creativity

January 25 2025

How to find your art style

Wise Lasagna Painting art journal, creativity, sketchbook, watercolor 0

In 2017, after a lifetime of defining myself as a crafter and more specifically not an artist, I decided to pick up some watercolors and learn how to paint and draw.

I knew I wasn’t an artist because my art teachers told me so. I got yelled at for doodling in the margins on my seatwork in elementary school. I was bad at copying the art styles of the Old Masters. When forced to make a pen and ink drawing in 8th grade, I drew the modern split level my dad was building. I got an awful grade and on top of that, my art teacher told me his house was ugly. It was GLORIOUS and she had no taste, obviously.

At any rate, after that I didn’t bother with art anymore and instead focused on writing. Old classmates are unsurprised to see me making art now and tell me they remember me as an artist back in high school, so art must have been leaking out of my pores despite my efforts to contain it.

Naturally the first thing I painted was something I wanted to crochet: Totoro Shake!

And then I crocheted it!

And now, all these years later, I realize I forgot to crochet Totoro’s ears, how embarrassing!

I started taking watercolor classes on Skillshare. I’m not sure why I started with loose florals, other than that they felt accessible because flowers can look like anything.

I quickly learned that flowers aren’t my thing. I like looking at other people’s watercolor flowers but I didn’t enjoy the process of painting them. And though the intention was that the flowers turn out loose and playful, because I was copying someone else’s style my flowers look extremely constipated.

That’s when I decided lobsters were the thing.

At some point my kid got their hands on this sketchbook and added captions to the illustrations!

I hated this lobster so much. The proportions were off. I had to think really hard about how to draw it because I couldn’t draw, and it was stressful.

So I decided to draw harder.

I love looking at this kind of art, but this was also not my favorite thing to do.

I abandoned watercolor completely and used markers to make a cartoon. A lightbulb moment: THIS is fun.

But I never made another thing like this again. Why? I liked doing it!

After a few months of playing with watercolor and hating the results, I decided gouache might be a better fit. I painted things that the goauche art books told me I should paint, mainly mugs and furniture containing dishes and plants.

What a fucking snoozefest.

I know. Let’s paint soap instead!

I actually love this, and like the Trump cartoon, I didn’t make another thing like this again. Instead, I went back to trying to paint flowers, which I already knew I hated doing.

I am cured of flowers after these.

I try to paint a cozy winter house scene.

Nope.

This is not the vibe.

Absolutely not.

I hated doing this so much I couldn’t even finish it and decided that I was not into watercolor and gouache after all. Those were definitely other people’s thing, not mine.

But then, six years later, I pulled out my watercolors again and decided to try something new.

YES.

YES YES

Hell yes!

I almost couldn’t believe how much fun I was having playing with watercolors after six years of believing I couldn’t use them well or draw well enough to do anything other than abstract painting.

AHHHHHHH OMG YES THIS IS THE THING!!!!

As it turns out I didn’t need to do loose watercolor florals, I needed to do loose watercolor blob monster doodles!

There are still creative detours.

I still play around with new styles and new ways of using my materials.

My art started making me happy when I stopped taking art classes and trying to learn from other people and instead focused my efforts on play and experimentation. Learning the foundations and how to use different media was helpful. Ironically aiming for an art style was what stopped me from finding my own.

Once I figured this out last year and practiced a LOT in my daily journals, I learned to trust my ability to create any idea that popped into my head in my own, unique way.

In between 2017 and today there were a million little sidequests that had nothing to do with watercolor! But even when I wasn’t working on The Thing, I was still developing other skills I needed to support it – sketching, composition, color theory, storytelling through illustration, etc.

It may take weeks or years to find your creative voice. The most important thing is to stop listening to everyone else’s voice and focus on hearing your own.

Pastel rainbow crochet hearts by Jen Russell

November 24 2024

Rules of Engagement

Wise Lasagna Wise Lasagna Musings creativity, mindfulness 0

Yesterday I was 2500 words into a blog post about holiday advertisements and somehow found myself writing about Elon, Vivek, and DOGE. I had to stop myself. Like, whyyyyyyy am I even writing about them? I think they suck. You might think they suck. Lots of things suck right now. What else is new? Am I gonna keep dunking my head in the Trump toilet for four entire years?

NAY

NEGATIVE

NADA

FUGGEDABOUTIT

Literally two days ago I wrote a mission statement re: what I’m trying to accomplish with my creative work (see the bottom of this post). As I was midway through griping about the swamp monsters (again), I realized I was out of alignment with this mission. Un-nichefying (this should be a word if it’s not already) my website to create a personal blog with the freedom to write about whatever I want feels fantastic! But also, there are plenty of people writing about politics. The only purpose my writing about it serves is venting and putting more ick out into the universe. I’m on an ANTI ICK mission here! Sure, my lens might be slightly different, but there are plenty of other things I’d rather be writing about. I can write about politics well, but I don’t have to, so I’m mostly not gonna.

