Resistance Archives - Page 3 of 16 - Dora Sislian Themelis Art

The Give-Away Begins Now, Yikes

Remember that give-away I said I wanted to get going? The one about adding emails to my soon-to-be newsletter thingy? My friends out there, you guys who read this blog about my bouts with Mr. Resistance as I paint, if you sign on to be added to the email list I will be giving away that free book to one of you lucky friends.

The first book give-away of The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield is on

Here’s where it gets tricky. I’m adding some info here, and since I’m not a computer whiz I can’t be sure how it will look. But I’m going to try so take a look at the link here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Does that look dopey or what?

Well, this is how it’s going to work. Sign up on my email list on the upper right corner and leave a comment at this post saying you signed up. When the campaign ends, which looks like it’s soon the way this works, I’ll announce the winner of the book The War of Art, by my guru Steven Pressfield, and send it out.

Let’s see how things go, okay? No judgement please, I’m new at this thing.

Beating Resistance

Resistance Can Be Beaten

If Resistance couldn’t be beaten, there would be no Fifth Symphony, no Romeo and Juliet, no Golden Gate Bridge. Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Urn in Garden 8x10 Acrylic on Canvas ©Dora Sislian Themelis $100 — Urn in Garden 8×10 Acrylic on canvas ©Dora Sislian Themelis $100

As my “friend and mentor” Steven Pressfield writes in his great work The War of Art, Mr. Resistance can be beat. I can tell you he’s right because I’ve been successful at it, here and there.

If beating down Resistance would happen each and every day, it would be a grand thing for me.

Time For A Gift Give-Away

BooksInTheMail — Sign on my email list for news and a chance to win The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

A while ago I received this great gift in the mail. I wrote a post about it at the time, too. The publicist of the author Steven Pressfield, (a genius on artists and Resistance in my opinion), Callie Oettinger, sent me copies of his books after reading my tales of Resistance woe. Needless to say, I was in heaven.

This blog was new in this WordPress space, having migrated it from Blogger, and I thought it would be a great idea to do a give-away contest with these great books as a gift for readers who signed on to my email list.

Guess what happened? You know it! Mr. Resistance decided that it would be such a stupid idea. He told me I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to do it anyway so why bother. That guy did so much yapping in my brain I couldn’t stand it.

This email sign up stuff has been the hardest thing I’ve had to overcome. Since reading The War of Art I recognize it’s the one thing I need to do to move ahead. I’m having Email List nightmares.

Have I figured out how to manage the give-away? Nope, but I’m determined to do it now as soon as possible. I’m going to give myself a deadline and tell you right now that by year’s end I am giving away The War of Art to a random person who signs up for my list, details to come.

There, I’ve thrown down the gauntlet Mr. Resistance. Let’s watch the fireworks happen now.

The Time is the Time

Shell Has Company 9x12 Watercolor, Arches paper ©Dora Sislian Themelis $100 — Shell Has Company 9×12 Watercolor, Arches paper ©Dora Sislian Themelis $100

Daylight savings time is a real drag on me. When the clocks need to spring forward or fall backward my brain and body can’t handle the action.

My inner clock is thrown off balance. I usually don’t need a watch to tell the time, except when the day comes for the annual clock adjustment thing. The day is dark when it’s supposed to be light, and light when it’s supposed to be dark.

It’s all very confusing to me.

My father used to tell us, “The time is the time!” He had no patience for any thing other than to follow the correct time, whatever season it was.

If you think about it, he was right. Too much time is spent thinking about time, having enough, not having enough, spending it wisely or not. Deciding whether to spend time on doing something worthwhile, or waste it frivolously on nothing much at all.

Should we be busy? Should we stay idle? What’s the best, or worst, use of our time?

Children can’t wait to grow up, and adults wish they were still young. And time does grow short very quickly, no matter how we mark it as we age.

Staying in the present moment is a tough task, but really the only way to slow down time enough to savor and enjoy it. I try to keep my eyes wide open, calculate every movement, use all the senses at once, to really see and watch and learn and remember everything, and everyone, around me.

Otherwise each delicious moment of the day cannot be counted and drift away. Babies grow up, day becomes night, summer turns into winter, and time runs along.

Plein Air or Daily Painting?

In the last few months of my art journey, between listening to Mr. Resistance and trying to fend him off, I was intrigued by two kinds of art processes: the daily painting and plein air painting.

As I would love to be one of those intrepid daily painters, I’m not sure I can hack it.

Yes, I’ve been painting in twenty minute segments and getting work done that way. But real daily painting? And to be responsible enough to post that work? Hmm, maybe that’s not me.

Then there’s the plein air painter. Also an intrepid bunch of folk, some of who trudge out to remote locations to paint the scenery. I would love to be one of those artists, and I have done that, but not really equipped the way some are. I am working on that though because I think I could be one.

Then again, I do get anxious thinking I’m all alone somewhere, which I like, but it’s scary too. Anyone one could be lurking about, with little old me happily painting away unaware.

I had an opportunity to join a local group of artists who meet once a month to paint at a local plant and garden nursery. That was great fun to see flowers, tractors, fall scenery, and a rocky waterfall.

I particularly enjoyed the waterfall, and the tractor which I already showed you here.

