Summer Activities for the Writer and Artist

As a writer and/or artist, how do you schedule your summer activities? Do you try to plan vacation trips that will later enhance your writing or your art? Or do you want to get away from all of the craziness a creative life involves?

"Hotel Del Pool" ©Mary Montague Sikes

I have to admit that, good or bad, I can't seem to get away from using any trip, vacation or otherwise, as an opportunity to create a writing, photography, or art project. With the wonder of digital imagery, creating articles, stories, and paintings has grown far easier. I always enjoy having a picture to go along with a story. Even with fiction writing, it's helpful to have reference photos to remind you of details of a setting. Also, I have found that it's wonderful to have your own image to use for a book cover when the occasion arises. The cover for my Passenger to Paradise novel, Secrets by the Sea, is a beach photograph I took on one of those vacation trips.

Recently, I've started taking photographs of meals in restaurants. After all, you never know when you might need your own picture of crab cakes or quiche to go along with the story you're writing.

As a artist, you can never have enough good reference photographs to inspire a new painting. When I made a painting a day for Blogging A to Z, I was happy to have my own photos to use most of the time for that project. There are free photographs available on the Internet, but I always feel more comfortable using my own.

What about you? Do you really take a vacation, or are you, like me, always looking?

Blogging A to Z - What To Do

I've joined the A to Z Blog Challenge for the last couple of years and really enjoyed being a part of the amazing event. For this year, I've been wondering what to do and have decided on a real challenge for me!

Months ago, I started reading about artists who create a painting a day. It's inspiring. It improves their art. It makes the artist work. It helps with art sales. It's fun. Also, it's grueling and it's daunting! That's why I'm going to give making a painting a day a try. And I'm going to make it my A to Z challenge. Hopefully this will be the challenge I need to finally Just Do It!

"Just for Fun" acrylic © Mary Montague Sikes

Can I do it?

I don't know. But I'll try.

Here's a sample. I'm 322 on the challenge list. Please visit and let me know what you think about the art I post.

What Does It Mean to Be Present?

"Waterlilies" original pastel MMSikes

What does it mean to be present? That's a provocative subject I've begun to ponder. 

Are you attentive to the person conversing with you inside a crowded room? Sentence fragments and words from others around you creep in and garner some of your attention. You try to listen, but the clutter of sounds pulls you away. You cannot stay in the present.

Now, even while talking on the telephone, you are probably multitasking. Reading e-mails on your computer. Doing a Google search. And we all know about those who text and drive. Never in the present.

As I consider the way a writer works, I don't believe he/she is really present. Not often anyway. Writers are off on flights of fantasy to some far away dream-struck destination. They are considering, recording, remembering, but they are not present. Even now, as I strike the letters on my keyboard, my mind is far away to other lands, a scattering of ideas, a fantasy landscape that no one but I will dare to enter. Even the mundane pulls me away from the present. What we might have for dinner. What I will do tonight and tomorrow. In fleeting images, all these thoughts pass through my mind.

I think of the true artist. Is she the one who is forever present? Hypnotized by imagery, drugged with paints, her mind connects with color on the canvas and is held like a magnet that will not let go. Time flies by, but she does not notice. She is caught in the present.

Writer. Artist. What does it mean to be present?

Are you?

--Mary Montague Sikes

Dream Your Own Dreams

In my elementary school art classroom, I have written on the white board this statement: "Dream Your Own Dreams." I think that's what art is all about. You use your creative imagination and see there unique things that are your own. I want the children I teach--young as they are--to use their imaginations and to see in their minds things no one else has seen. I want them to put those things on paper or canvas, and I want them to feel good about their creations.
We as artists live a different life than others who have more concrete professions or hobbies. We create, then worry if our work will be accepted or wanted should we choose to sell it. As a writer, as well as an artist, I put myself "out there," vulnerable in so many ways.
How do you dream your own dreams? Do you feel secure in those dreams? I would love to hear the thoughts of other artists and writers.

Mary Montague Sikes, author Secrets by the Sea, Eagle Rising, Hearts Across Forever, available now on Amazon