Dave Lukas

  • Weekly Review 6/24/24

    What’s been taking up brain space this week along with what I created this week.

    • Connecting with close friends. Always grateful for their presence and feeling seen and heard.
    • Reminding myself about doing spiral check-ins
    • Trying to give myself grace for not showing up as much in my journal as I’d like as my mileage ramps up for my 50k race in 8 weeks.
    • Reminding myself there’s only 24 hours in a day and how I’m choosing to prioritize my time to have training take up so much of it. That I’ll return again and in the meantime do what I can do when I can. And that’s enough.
    • Wins: getting to the end of another journal, running a total of 23 miles over the weekend, getting transparency and acknowledgement of boundaries, not putting pressure on myself to use the summer solstice and full moon energy “well” while still being intentional.

    Here’s what got created this week:

  • Weekly Review 6/27/24

    What’s been taking up brain space and emotional bandwidth this week:

    • Trying to notice and remember wins for myself cause I don’t celebrate or recognize them as often as they probably occur
    • Finished “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” book by Peter Matthiessen. Great book, eye opening and maddening.
    • Feeling some frantic energy that lingered for the day
    • Being inspired to think about RSS via a blog post from Chris Glass. Do I incorporate it here? Do I follow blogs that way? The way I used to in the early 2000s? Not sure yet, it’s still marinading.

    Here’s what I created this week, despite all the reasons I could have made to not create.

  • Weekly Review 6/10/24

    What’s been taking up brain space for me the past week.

    • Reminder that my energy and emotions fluctuate from day to day. To pay attention and be aware but just let them be and observe. Like clouds passing in the sky.
    • Annoyed at myself for circling on the same concepts. But are they figure out-able? Is there an other side to them? Do I need to move to acceptance that they’ll never be answered? Cause trying to solve them hasn’t worked.
    • The magic of re-visiting old journals. Discovering old practices and ideas. And reminder of the evolution of my artwork. But I have to keep showing up and creating for this evolution to happen.
    • Creating just to live the quote by Sarah Leavitt to make a “pile of imperfect things”.
    • Also reminding myself of what Lynda Barry says about creating to have an experience.

    Here’s some of what I created this week

  • Weekly Review 5/20/24

    Things that have been taking up brain space this week:

    • Feeling stalled out on topics or reminders to journal about
    • The idea of looking at things and decisions with the question “what would a _____ do?” The blank being “artist” or “athlete” or “present spouse” or “attentive Dad” etc
    • The enjoyment of making a mixtape for my father in law
    • Do I create a set schedule to post or write or create? Like every Monday I’ll post something or every Friday I’ll share 5 things from my week. As a way to keep myself accountable for creating and showing up.
    • Feeling stuck and in a bad mood and then creating a collage to try and capture those emotions. And then feeling lighter after making a collage.

    Here are some of the things I created this week:

  • Randomness in Art

    This was made blasting out the ink from my blunt tipped syringe after I refilled my Pentel brush pen. I just love the randomness of this. It always makes me smile to see what shows up.

    In fact that’s a lot of artwork I like to make and/or resonate with. Lots of stuff taken from Lynda Barry: scribble monsters, see where the pen wants to go, collage. It’s certainly help break out of wanting things to “look good” or look real. While I appreciate the skill to make things look realistic, that’s not what resonates with me.

    The random style of drawing has also acted as a kind of permission to make things that don’t look realistic. For so many years I believed that the only good artwork was realistic. That’s what our society has programmed into us as well. But discovering Lynda 3+ years ago has cracked open a creative flow where randomness is encouraged and can also serve as the catalyst for creating something. It takes out the pressure of having an idea or knowing what to create. The randomness breaks through all that so I can get to the most important thing: creating something.

    All this ran through my mind as I blasted out the ink onto the paper and got me thinking about the art I enjoy consuming and most importantly the art I enjoy making have some element of randomness in them. It’s always fun to see what or who shows up.

  • Journal Doodles 4/17/24

  • Random Drawings