The Creative Habit...

Books are my favourite! Books about the creative process...well it just doesn't get any better. I am fascinated with people's work habits and love discovering how they create. Let's just say that if I could be a fly on the wall in every creative studio in the world for ten minutes I would...but admitting that sounds creepy and the creative side of me knows that I work best in complete solitude, so this dream of being a spying insect (though fun for me) would be very invasive for some creative individuals (me).
Knowing this makes it more special when someone does share their work habits or their raw, unfinished, process work. It is very brave!

As a designer, especially when I was first starting out, I believed that you have to do many thumbnails first, and while this is true, thumbnails and sketches are necessary (at least for me), somewhere along the line I learned that they don't have to come first. I could never just sit down and start drawing. I have to organize my thoughts and I do that by writing, which gets my hands moving and warmed up for the drawing bit. To realize this though I had to try a few things and that's how I learned what works and what doesn't and that there isn't a set formula. You have to find it for yourself.

Now, you might be savvy at the whole creativity thing and your process may have come naturally to you, or it may seem commonsensical that there isn't a formula, but it wasn't for me and that is why books like The Creative Habit exist.

This book, written by choreographer and dancer Twyla Tharp, is one of my favourite reads and I keep coming back to it over and over and each time I discover something new. She talks about everything: fear, rituals, skills, tools, ruts and grooves, using your memory...I could go on and on and will not exaggerate in telling you that if you care about your own creative process or find others' fascinating there are gems...no... gigantic diamonds on every page.

She is a dancer, so if you like dance you will appreciate it ...but this book is not about dance and the ideas and exercises cut across all mediums of creativity. It is a book about work, and while you find it in the self-help section of your book store it is never preachy and simply gives great advice from someone who has been working at her craft for a very long time.


"...More than anything, this book is about preparation: In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative." - Twyla Tharp


Photos by: me, Kinga Subject, but you can buy the book here or here. 

Fall Flavours...

Happy Monday! Hope you've all had a great weekend. I spent most of it working and had a really fun photo-shoot yesterday which you can see here...but I did take some time to sit down and enjoy a big helping of Laura Calder's Chickpea Soup.

I watch her show French Food at Home on the Food Network and saw her make this yummy soup and of course  it looked so good I had to try it for myself.
I really enjoy creamy soups especially as a starter or as a snack and the earthy flavours of this soup, much like its colour, are perfect for fall.
I've made it a few times now and have adapted the recipe to our tastes by putting in less thyme and more bay leaves (I use two or three)...and it's very important to put the soup through a strainer after you blend it to separate out the gritty bits of the chickpeas and make it nice and smooth.

This recipe is also in Laura Calder's book French Taste which is on my wish list...you know...in case my husband is reading this, after all, he benefits from it too...

The ongoing chalkboard project...{part 2}

Happy Friday! This post comes a bit late but better late than never I guess. I took a time out yesterday to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary. We went out for an amazing dinner and then just relaxed at home wondering where the time has gone. Feels like it was just yesterday that we said "I do"...

Speaking of time passing quickly, this week has gone by in a flash but I am ready for a busy weekend filled with some needed studio time, sorting out packaging and shipping issues and a photo shoot on Sunday.
I took some time this week to put chalk to board on my ongoing chalkboard project (which I introduced last week). I will be changing this up again next week, and the week after...adding to it and washing some of it away. It's kind of fun knowing that this city scape (which took all of fifteen minutes to draw on there) will be morphing to something else in a short amount of time and I'm really enjoying envisioning the next step. It's ongoing and evolving like everyday life and I kind of like that...and it's sparking some lighthearted creativity at the very least.

Wishing you a happy weekend!

Photo by: me, Kinga Subject

Calm...

At the risk of talking about the weather, which I have been doing too often lately (especially as I attempt to break the silence while taking the elevator with a neighbour), today has been a grey rainy kind of day that warns of colder ones ahead. Days like this always make me feel the need to hibernate. After a busy morning and a hectic afternoon I lit some candles and made some Tazo Calm tea to unwind, calm the hectic, quiet the loud, and warm up the grey...

I love the light we get in the loft on days like today. It's perfect for snapping some softly lit photos, some quiet sketching and rearranging the good old to-do list (which sadly looks like a save-the world-list these days).

Hope you've had a good day but if it has been a bit crazy, some candles and tea might help...

Photos by: me, Kinga Subject

A is for...

...Armadillo. That's right, quite possibly the goofiest looking creature on the planet. I'm sure there are many animals (that are cute) that start with the letter "A" but when I think of an "A" animal, armadillo always comes to mind. I can't escape it. The last time I was at the antique market, I saw a stuffed armadillo in one of the booths and I was creeped out because taxidermy is...well...creepy, but at the same time I was intrigued. It looked kind of cool and I felt bad for it, because it was stuffed, but also because the armadillo gets a bad rep for being ugly.

