The more work I do as an engineer, the less work I do as an artist.

I do, essentially, have two jobs.

From 8-5, Monday through Friday, I am a Mechanical Engineer, licensed by the State of California and everything.

I design very practical things in practical ways. If you ever go to the bathroom in Yosemite Valley, your waste most likely leaves the valley through my pump station. A few of you might drink tap water from plants I helped design and build.

Right now I’m busy designing the replacement heating, cooling, and ventilation systems for a large helicopter repair hangar. Last time I was at the hangar it was full of partially disassembled Blackhawk helicopters. Cool!

When I say “busy”, I really mean “really busy”. I took Saturday off last weekend, but was in the office for 13 hours on Sunday. The weekend before I put in about 25 hours between Saturday morning and Sunday night.

Deadlines are keeping me this busy, I have a lot to get done, and not quite enough time to do it all. Still, It needs to get done. Not doing it isn’t really an option.

For the last few weeks, my mind has been calculating pressure losses, looking up electrical load data, sizing ducts, and drafting equipment details.

It is left brain work, and when I get home, I have nothing left, and nothing goes right.

There’s a painting I started 3 weeks ago sitting on my work bench next to my desk. The paint on my pallette has grown a thick skin that I will have to eventually scrape off.

Every day, I look at this painting, and then think about how I should work on it, and I am neglecting it. I just can’t wrap my head around it though.

I can’t wrap my head around how to apply paint to the canvas right now, I can’t think about the risks I take with presentation when I paint, or the emotional resonance I may be trying to capture.

It’s a good thing, that I’m stuck in my left brain right now. I need my left brain, at least until the end of the day when this project submittal goes out.

I don’t just get stuck in left field though. The same thing happens on the right.

When I start digging into art, and get deep into my right brain activities, I have a hard time switching gears to crank out some rough and dirty engineering work. My job suffers when I am productive at night making art.

It’s quite a conundrum!

I think that the answer is to focus on the more “left-brained” stuff during the week. I can prepare paper, edition prints, even print during the week, keeping it nice and left. No creative stuff though. No image development, no painting, no “artsy” stuff. Keep it analytical.

Friday night, switch gears and swing out to the right for the weekend, and let myself hang out in that mode for two and a half days.

I think I have been trying to switch gears too fast, faster than I am naturally capable of.

Anyway, I’ll test this out, and see how it works for me.

After my trip to Utah, I got back, and spent an afternoon in Union Square to readjust to the city.

I call it recompression, because that’s what it felt like.

The City Canyon in the morning

It was louder. There are a lot more sounds in the city.

Everything moves faster. It is harder to stop.

My good friend Tiven welcomed me back from reality when I got home from Utah, and he was right. While I was out in the middle of nowhere, walking amongst giant, strange, colorful rocks, and sleeping next to the Colorado River, I felt a certain realness about the place.

That realness was hard to find in the City at the moment.

I sat in the square for an hour or two, watching everything. Ate a sandwich. Talked to a homeless guy. I felt like a rock in a river, everything moving past me, things were gone before I even realized they were there.

The sound in the city is a cacaphony, a mixture of dozens of sounds, combines into a rolling jumble.

I started to think of the building walls as the walls of our own canyons, and the streets as the deep cut wash ways in between. The city is it’s own Fiery Furnace, it has it’s own Devil’s Garden.

Most of all though, it has people. People that flow through these canyons, scale the canyon walls, and climb the mountains. People carve this landscape, like the water carves the landscape of the desert.

That is the big difference between the desert and the city: people.

People shape this place, and people make the city what it is.

Without people, this city would be nothing but canyons made of concrete and steel.

It is people that make the city worth living in.

I'll be somewhere around here

Working too much can do strange things to a mind.

In my case, it made me think that driving to the middle of nowhere (aka “the desert”) for a week was a good idea.

I still think it is a good idea. I made a quick pit stop with the family in Southern California today, and tomorrow I’m driving the Invinci-Truck out to Utah. I’ve got food, a sleeping bag, a couple sketch books, and my freshly cut mohawk. That should be enough.

The plan is… well, I don’t really know what the plan is. I’m driving to Zion tomorrow, and I’ll stay there a day or two, then move on to Canyonlands.

It will be me, the desert, and my thoughts. I need a reset. My mind has been cluttered with stuff, and I need to let it go and start fresh.

I really have no idea what I’m doing.

Somehow, however, I know this is the right thing to do.

Talk to y’all in a week, maybe I’ll have more to say about it then.

Comments are open, but I won’t be able to reply till I get back in early June.