ANYWAY

I stopped writing about the swamp monsters and put my computer away and decided to spend the afternoon crocheting instead of writing. While I was crocheting I had this voice in the back of my head telling me I don’t have time to be sitting around playing with yarn. This has been my constant refrain for the last couple of months – I don’t have time I don’t have time I don’t have time. Why do I feel this way? I don’t know! This is an intentionally unbusy period in my life and yet the more I cut out the less time I feel I have.

I used to have a consistent morning routine, which I abandoned when the school year started because my mornings became more hectic. I used to sit with my planner, do a one-card tarot reading, journal, make a bit of art, and read some brain food. A few days a week I’d go for a run. Importantly, I’d do those things before I even thought about opening up my phone to check social media or the news.

Once I abandoned my morning routine, allllll of the bad habits returned. I’d read news while making coffee and start writing before I finished my first cup. I’d check socials while brushing my teeth. Running? Pfffffft. Who has time for exercise?

I realized that the problem has never been a lack of time, but rather a lack of focus. So, once again, I dusted off the Rules of Engagement index cards sitting untouched on my art desk. They needed an update, and also needed to live somewhere I could refer to them all of the time — not just at my art desk — so I made space for them in my bujo.

(As I was painting the border, that “OMG I just seriously don’t have time to be painting silly little flowers” voice appeared. I told the bitch to go away because what the hell else do I have to do today? Cleaning the bathroom? Grocery shopping? Finishing the laundry? Sheesh! I have all the freaking time in the world to be painting silly little flowers.)

My handwriting is cursed, so here they are in easier-to-read form:

I will create before I consume.
I will slow down because I have time.
I will not work to exhaustion.
I will decide what is enough for me.
I will remain focused on my process, not the outcome.
I will follow my interests.
I will withhold judgment of my work.
I will not take criticism from anyone whose advice I would not seek.
I will look for what’s working.
I will not outsource my definition of success to others.
I will not assign meaning to neutral events.
I will slow down and consider whether something I’m about to do is coming from a place of fear or strength.
I will remember that 99% of the things I worry about resolve themselves without my intervention.
I will remember how important it is to get centered before interacting with the world EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY.

This next one is more important than all of the others:

I get the only vote in my creative process because I was not put on this planet to make other people happy or comfortable with my choices.

The reason this one is so important is because we have a tendency to let other people’s voices rattle around in our heads too much. Unless you have a clear view of your mission and some guardrails, it’s easy to be pulled in one direction or the other.

When I built my new blog and started this newsletter a couple of months ago, I intentionally left things open to see what kinds of things I was drawn to writing about. Now that I’m consistently writing, I better understand what I’m trying to accomplish:

I’m on a mission to make the internet human again. When Big Tech sold us the lie that the personal blog was dead (so they could more efficiently monetize us), they flattened the meaning of community and turned us all into walking piggybanks. This has resulted in a less curious, less empathetic world where we rarely slow down long enough to remember that we are humans, not avatars.
The only way to have an algorithm-free community, one where we are not force-fed ragebait and drama, is to move away from social media and relearn how to connect with each other online and offline.
I’m here to build this for myself, and also to help you relearn how to build pockets of peace around yourself by digging into:

How to move away from social media.
Relearning how to start/maintain a personal blog and a webring (it’s 2005 again baby!).
Thought Seeds and other public art projects to reconnect with your community.
Zine making! For fun, political activism, and as a record of this moment in time.
Art journaling as a form of self-care and reconnection with yourself.
Sharing my story and encouraging you to share yours!

NOTE: nowhere in the above is writing about politics 🤣 We need some politics-free zones, and while some of my work is political, it’s also better served without my discussing politics head-on.

If you also feel yourself being pulled this way and that by waves hands everything around us these days, you might find it helpful to create some rules of engagement and a mission statement for yourself. Feel free to swipe any that resonate and/or create new ones (bonus points if you share them!).

November 3 2024

Brain, interrupted

Wise Lasagna Wise Lasagna Musings art thoughts, creativity, social media 0

It looks like you’re trying to escape social media, would you like some help with that?

(Just realized I can easily insert GIFs here so I had to let Clippy out for some air. I miss him so much, he made work fun.)

ANYWAY.

I’ve spent the last few weeks building my new website, Wise Lasagna. Until now, I’ve relied on Instagram to function as my portfolio which was silly, because I didn’t own the platform or control the presentation. I always had an excuse for not making the time to build a proper portfolio – takes too long, couldn’t get the plugin to work on my website, don’t have anything to put in it yet, yada yada yada.

