Simply Sunday - Pacing and Animal Crackers

Pacing, animal crackers, a puzzle book, Illustrate Your Week, and more!

Apr 23, 2023

Simply Sunday: pacing, animal crackers, Illustrate Your Week, and more

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” — Henry David Thoreau

Good morning and happy Sunday. Thank you for your kind words last week. It made my day to see your comments. I am happy to be connecting with you here in this written format, but the podcast has started to complain. It really has!

This week:

A Juggler, Spock, and Animal Crackers
Morning Stories for April 16-22
Illustrate Your Week 17 prompts
Some interesting finds/reads this week
Write for Life Read-Along Week 3
Pointers to a few old episodes of the Creativity Matters Podcast
“Under the Influence Art Journaling”

Pacing

I have been thinking and writing this week about excitement, about the honeymoon phase in a project, about “scatter” and focus, about overwhelm, and about burnout. In tandem with all of these things, I spent time writing about prompts (and a history of not using them), about a new series idea, “from the shelves,” (which, in concept, has really captured my imagination), about gratitude tracking, about packing creative supplies for travel, and about juggling and a long-ago longing for a cargo vest. I also found myself following breadcrumb trails about several of the prompts from Week 16 of Illustrate Your Week. I learned about animal crackers and about the Semicolon Project.

One little mailing each week can’t hold it all.

Every week, there is a pick and choose for what holds this space. Sometimes, what I love most gets moved to another file. Sometimes, I remove what is most vulnerable or most revealing. Picking and choosing often feels arbitrary. I want to write and share them all. Right now. All at once. I want to talk about all of the things above, including the animal crackers, and I still haven’t let go of some of last week’s castaways. Maybe all of these ideas drift away to some storybook island, where maybe they will be rescued, salvaged, pulled back into the fold of a longer work, a revised essay, a new set of notes, or a how-to list.

I am working on focus, on pacing, on breathing and slowing down and accepting that I can’t do it all at once. Looking through a kaleidoscope is a beautiful thing. There is color and shimmer and symmetry. The pattern is transient. A tiny movement can shift everything into a new array. Thinking about this constant sense that there are dozens of things at any one time that I could be writing, I thought “this struggle feels different than my illustrated journal.” On the surface, that surprised me, but in reality, the difference is simple. I’ve worked to create a system for working in my journal that helps it not feel overwhelming. That didn’t happen overnight, and it takes work to keep it that way. Writing is also different. It’s a different vehicle, a different stream, a different mindset. It’s more innate, more intuitive. The flow is different and much, much harder to stem. And everything takes space.

I think the tendency with new projects is to want to do everything all at once. You probably saw the movie, Everything Everywhere All at Once. No matter what you thought of it, of the “everything bagel,” of the hot dog fingers, of the metaphysical rocks….. the phrase of the title might stick with you. With new projects, we are excited. We are enthused. We are empowered, determined, and ready. We are ambitious. Take all of that and shake it together, pour over ice, and you have an easy project cocktail for overwhelm because in our enthusiasm, in our excitement, we often jump in wanting to do everything all at once.

It is similar to when you meet someone new, and you make what you hope is a lasting connection. You want to fill them in on everything, on years, on a lifetime. You want to tell all your jokes, use all your words, show off all the bits and pieces of the tapestry you’ve been working on for years and years and years. You want them to know you, and you want to know them. You want to make up for all the lost time, the time before. You want to share and get all the details, details that often take years of knowing someone to roll out over time.

New projects can be that way. You want to do everything everywhere all at once.

This week, I spent a lot of time writing about this, about feeling scattered, about the problems that arise when there are too many things, too many possibilities, about sustainability, about strategies for focusing, about overwhelm and, at the other end of the spectrum, burnout.

A Juggler, Spock, and Animal Crackers

In recent weeks, I have found myself really enjoying some of the weekly prompts and the drawings they have inspired. From Popeye and Olive Oyl to Crayola crayons to polar bears in sweaters, I’ve drawn a range of things in recent months that were a surprise but were a lot of fun. Finding something to fit some of the prompts often gives me a bit of a puzzle to solve, inroads to memory, if I want them, ways to incorporate whimsy, and more.

“Spock” wasn’t technically a prompt. Spock came to mind in a recent Sunday newsletter about the hand sign prompt from Week 15. So I did draw the “live long and prosper” sign last week. (I know some of you did as well.)

(I love, by the way, that so many people did the sign for “I love you.” I’ve drawn portraits with peace fingers often, and I expected that might be a popular response. That everyone chose a positive “hand sign” to draw was really nice. Personally, I can’t see the prompt and not think of a full gamut of options! I loved discovering through your comments that many of you have connections to ASL or another form of sign language. These unexpected moments that come out of our shared journaling are amazing.)

International Juggler’s Day and National Animal Crackers Day were both last week. With the International Juggler’s Day prompt in mind, I shared “juggler” photos with my Sunday drawing group, and I ended up tackling one of those portraits during the week. It’s a tough portrait, the head foreshortened as the juggler looks up at the three balls in the air. In addition, both hands are in the photo (since they tossed and are waiting to catch the balls). It felt like too much, so I cropped the photo to just focus on the head. I’m really glad I drew him. It was a difficult position, different than the portraits I typically pick. It was a challenge. It also was mindful. It’s hard not to think about juggling and see the easy parallels to life. I love portraits for what they contribute to my pages, what they have to “say” in the context of the week, what mood they bring—regardless of whether I know the people or not. In our individual drawings of people, we bring our own context and voice to the page. This is part of the magic for me. That we continue to develop our skills by drawing whatever we draw is a given and a bonus.

