Week 8+9 of being creative

Dear readers,

Even though I didn’t post on Monday, I’m proud to say that I’m still consistent with creating 1 hour each day (not a sloppy apology again yay). I’m surprised at the level of commitment I’m showing. Even when I was dead tired traveling, I drew on airplanes, and the moment I woke up on a couch. As long as I have my “no words” playlist on, I immediately go into a flow. This is quite new for me, even tho I can be pretty intense, because I’ve always needed something to externally validate or a deadline to achieve this level of focus and commitment. Doing something purely for enjoyment like this and actually keeping up with it, ahhhh, what a sense of accomplishment and joy and freedom. 🪁

Just the door mural

Last week I started on the longest + most visible creative project I’ve ever worked on: creating the mural for my door.

After a week of drawing, I now have the draft:

How it’ll look on the door and the design itself

Shoutout to Yufei again for giving me many notes.

In making this, I looked up illustrations for inspo constantly, which made me, for the first time, WOW at traditional Vietnamese art.

I marveled at the Đông Hồ folk woodcut paintings. They have a sense of humor, the patterns are super cool and unique. I wonder though if they still design new woodcut patterns in Đông Hồ village, or is it a dead UNESCO art now?

Left: Maru Manu, Lisva Natalia, Đông Hồ paintings. Right: my father, one hand playing Chinese chess the other looking at his phone

When looking up inspiration for the dragons, I found huge respect for artists from the Lý and Trần dynasties. They make the dragons wiggle like worms yet somehow still look very majestic. I tried to make my dragon look kinda majestic too but just ended up with a clown dragon, which is fine, cuz I’m kinda a clown. The door mural is imbued with humor (phew 😌).

Left: Dragons from Lý & Trần dynasty. Right: as a dancing dragon 🕺

One thing though, I didn’t end up depicting my family as they described themselves. I found it hard to draw a suffering buffalo for my dad. So I ended up just mostly drawing my impression of my family. Even though my sister shat on me for drawing her as a funky tiger with no real tiger stripe, she said “Love you” at the end of our call 😳. So I think the approach of drawing from the heart works hehe.

Left: Vũ Quỳnh Mai, Thái Minh Triết, Ravi Zupa, tranh Hàng Trống (another traditional woodcut painting village). Right: My sister with eyes and a tail of fire because she’s scary when she’s angry. But the stripes are painted on so she’s actually a softie.

This week, I’m getting a projector and will finally put this design on my door. A bit scary. It’s like getting a big tattoo as your first tattoo, but for your room.

A bit of writing drafts

I told myself I would publish the first draft of the freedom series but failed to do creative work for the past 2-3 days. 🙇‍♀️ Apologies to myself and (pretend there exists) my loyal readers. I shall at least publish one writing this week.

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Takeaways

• Starting points by Hayao Miyazaki (Ghibli Studio’s director) is very influential on my creativity now. I imagined that once I’ve “made it” somehow, I would no longer feel anguish and incompetence. But Miyazaki, having made so many wonderful movies, seems like a relatively heavy person still. But he’s very gentle when he talks to young creatives, saying “it’s expected to be in anguish now.” Lol that gave me lots of acceptance for being incompetent right now.

• My mental health went down significantly after I skipped my morning routine (meditate + creative sesh) for about 2 days. Proof that this routine is definitely working.