So, in my alphabet print collection the letter "A" is represented by this funny little creature and let's face it; armadillos need love too. I will be doing these prints in many colour combinations (hot pink armadillos would be fun) but I will also have the letter A represented by alpacas...in case your judgement on the armadillo is so harsh that you can't fathom hanging a picture of one on your wall. (Shame on you)
On the other hand, if you don't like the cute and furry alpaca I can't help you and wonder...what kind of person are you? Who doesn't like alpacas? They look like sheep with camel eyes and long necks and usually have one fabulous hairstyle...or many.

Hope you're having a good Tuesday!

Photos and art by: me, Kinga Subject

Adventures in baking...3

...Free Form Blueberry Pie. A little while ago we had the pleasure of enjoying some blueberry picking with our adorable nieces. It was a rainy kind of morning and we had alot of fun but I actually didn't pick any of these berries myself because a) that's what husbands are for and b) I had a camera in my hands the whole time.

I will however take credit for the pie! That was all me with the help of a good recipe from a book called Desserts, which was written by Jane Price for Murdoch Books.

Because I'm new to baking I have clearly never made pie so like the biscotti last week, this recipe was daunting. I actually had no reason to be nervous though, it came together quite easily and was really delicious.
The only thing I was unsure of was the crust. It turned a nice golden brown everywhere except on the bottom, under the filling, it stayed quite moist. I was worried that I didn't bake it long enough even though I had it in for ten minutes longer than the suggested time in the book. Should the crust on the bottom have been crispy?

Anyway, it made our place smell amazing and I photographed it almost immediately out of the oven ...then I went and shared the rest with our neighbours. It got decent reviews, but I'm skeptical about that crust! I'm going to have to try it again...

Photos by: me, Kinga Subject

Hangin' around...

Dedon Nestrest | designed by Daniel Pouzet and Fred Frety 

There are a few things on my bucket-list, owning a Dedon Nestrest is merely one of them. When posting on this blog I always like to use my own photos so I'm not going to be making this kind of post a regular thing, but from time to time I will share some things that have deeply inspired me.

Dedon is a furniture company specializing in outdoor furnishings. Their designs are modern, elegant and whimsical and I want all of it...but mostly I want a nestrest. It was designed by Daniel Pouzet and Fred Frety and while I'm not certain if all of their promotional photos were done by him, the legendary Bruce Weber, fashion photographer and filmmaker, has photographed/filmed many campaigns for the company including Coming Home ( which was so beautiful it became a hardcover book).

I could spend hours going through their blogazine and sometimes find myself daydreaming about where I would hang my own nestrest...I wonder if I could fit one in our six-hundred square foot loft? Hmmm?

Photos: from Dedon website, also check out this movie featuring the nestrest

The ongoing chalkboard project...

I have a thing for abstract art. It never used to be that way though. When I was first discovering my artistic abilities I thought that I wasn't an artist if I didn't draw objects and people exactly as they appeared. I thought that true demonstration of artistic skill meant that you could draw or paint something to it's exact likeness, and if you couldn't you had no business calling yourself an artist.
I'm glad to say that I very much disagree now, and in fact am almost always drawn to abstract images or very interpretive types of art.

In design school we were presented with a project that involved us drawing a broken cob of dried up corn a hundred different ways. So I got my pencils ready and drew the corn from one hundred slightly different angles. I did these realistic pencil sketches that took me forever and when I was done I was so proud of myself...until the teachers literally ripped the thing off the wall in my final evaluation. FAIL! Epic fail... You see, I had missed the point entirely.
They knew I could draw, that's part of why they let me into the program...and up to that very moment, I was told, they thought I was capable of creative thinking too. WRONG!
They wanted to see one hundred different interpretations of the corn not one hundred exact likenesses... It was an exercise in creative exploration.

Since then I've changed things up alot. I don't have much interest in drawing/painting things exactly as they are (especially when I can just snap a photo). Now, when I paint, I like to just attack a canvas or art board with no real plan. I like the results of sheer spontaneity. It's therapy!
The above painting is my example of an exercise in creative exploration. The black is actually chalkboard paint and I intend to draw something new on it every week with chalk. I've attempted this with another piece before which you can see in this photo...and ended up liking the result so much that I couldn't wash the image away, but this time I won't allow myself to get attached and I will take a photo of each drawing for documentation purposes.

So I will keep updating this "painting" every week with a new image...and I'll keep you posted with the results. It may not always be earth shattering, it definitely won't suit every taste, it won't always be great art, and sometimes you'll laugh at the feeble attempt, but it'll be fun...and that's why I'm doing it.