Take a look at the waterfall sketches I did in my Moleskin notebook:

Quick sketches in micron pen with watercolor washes, and straight watercolor work without pen sketching. The idea was just to get something down on the paper, the feel of the subject, some color and light. That’s it.

Imagine, I did three sketches outside! Next up, I’m investigating outdoor painting easels and pochade boxes. Maybe if I am well equipped I can make the plein air thing happen more often, but nearby, in full view of civilization so I don’t get scared!

Resistance and Rationalization

Resistance is fear. But Resistance is too cunning to show itself naked in this form. Why? Because if Resistance lets us see clearly that our own fear is preventing us from doing our work, we may feel shame at this. And shame may drive us to act in the face of fear.

Resistance doesn’t want us to do this. So it brings in Rationalization…The spin doctor.

~The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

How does author Steven Pressfield know what is going on in my own head? It’s so easy to just let other things going on in life walk right in and take over my precious time at the easel. Pressfield has such way of explaining Resistance that makes sense to me. I can hear my own New York accent in my head, laying it all out and making it plain as day.

It’s Resistance’s way of hiding the Big Stick behind its back. Instead of showing us our fear (which might shame us and impel us to do our work), Resistance presents us with a series of plausible, rational justifications for why we should’t do our work.

The big take-away is that reading The War of Art, and talking about it with you, really helps me stop letting life stuff distract me.

What Resistance leaves out, of course, is that all this means diddly. Tolstoy has thirteen kids and wrote War and Peace. Lance Armstrong had cancer and won the Tour de France three years and counting.

Reading these words sets me on my path, reminds me what I’m supposed to be doing for the day, and pretty much kicks me in the butt. Well worth the effort.

Just like everyone else in the world, I am a busy person. There’s a lot going on around me, much of it has to come from me, but my real work is painting.

Now what’s the problem?

Resistance and the Challenge

Resistance is a real kicker. One day you’re cranking out the work, nothing can stop you. Absolutely nothing.

Suddenly, BOOM! Everything comes to a stand still. And yet, you fully expect the next day to be productive.

What happens next? Nothing.

However, some good things happened in the process, in the work that is art.

Hating the acrylic paints I picked up a while ago, expecting to like them but totally Not Liking, I vowed to use them and empty each and every little tube of it’s contents creating whatever seemed to move me.

Completing 30 works in the 30/30 Painting Challenge eluded me, but the process was there.

Let’s just say it was there on most days during the month long challenge.

17 paintings in the 30/30 Challenge — 17 Paintings in the 30/30 Challenge

Let’s also admit that creating 17 works of art, however I like the outcome, is nothing to sneeze at. It takes commitment to painting as the work that must get done, no matter what else is on the list of to-do’s around here.

13 Years Later It’s Still Painful

Thirteen years after the horrible events of that day and there we are. The raw feelings are still there under the surface.

It just doesn’t feel right to post anything really “up” but I will leave a link to a post from the past on September 11.

https://www.dsislianthemelis.com/photo-for-friday-and-sept-11/

Daily Paintings 2 and 3

Today I’m presenting days 2 and 3 of the 30/30 Painting Challenge on the blog. I am still working in acrylic paints, trying to finish them because I am not thrilled by the way they work.

Sunflower, 8x10 Acrylic, ©2014 Dora Sislian Themelis — Day 2- Sunflower, 8×10 Acrylic, ©2014 Dora Sislian Themelis

These acrylics are not as creamy as the oils I’ve used in the past. They don’t cover the canvas as I like, but there is a certain quality about how this looks. Somewhat creamy and transparent at the same time.

Maybe it’s my brush?

I painted this sunflower before, in watercolor and that was kind of tightly worked while this is freer.

This fast and loose style is interesting. It has movement, and feels good to me.

PatmosBoat — Day 3- Patmos Boat, 8×10 Acrylic, ©2014 Dora Sislian Themelis

Now look at this seascape. Same size canvas, same brush and the acrylic paint, but tighter brush strokes. Ok, I’m interested, but I’m not that happy with how the paint lays on the surface this time. I wanted to get a smooth brush of paint, but nothing I did would work, in my opinion at least.

When I used oils I don’t remember them being so hard to get color on the canvas. It kept blending with the paint already down when I didn’t want that to happen. Maybe it’s the quality of these acrylics, could be a student’s grade.

The idea is to finish these and continue on with something else.

The daily painting process is the priority.

A Productive Painting Morning

This was the most productive morning I have had in quite a long while. Working at my art making had taken a back seat to the mundane, every day stuff of life. What else is new?

Today you can pat me on the back because I beat Mr. Resistance at his game!

Making the most of a pretty wide open morning, I made my way to the studio space and worked on the latest larger piece. I had been putting it off, painting some small still life works, and ignoring this one.

At 18×24 it’s large for a watercolor painting, but the small pieces were 7×10.

Big difference in working space.

Laying in some nice darks on this 18x24 watercolor — Laying in some nice darks on this 18×24 watercolor

Twenty minutes and I had some really nice darks going on with a lot of color for interest. There’s some things I’m not so sure I like, but overall this work is coming together nicely.

Another art event is soon approaching on Memorial Day weekend, and I hope to have fresh, new work to show. Updates will be forthcoming, unless Mr. Resistance shows up and drags me out of the studio by my feet.

It could get ugly.