into the brown paint, and swabbed it against the bottom of my tree.

“Does this look like winter to you?” I asked Chris.

He stared at the card for some time. “Why is the ground brown? Shouldn’t it be white, like snow?”

“Aw, forget it!”

I studied my card. Maybe if I added a border. I swiped red, bold streaks against the edges. What if I added…a striped border? With the colors fading from red to yellow and back again?

Now my card was covered with paint. It didn’t look like anything, and especially not Art. It looked like a lot of smudges and blurs.

By now the card was sopping wet with the water from the paints. I set it aside. Maybe when it dried, it would look like Modern Art?

I moved on to a fresh card. Maybe watercolors weren’t the way to go. I ran upstairs for a box of crayons. Primitive art! Like cave paintings! Or…not.

I scribbled over my cave painting and tried to hide it with some arty shades of green. Then I tried some gray around the edges, and found that improved the shade not at all.

“Chris, I can’t draw! I don’t have anything yet,” I wailed.

“Oh, you just say that! I’m sure it’s fine.”

I showed Chris my new card.

He stared at it.

“Okay, well maybe you haven’t gotten off to a great start yet, but I’m sure you can do better,” he offered.

Humph. So much for spousal support.

Maybe I just needed a different medium. Like, collage. Or mixed media. Scraps of cloth!

I ran for some cloth. I examined a green and gray piece with squares in it. I could cut out a square, and have the inner squares form a tic tac toe grid.

I brought out my Elmer’s glue, and found that the glue had hardened on the tip. Usually all I needed to do was break off the hardened glue to restore the opening, but it had been years since I’d used this. Only after chiseling the hole into a vast gaping wound and breaking off the tip of Chris’s mini-drill by jamming it into the hole, did I finally accept that the glue was not going to be freely flowing out the tip. Ever.

I uncapped the glue and poured some onto the cardboard box that I was using as a table surface. I swiped my tic tac toe box over the glue and pressed it onto the card. There! Not bad!

I cut out more shapes from a different piece of cloth, and tried to glue it onto the first piece, to form Xs and Os for the tic tac toe. Except the original cloth was too slippery, and nothing would stick to it.

In desperation, I gave up on the tic tac toe, and just glued some other miniature bits of cloth around the edge of the card, forming a border.

“How’s this?” I asked Chris.

“Hey, that’s good!”

I looked at my card again. It did look good–but only in comparison with the others. Sadly, even my best looked like it would lose against a third-grader’s art project. Maybe I could hire some neighborhood kids to make the next set of cards. Maybe they knew all about this Art stuff.

Posted by: Supersonic Jane | March 31, 2004 | 10:37 pm
Posted in: This Life