Photo and art by: me, Kinga Subject

Adventures in baking...2

Since my last baking adventure, I am happy to report that I was actually able to locate caster sugar. Of course, at the bulk foods store it was not called caster sugar because that would have been too easy. No, instead it was called quick dissolving sugar. (Have I mentioned I'm new at this whole baking thing?) 
So after walking aimlessly throughout the store and getting distracted by bins upon bins of chocolate covered everything, a lady hanging a piñata finally asked me what I was looking for, looked at me like I had ten heads when I nervously told her “caster sugar” as I was taking a leisurely stroll in the dog food aisle, and then ushered me to the bin...on the other side of the store. 

At last! I had found the magic super secret, super elusive ingredient that seems to be in every baking recipe!  

So home I went with my new discovery and made this yummy biscotti. I’m not going to lie, this recipe made me nervous, but I was determined to conquer! 

It turned out delicious too, except the biscuits in the end weren’t as long as I would have liked them to be. The recipe says to flatten slightly after you make the log of dough on your baking tray, but I would amend this to say, “flatten slightly more than slightly”. My logs weren’t flat enough so instead of the long biscotti that’s easy to dunk I ended up with short and portly. 

Overall a decent first attempt. I will gladly e-mail the recipe if you'd like to try it yourself.

Photos by: me, Kinga Subject 

Decorate...

Happy Monday everyone! I can't believe we are kicking off another week already, and to be honest I'm not quite ready. Where did that weekend go? 

Admittedly, I have had a tough couple of weeks and desperately needed some down time to just decompress and refocus my energies which have been in very short supply lately. So this weekend I took a time out to go to the movies with my hubby (Crazy Stupid Love was fantastic), we enjoyed dinner with good friends and yesterday we went blueberry picking with our adorable nieces (I will share photos from that later).

I also took some time to sit down with a good cup of tea and my cherished copy of Decorate for some well needed inspiration. This book has been all over the internet and the blogs, with good reason, and I could not refrain from taking part in the celebrations. It is a remarkable decorating book written by Holly Becker of the wildly successful decor8 blog and lifestyle writer Joanna Copestick. 

If you are like me and have piles and piles of decorating magazines that you hoard away desperately for rainy day inspiration, this book will speak to you! It is written like a magazine, with an easy going tone and every page is filled with stunning photographs by Debi Treloar, who is a hero of mine with her photography superpowers. At first I flipped through the book to look at all the photos and highlighted bits of text and then I started to read it slowly, patiently, page by page. It's a beautiful book that will inspire you to be creative, stay budget friendly and most importantly it will inspire you to stay true to yourself when decorating your home; but don't take my word for it....go check it out for yourself. You won't be sorry!

You can purchase the book here and here.

Photos by: me, Kinga Subject

Refreshingly green...

One of my favourite things to do is cook. I have slowly been building up a decent collection of cookbooks and have a handful of recipes that I love, this creamy asparagus soup being one of them. It comes from the genius of Jamie Oliver and is, in my opinion, the perfect soup. You can eat it cold or warm, with or without the egg and it's full of vegetables!

I think I could eat asparagus every day and that's a good thing too because it is packed full of nutrients. This recipe also calls for celery, onions and leeks and is quite possibly the easiest soup you'll ever make you just need a food processor or a hand blender.

Find the recipe here and try it for yourself. If you like asparagus I promise you will not be disappointed.

Photos by: me, Kinga Subject

Suite inspiration...

Hello everyone! I hope you've all had a fabulous weekend! It went by way too fast in my opinion and all I can say is that I'm glad today is not Monday. I spent my long weekend in the studio getting ready for the suite 404 shop launch, building up inventory and working out some minor issues. It was nice to be focused on only one thing for a few days, that rarely happens around here.

Anyway, I will be doing a suite inspiration post, like this one, from time to time to show what inspires some of the prints I create. Early last summer I took photos of these gorgeous poppies and I've been thinking about making some graphic prints using a deep rich purple and a really bright red ever since. I love this colour combination. It's dramatic and kind of unexpected and I cannot wait to apply the above designs (which will be available in the shop soon) to some pillows and maybe even tea towels.

Hope your week is off to a good start and thanks for stopping by!

Photos & Art by: me, Kinga Subject

Glass half full...

Thank goodness it's Friday! While I don't generally drink and can honestly say that I have never been drunk in my life, this week I was definitely worried that I might be driven to it. Ha!

In many ways it has been the best week, and then, in exact equal measures, it has been the worst.
Needless to say, I am glad that it is over and I can move on to a long weekend of serious studio time to just forget about it.
With it being a long weekend, and the last weekend of the summer, I am hoping that all of you will find time to unwind in some way. Perhaps with a glass of wine, a cold beer, or like me, with a cup of herbal tea; I'm hoping you will find a quiet moment to reflect on the fact that...it's September! Already!

Where has the time gone? Cheers and best wishes for a safe and happy long weekend!

Photos by: me, Kinga Subject