UPDATE

Dave wants a debrief. You can find out what happened on this trip here:

• Day 1: Watching the Sunrise from the top of the World – Angel’s Landing
• Day 2: Dancing through the Devil’s Garden – Arches
• Day 3: Threading the Needles to Druid Arch – Canyonlands
• Day 4: Through the Fiery Furnace and Up the Partition – Arches
• Day 5: Walking the (Sync)Line – Canyonlands

I got to work this morning and found this on my desk:

Ductwork Layout in a building, color coded for clarity

Turns out I made this the day before. By the time I was finishing this, around hour 12, I wasn’t taking a bird’s-eye view of what I had done.

I got to work, saw it all laid out in front of me and thought it looked kinda neat. After all, it is kinda neat. My supervisor walked by this morning and said, “Ooooh, pretty”.

It’s ductwork. Pretty ductwork. Green and blue are supply ducts, Red is return and exhaust ducts.

The color coding helps me wrap my head around what is what. I’m retrofitting an existing building, and what I need to design depends on what is already there. It’s a lot to keep track of, color-coding helps me keep track of it. What you see above is one floor on one half of the building. It’s a big job. Sometimes it feels bigger than my mind.

I get sucked into this type of work. I can do it for hours on end.

It is soothing, in its own way. Each new duct I color in adds to my understanding. I assembled this puzzle in my mind throughout the day, adding piece after piece, until I understood how all the pieces fit together. I know what each piece does, and how the new pieces that I have been tasked with adding have to fit into this overall system.

Understanding calms me down. It helps me focus, and once I have understanding, I know how to proceed to complete the task.

Most problems have simple solutions, once you know what the problem is.

The tricky part, the part that may require days of coloring in ductwork, is fully understanding the problem.

Pencil Sketch, dispatched from the Spice Mines

The best laid paths cannot pass through a brick wall in the way.

I had a path set out for myself. I spent the first weekend in January planning 2010. A painting every week! A new woodblock edition every month!

I had an assumption built into those plans, I would not be too busy at the Spice Mines in 2010. I would be just busy enough to keep on working, but not so busy that I would have to commit an extra amount of focus to the job.

Those plans have flown out the window as this year progressed. The Spice Mines have gotten spicier and spicier over the last few months, and now, after already working plenty of nights and weekends, I see myself spending even more time in Chateau Spice.

I’ve been fighting it and fighting it, regular readers have seen my posts about being behind at work or how to focus after a long day of work.

I’ve been fighting it, trying to figure out how to work hard all day, then come home, shift gears, and make beautiful art at night.

Luckily I have good friends, friends who not only help me sort this stuff out, but that prompt me to sort it out for myself as well. My buddy Dave teaches people stuff, how to blog being what he is publicly known for. He teaches other stuff too, like how to get your head right, but that tends to be in our private conversations.

Yesterday Dave called, “what you up to today?” and I had no idea. My plans had fallen so far behind, that once I got a goodness gracious free day to work on art, I didn’t know what to do with it. He told me to come over later in the day, and we’d set stuff straight. He bought me tacos too, and I very much appreciate those as well.

As I did laundry, cleaned my apartment, read some comics, and took a nap, I got to thinking about my situation, cuz I knew Dave and I would be hashing it out later. Big revelation, fighting my situation is the hardest part. I realized a little emotional jujitsu may be in order, and instead of trying to work against my need to double down on the DayJob, I should use that as the fuel.

I’ll probably do that. You’re probably gonna see a lot of art and drawings about being at work and stuff for the next few months. You probably won’t see much promotion or sales stuff here either. I figured out I have time to make art, or I have time to sell art.

Not both.

I’m opting to make art.

When the DayJob piles on the work, it doesn’t just eat up on time, it eats up on energy and motivation.

I’ve been wrestling with the DayJob lately, they have been loading me up with work. It hasn’t started to push into my free time yet (though I see that coming), but it has sapped a lot of my energy and focus.

When I started this crazy art venture, I wasn’t overloaded at work. Every now and then I would have to work late to catch up, but it was infrequent. Now, however, I have a constant, heavy, stressful load of work.

By the time I get home from work at 6pm, after stressing about the 3 jobs I have due in the next 2 weeks to 2 months, as well as the “gotta have it now” emergency work that gets thrown my way, I am mentally drained. I am not in a mental position to focus on writing, editing audio or video, and most of all, art, which requires plenty of focus.

I am not one of those crazy powerhouses of energy that can go and go and go.

Is it just me?

I have a feeling that a lot of jobs are like this, and a lot of people’s lives are like this. Fresh in the morning, drained in the evening. I hear this from my coworkers, later in the afternoon, their brain is fried, they can’t focus on stuff anymore, and not much gets done.

By the time work is over, and the commute home is complete, there isn’t much energy left for mush else. Food. Booze. TV. It’s not that I don’t have time to work for a few hours in the evening, it’s that I don’t have the capacity to work in the evening.

