Speaking of Art Blog

Momentary Playmate

pastel, 12x12"

This is my newest pastel that I just finished.  I was talking to a friend about it this evening, and she asked me how long it took me to complete it.  I told her, “12 years and 20 hours.”  She responded, “I can understand the 20 hours part, but 12 years?”  Yep, that was how long I hung onto my reference photo before I decided to take the plunge and try rendering it.  She was so surprised.  I told her that from time to time I’d pick it up, contemplate starting it, and then put it back down, because I knew I wasn’t ready to tackle it.  Then she had a thought.  “Oh, I see what you mean,” she said, “I’m a knitter and sometimes I pick up the instructions for a new knitting creation and I don’t understand them at all.  So I leave them alone and come back to them from time to time, and then suddenly one day I understand them and can start on the project.  Is that what you mean?”  My reply was, “Well, sort of.  Except with a new piece of artwork there are no instructions.”

And that’s the key difference – no instructions, none.  Yes, I suppose you could call all my training and art education the instructions, but at the end of the day I am following no patterns, no ready-made composition, no dictated color scheme, not even the perfect size for the paper I will be using.  Nothing.  Just some art supplies waiting for my use.  I decide everything.  It’s downright terrifying at times! 

And it can sometimes be one element that holds me back from starting a new creation.  With this piece 12 years ago it was a number of elements – the butterfly, the hands, and even the background.  Well, I’ve rendered quite a few butterflies as of late, so cross that obstacle off the list.  How about the hands?  Most people would think that was the biggest hurdle.  Not for me.  I struggled with how to create realistic hands many years ago when I did a painting of our two children.  It literally took me 75 hours to create that puppy, but since then I do know how to render hands.

Big Brother Pride

pastel, 20x16"

No, the final obstacle was the background.  In my reference photo there was just gravel back there, gray blah gravel.  Ick.  But I needed to consider and play with a number of options in my subconscious before finally striking on at least a color scheme that I preferred over gray.  I knew I wanted to incorporate the colors of the hands and butterfly back there, but even as I started in on the actual painting I STILL didn’t know exactly how I would render it.  Would I show my strokes or blur it completely?  Would I use some bokeh circles or have it be broken lines?  This is where the terror part comes into play.  A famous quote comes to mind each time this kind of situation presents itself to me:  “Sometimes you just have to jump and build your wings on the way down.”  Parenting is like that….every single day.  Creating something from scratch is like that too….every single time.

In this case I decided to let broken diagonal lines help to create a sense of movement in the piece.  Most of us rarely see a butterfly standing still.  They are fluttering by and we only catch a glimpse of blurry diagonal edges of their wings in the air.  So I decided to juxtapose those diagonal lines with a still butterfly.  Their angle mimics the top edge of its wings and focuses the viewer’s attention on the still butterfly, while the hands serve as a sort of nest, protecting it from the flurry of movement behind them.  The butterfly will return to its flurry world in a few minutes, but for now, it is still.  Mission accomplished.

Did I realize all of that before I started?  No, but my subconscious did.  It’s been working all that out for 12 whole years.  It just needed to give my conscious mind time to catch up.  Creating something from scratch – it’s scary and wonderful and full of surprises, but most of all it takes time, sometimes…..12 years.