Animal Crackers proved to be surprisingly fun and thought-provoking. I considered drawing the box, but instead, I pulled up an image of some of the common shapes and drew a few of them. They are incredibly simple in shape. In thinking about how tough we sometimes are on ourselves when it comes to drawing recognizable shapes, I think we can learn a lot from animal crackers. I’m not sure I would be able to label most of them without a guide, which made it a really fascinating thing to think about as I drew them, especially since I think so much about practicing and developing a visual vocabulary.

Not feeling any clear personal connection to animal crackers (for myself or the kids), I did a bit of poking around and turned up some fun facts.

Note: “Animal crackers” is not a brand. It is a generic term for this kind of animal-shaped cracker. In the U.S., you are probably familiar with the little red box of Barnum’s Animals Crackers (by Nabisco), but there are other brands.

There have been 53 or 54 (depending on the source) different animals represented by animal crackers.1 (Barnum’s Animals Crackers has had 37.)
In 1955, there was a special collection of “endangered” Barnum’s Animals Crackers that included Komodo dragons, a Siberian tiger, peregrine falcons, a panda, an elephant, Hawaiian monk seals, an orangutan, and Bactrian camels.2 (The box was green.)
Especially when you stop to draw them, you’ll notice that they each have at least one small hole (in addition to the eye). These are called “dockers” and are used in production to limit the rising of the cracker.
The red box was designed with a string so that it could be hung as a tree ornament.
The most recent addition to the animal lineup was the koala, in 2002.
In 2018, Nabisco removed the bars on the red box. This “freeing” of the animals made a major splash in the news, from Fortune to Smithsonian Magazine, to NPR, and the New York Times.
Shirley Temple sang “Animal Crackers in My Soup” in Curly Top (1935), but the lyrics reference a rabbit, and there has never been a rabbit in Barnum’s Animals Crackers! (Most people eat animal crackers more like cookies anyway, less like oyster crackers or crumbled crackers that might be tossed into soup.)
Only one animal wears clothes. Did you know?3

It was fun to draw these simple outlines and to learn a bit more about them. While I don’t remember the boys ever having an attachment to animal crackers, I do remember really liking the iced circus cookies!

Every week, I seem to stumble over some surprise when I pull my notes together. This week, I discovered that the animal reference set I used to draw my animal crackers isn’t the Barnum’s Animals Crackers set. The ones I drew are Stauffer’s animal crackers! Maybe Barnum’s Animals have more refined shapes. Maybe someday I’ll pick up a box just to check. But I’ll probably wait a while until I can add a relevant prompt to the list so that I have a reason to buy them!

Filling even a small space on my pages with something this whimsical and tasty was a lot of fun.

Morning Stories

My “Morning Stories” (posted daily at Instagram) for this week are compiled on one page here.

Illustrate Your Week — Week 17

The new prompts for Week 17 have been posted.

Write for Life Read-Along

For those reading along, my notes on Week 3 of Write for Life are here. (No matter how this is going, I do plan to finish the six weeks.)

Interesting Finds/Reads

Polly Wants a Video Chat (New York Times)
AI Can’t Solve this Famous Murder Mystery Puzzle: Interesting article! Caine's Jawbone (the book mentioned) sounds fascinating! I might have to take up this challenge with my son this summer. Would I do it totally on my own? Maybe not, but I think it would be a fun family challenge. Something about this concept and seeing images of all of the pages removed from the book, which you have to do in order to rearrange them to try and solve it, made me think of the awesome photos from the person who “tagged” Infinite Jest based on color references. It’s not the same at all, but it came to mind and reminded me how cool I thought that was.
Along similar lines, I saw mention this week of Box ONE, Neil Patrick Harris's new "escape room" type game for one player. We have really enjoyed Exit games in my house. The boys are really good at them. Two of our favorites were Dead Man on the Orient Express and Theft on The Mississippi. The two-part The Catacombs of Horror is still one I think we'll play someday. All of these are on the "harder" end of the difficulty scale, but there are also options for younger players (and easier games all around). I noticed there is a new one, too. (Note: The Exit games are not replayable. Just know that ahead of time.)

Old Episodes of the Creativity Matters Podcast

For one reason or another, these all came up this week when I was searching for things:

On the Open Road (442)
Sketchnote Handbook (254)
Pick and Choose (451) (includes two illustrated journals from trips to Japan)
Two Visits to Japan (315) (two different visual accounts of trips to Japan)
Thinking in Words and Pictures (358)
Color Code (194)

Under the Influence Art Journaling

I am not directly involved in this, but “my” work will be included in this next session, so I want to share with you. I am not able to take classes like this, but I know many, many, many people do, and I think this looks like a really exciting approach. Andrea Chebeleu (of A Work of Heart) offers her Under the Influence Art Journaling series a few times a year. Each week, there is a featured artist, and they look at that person's work, break down what elements the artists uses, and then experiment with creating similar work to explore various techniques, approach to layout, etc. Learn more about the upcoming series. This next session begins May 2, 2023.

(I have a lot of thoughts about this, and I really had to wrangle with myself about it. It’s all tied up though with so many other things, stories for another time.)

I hope some of you might be interested in checking it out.

Questions

What creative project will be coming up for you next month? Do you have a challenge or project you do every year in May?