Most evenings, when I get home from work, I want a big plate of food, a few beers or glasses of wine, and to sit and blither out watching TV or some movie. I don’t even like TV (except Lost, that show is tha bomb), but it feels good after a long day at work. It feels like I am relaxing and more so, recovering.

I really believe this is why TV is so popular. It’s not what’s on TV, but what everyone does all day before they watch TV. There isn’t much left upstairs for anything else after slaving away.

So… what to do about it?

After all, I want the fire back. I wake up with it, and it is dim by the end of the day.

Honestly, I’m not sure.

I’ve been cranking up my diet, eating healthier foods, that helps.

I give myself my best time, ie. the morning. I just have to teach myself how to wake up early on a consistent basis.

I think that adding physical exercise to the mix will help. I may start doing some sort of physical activity first thing when I get home. I’ll try this out and see how it goes.

What about you? Do you have any secrets about how to recharge after a long stressful day of slaving in the spice mines? I’d like to hear it. I haven’t solved this one yet.

I will solve this one. It is just going to take some work, practice, problem solving, and trial and error.

Artists get show horned together, as if we are all the same.

It doesn’t matter what subject or what medium, society thinks we are pretty much all the same thing.

Painter, sculpture, illustrator, printer, photographer, all the same.

Luckily I don’t remember specifically who I am going to pick on next, it was someone in Blogistan, or on the Twitter Show. This person was pimping out their “art training”, and from what I could see, all artists got the same training.

We’re not the same though. The skillz required to create a great painting are quite different from the skills required to make a great sculpture. Illustration, yet other skillz. Printmaking? Forgeddaboudit.

There are some basic skills that each of these different types of artists must have, but after those skills are worked out, the skills become wildly different.

I got to thinking that an artists medium is sorta like being a specific type of engineer. Nobody would offer the same training to both a Mechanical Engineer and a Structural Engineer.

A little digress, In the Spice Mines (my term of affection for my DayJob), I am an Engineer. A Mechanical Engineer in fact. I work with Electrical Engineers, Structural Engineers, Civil Engineers, and Architects (sigh) on a regular basis.

We all had the same foundation training in math and science, but the details of what we know are very different. I know enough about each of these to get by (480 volt 3 phase! #5 @ 12″ on center!), but the specialization between fields of engineering is rather different.

Electrical Engineers are concerned with voltages, power, and signal; Mechanical engineers concern themselves with pressure loss and heat gain; Structural Engineers think about shear stress and moments; architects concern themselves with getting their latte right.

Nobody would offer the same training to each of these types of engineers.

Why, as artists, are we offered the same training, wrapped as “artist training”?

I think it is because we think of ourselves as artists first, and our medium second. Contrast this with engineers, who think of them self as an Electrical or Mechanical Engineer first, and an engineer in general second.

I’d like to see artists identify with their medium first, and as an artist second.

“Artist” has too much stigma. Too much baggage.

“Artist” doesn’t capture the very different skills required to produce very different art.

I am a printmaker. I am a painter. Sometimes, an illustrator. I am not a sculpture, or a photographer.

Does this make me an artist? I guess, but after the above, that is just a trifle.

I didn’t do any work yesterday, at least, not on Art.

However, I did spend a lot of time cleaning my apartment. What a relief…

My goals require a lot of work to achieve. I have no misconceptions about them. I’m in the business of putting art in people’s hands, and I’m on the long road to making that happen.

I don’t need a messy environment to get in the way.

I’m a slave to my Environment

I’ve become more observant in the last few years of how my environment effects me.

• I am more likely to open up my computer and write when my desk is clean and orderly.
• I’m more likely to head out for a morning jog when my workout gear is clean and easily accessible.
• I am more likely to spend all day printing when I’m not tripping all over stuff laying around my apartment.
• I am more likely to spend an evening drawing when my drawing pads are accessible, my pencils/pens are organized, and my dry work area is clean
• I am more likely to make a healthy meal for myself when I have a clean kitchen and a fridge full of food

I work best in clean, minimalist environments. I dream of a desk with a computer, pen, pencil, pad of paper, and nothing else. There is a strange contradiction within me, however, because I have tons of stuff. I collect and accumulate stuff like crazy. Pens, unopened mail, electronics equipment, scraps of paper, plastic silverware, books, CDs, comics, you name it. It’s just hard wired into me, and happens unconsciously.

On top of my penchant for accumulating stuff, entropy seems to be a little stronger in my life than usual. Entropy is, of course, the Thermodynamic phenomenon that makes everything becomes less organized and more chaotic, unless a certain amount of work is done to keep it together.

Entropy. Lucky me.

I’ve got enough on my plate. Two full time jobs (one of which has a paycheck). In addition, a few other big initiatives in my life that aren’t quite relevant to this site.