I think maaaaaaaybe the bigger issue was that I was scared to look closely at my work and decide what was good enough and what wasn’t. How could I decide what was good? A portfolio would be evidence that I was very much not an artist, just pretending to be one, and everyone would see it, and then I’d be canceled and irrelevant for the rest of my life.

The amazing thing about this is that I’ve got years of showing my work and seeing it in publications as evidence to the contrary. I have an artist CV, for crying out loud!

After stepping away from social media, I realized that a lot of these feelings stemmed from wandering around through the funhouse mirrors of social media. Everyone’s work looks better, they’re doing new and better things, they’re being more successful even though they’re less talented, they’re hustling harder, or doing almost nothing and lucking into big opportunities. All things that were very much not happening for me. It makes you question your sanity sometimes, on top of causing you to constantly question your creative practice while you struggle to vomit out a steady stream of content just to be seen.

It’s only been a couple of weeks since I stepped off the hamster wheel and I already feel a sense of coming back to myself. I think that’s why I was finally able to spend a few days sitting with my work long enough to pull together a portfolio.

I spent years working on large canvases until I set them aside to work on more bite-sized pieces that could easily be fed to the content machine. When I think back to when I was working on these canvases, most of them were made during periods in which I was on a social media break, or at least using it infrequently, so I could hear myself think.

Let’s talk about these giant arts and please feel free to let me know if you’re seeing something different.

This was my first canvas. I was (and am) obsessed with phthalo green and drips and dots and just playing with the process. I don’t like much about this canvas, though, except the top left corner where the magenta is peeking through.

The one that came after I like more:

I’m still obsessed with drips and dots. The contrast is better in this one, but it’s still a little too symmetrical. I love what’s happening with the neon orange at the top center and bottom left.

Still drippy, less dotty:

The only thing I like about this one are the white ghosty highlights, especially the ones coming in from the right – they feel like dappled sunrays. The painting too dark and too heavy as a whole, though.

This next painting got stranded in Merida, Mexico by the gallerist who abandoned it (and two collections of collage work) when she abruptly shut down her gallery and left the country. If you see it, say hi for me!

I forget what this is called because I’ve blocked it out of my mind, I miss you lovely painting please come home by Jen Russell

I adore this painting. It shows so much more restraint than the ones that came before. I dug into the ghostly highlights and they really worked here. The contrast is good. The only thing I don’t love are the Payne’s grey sections on the bottom left and right – they’re a little too balanced.

This is the last canvas I worked on. It’s my favorite so it hangs above my fireplace.

All of these canvases have a layer of collage under the paint. In this one I let some of it peek through. If you zoom in you can find rows of tiny people, a train, and some text here and there.

I realized while going through these paintings that including work in your portfolio isn’t as much about deciding whether the work is good as it is about choosing work that’s the best representation of that particular layer in your creative practice. You can’t see this unless you zoom waaaaaay out with a detached eye – one that’s not been glazed over by comparison to other artists.

I’m sure this is obvious to artists who went to art school (you lucky ducks!). But for those of us who are self-taught and developed our art practice while at the same time growing our social media presence, it might not be.

When I was looking at the layers of my work to build my portfolio, I see a similar pattern in my art journals and collage. They started out very visually noisy and over time simplified into collages using only two images. When I took a break from social media, my collages started to get more complex again.

Baby Shark Do Do Do Do Do Do Do by Jen Russell

Baby Shark image

None of this was intentional.

I was making work that was digestible for the forum in which I was sharing it. And, because videos became one of the primary drivers for social media growth, simple collages were easier to demonstrate than my days-long process of flipping through dusty old magazines until I connected with the right images. People don’t have the patience to witness that process, and having to interrupt myself to remember to record it made the process tedious, and eventually I just stopped making art for a while.

As I move back into a regular art-making practice, not having to create content for social media feels liberating. I’m not sure whether I’m feeling art journaling or collage just yet, so I’m writing a lot, working in my bujo making watercolor train doodles, and writing comics on my iPad.

I have some ideas on how I’m going to share my work so that my art career doesn’t die along with my social media presence. Most of it will require me to /gasp/ leave my house 😱 Basically, I want to provide the kinds of experiences I’d enjoy myself.

I’ve thought about making slowcore long-format process videos for YouTube. Sixty second glitchy sped up process videos with twenty different camera angles which change every three seconds before my brain can grasp onto what’s being demonstrated aren’t it, but I can watch watercolor pigment shift around in slow motion until it dries all day long.

I like finding surprise art in the wild, and from past experiences other people enjoy that too, so that’s something I’m digging into again.

Me leaving a crochet heart somewhere random during Art Basel Miami 2021 – see you soooooon Miami!!!

And of course, I’ll be continuing to seek out new opportunities for shows and publication.

I’m so happy to see lots of people engaging in this conversation about leaving social media. Whether it will reach critical mass sufficient to foster the development of a new type of creative community building is yet to be seen, but progress is progress and less people continuing to be harmed by social media is better.

If you have a personal blog and would like to be a part of my webring on Wise Lasagna, let’s chat!

Lastly, today I received my first paid subscription and I’m so honored – thank you! This newsletter is only a couple of months old and it feels really nice and validating to have support so early in our adventures together.

Have you given up on social media? If you haven’t, what’s keeping you there?

PS – I leave one intentional mistake in each newsletter. If you’re the first person to spot it and tell me about it, I’ll mail you a piece of art!

September 14 2024

I rawdogged a 5k at PHL

Wise Lasagna Wise Lasagna Musings creativity, philadelphia, running 0

It’s been a very eventful week here in Lasagna Land! My youngest started high school; our lovely city hosted a debate and the people watching was fantastic; I learned that the reason I’m getting shorter is because the discs in my neck want to get closer to each other (so sweet!) and I started physical therapy; I wrote an entire book in my notes app while brushing my teeth and packing lunch. This morning I ran a 5k without having trained properly for anything but eating noodles from our new noodle shop up the street. Yay carbs!

And now here I am on the sofa wearing my sweaty running clothes munching my way through the free chips and cheese puffs from the nutrition table (I ate the banana while walking it off) and writing to you. I smell bad. My feet hurt. There’s a good chance I won’t be able to get up from the sofa which is less than ideal as I have cleaning and laundry and shopping to do today and also a kid who desperately needs a haircut.

Everything is just as it should be in this moment.

This is not a running Substack, but it also kind of is, because running is 1/8 of what I do in this season as an Octopus Person.

I was signed up to do Run PHL last September but was so overwhelmed I decided to skip it and sleep in. My dad had just died. I was in the last month of my marriage. I’d just signed a lease on an apartment I didn’t feel financially ready to take on and was frantically packing to move house while preparing for a civil RICO trial, trying to figure out how I was going to survive moving in the middle of trial while working 16-hour days.

I survived and then crashed hard for almost an entire year.

Because of this, I’ve had to scale my definition of success waaaaaay back. To me, success is simply showing up, ergo I fucking crushed this jawn.

As we were milling around on the tarmac before the race, waiting for everyone to clear the security checkpoint, I was thinking about how each person there had a story running through their head about how this race was going to go for them.

I didn’t sleep well last night.
Will I make it to the finish line?
Will my knee/ankle/hip hold up?
Will people think I’m weird if I stop to take pictures of planes in the middle of the race?
I need to remember to pay this bill when I get home.
What was that thing my kid said they needed this weekend?
I really should have peed before I got to the corral.
Am I hydrated enough?
Oh God please don’t let me be last.
My legs feel like lead.
I should have stretched more.
Fuck I’m so hungover. That was dumb.

And then I noticed the drone gazing upon us from just beyond the starting gate, lazily buzzing around appreciating the hundreds of people who woke up obscenely early on a Saturday morning to do something they love. The video of the crowd will end up on social media and people will be like “awwwww how inspiring look at all those people having fun I need to do this race next year!” And, having finished the race by the time we see those videos, our stupid little worries before the race will be replaced with happy memories when we watch them.

Why do we have to do the icky thinking thing first, when we could just show up and enjoy the fun we’re having? Because it IS fun! We end up missing a bunch of it because our heads are so messy.

For most of us, it takes time and discipline to be able to run a 5k. I learned how to run after gaining weight during the pandemic thanks to my wine and hummus diet plan. It was HARD. I couldn’t run for more than two minutes when I started. I didn’t follow a couch-to-5k plan because that felt too hard. Instead, I applied what I learned from Atomic Habits and made running so easy it would have been stupid not to do it. Each time I ran I made it a tiny bit harder by running an extra 15 seconds. When it started to get too challenging, I stopped making it harder until it felt manageable, and then I once again added more time. It took six months to be ready for my first 5k.

The point of saying all of this is that when you have this big, looming impossible thing you want to accomplish and you make doing That Thing your definition of success, you’re going to miss celebrating all of the smaller successes you have along the way to doing That Thing. Showing up is something to celebrate. So is progress. So is failure, because that is your best teacher if you’re willing to take the lesson.

For years I’ve had this idea that I want art and writing to be the thing I do professionally, instead of the paralegal thing I do now. I’ve always looked at this as a scenario where I continue to do my work-work full time and do art and writing in my free time (HA) until that is successful enough that I can leave my day job in the dust. I’ve mapped out plans. I’ve broken goals into bite-sized pieces. I’ve made vision boards. I’ve started and stopped and given up and started again more times than I can count.

And also! I’m interested in SO many things! I make a bazillion different kinds of art, incessantly write and journal, run (not as much as I’d like to!), and hover up books like my life depends on it.