The real lesson here is that spending all day cleaning is working, just not in a direct way. It is work at being able to work better in the future.

It is an investment in a healthy environment. An environment that will encourage my work, rather than inhibit it. An environment that makes it easier, and more enjoyable to work. An environment that speaks success to me.

Our environments, after all, are always talking to us. Our environment tells us who we are, how successful we are, what we do with our time, and what we should think of ourselves.

I for one want an environment that pushes me in the direction of success, that is specifically designed to do so. I need an environment designed to subtly turn and direct me to do and feel the right things.

Like all things of value in life, this takes work to keep in place. The work will pay you back though.

Are you creating Assets or Liabilities?

Like everyone, I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and learned the difference between an asset and a liability. The idea of assets and liabilities applies to environment, but in an emotional way. Your environment can be an emotional asset, providing support, and good feelings when you work, or it can be a liability, hindering your ability to work, and providing bad feelings when working.

I’m not talking about anything “woo” here, I’m talking about really practical, basic stuff. Is the desk you work on clean, and easy to work at, or is your mouse covered with crap, and you always have to move stuff out of the way to get work done?

Is your apartment/house clean? Or are you distracted by the fact that the dishes aren’t done and you need to do laundry if you want to wear clean clothes tomorrow?

My old printmaking station didn’t work well for me. It was small, and even more detracting, it was too low. I am tall, so standing up and working on a surface 30 inches off the ground doesn’t work for me. When I got a new printmaking work station, my workplace became an asset that encourages work.

For nearly everything that requires work, we can create an environment that promotes productivity and getting that work done. My experience is that if I don’t actively work to make my environment an asset, entropy will take over, and it will work against me.

Have you worked your environment to make it aid you and your goals? Make you more productive? Need some help with this? Leave a comment and let me know!

I managed to get sick late last week. It’s been a slow-burn kind of sick, not completely debilitating, but making my body feel bad. I’m behind on health.

I’m also behind on work for DayJob, which has been the state of affairs for pretty much the last 2 months.

I’m also behind on making these little skater prints. The 4th is ready to print, but I haven’t found time to get to it, especially since I am teaching myself to make videos while I work. Video complicates things.

Like a naked aggression inside of me, pulling in different directions.

These 3 are pulling me in different directions – my body wants me to stop and do nothing (or just play video games and eat soup), my mind wants me to go to work and finish my projects, and my heart wants to be printing and emitting more stuff into the world.

This “balance” is a pain to figure out.

I put “balance” in quotes because what I mean by balance is more of a scheduling issue than an emotional issue. When people speak of “balance”, I hear them mostly talking about emotional balance. In other words, not being obsessed.

Obsession is just the way I roll.

Anyway, it turns out the mind is right, I need to get my work done (something about getting a paycheck).

Eventually I’ll be completely caught up, and be able to work to my heart’s content.

I am fascinated with hands.

As far as drama goes, the face is usually the big winner. We know to look to the face to see how someone feels.

Hands are far more subtle, far more sensual, and far more truthful.

Eyes may be the window into a person’s soul, but I believe their hands are the window into their heart.

My painting professor at Santa Cruz once made a side comment to me as I was working on a painting, “hands are made to caress”. He was trying to teach me to see the shape of hands, the roundness and the curvature of them. That comment has stuck with me for about 12 years now, and, as I have seen over time, means far more than it first appeared to.

Functional Hands

...and sometimes, my hands just get covered with ink

Our hands are also incredibly functional, amazing tools. They can grip, twist, lift, move, bend, hold, tear, etc, etc. It is amazing what they can do. Would humans have advanced as far as we have without them? I don’t know.

I work with my hands to make art. In many ways, I think of art as a process of absorbing information through my eyes, running it through the processors (brain, heart), and outputting the processed image with my hands.

Without hands, much less is possible.

Always keep the hands

One of my early art lessons from Mrs. Post (my high school art teacher) was to accentuate the important, and leave the obvious vague.

To me, hands are essential, because they tell a lot of the story.

The last skater print is ready to carve

Whenever I draw a figure, I include the hands. When the image is progressing in such a way that the hands are off of the page, I redraw the image. You may notice that in each of the recent skater prints I’ve completed, I keep at least one hand in the image, preferably two.

The hands get a lot of my time and effort, because I believe that they are a critical part of the image.

Speaking of Skater prints, the last one is in progress, for those following along with this project. I have drawn the image onto the block, and I’m ready to start carving.

I opted for a decent night of sleep last night, rather than stay up till 2 am carving this block.

I should have it done tonight, and then I will be able to reveal the real reason that I have done this series of woodblock prints…

(Those of you that read Dave regularly got a hint today though)