Speaking of Art Blog

I recently finished this charcoal & graphite drawing that I’ve titled, Texas Madrone. I saw this unusual tree growing in, you guessed it, northwestern Texas in McKittrick Canyon at Guadalupe Mts National Park. A mature Texas Madrone tree really does have both ghost white, smooth bark on some branches, and deep, dark red, highly textured bark on other branches. It is quite a sight.

I love to draw, but I don’t churn out only black & white drawings because, frankly, drawings don’t sell as well as a colored pastel. And I do need to make SOME money now and then from selling my artwork. But every so often I get a hankering for doing a drawing, and so this was the chosen subject for my most recent drawing. But I’ve never done such a detailed drawing before…..ever. 

Over a year ago I did this drawing of a Pacific coastal scene titled, Ruby Beach.  While it has plenty of texture, there really isn’t much detail. 

And several years ago I did this drawing titled, Resting. Yes, the shoelaces are detailed, but there aren’t all that many of them. 

I wasn’t sure how I’d like all that much detail in this new piece, but I was up for the challenge and wanted to try it. I am not one to shy away from difficult subjects in my artwork. So I dove in. And what I found was that I LOVED all the detail. Just like I’ve found in the past, I LOVE to draw, and all the details in this piece satisfied that love in a BIG way. But as I neared the end of this piece I was suddenly faced with a dilemma I had not anticipated – when do I stop? When do I call it quits and put my pencil down?

Had I ever faced this dilemma before? Of course, years ago when I really got serious about my artwork and was taking lessons and workshops and churning out work. One guiding principle that I adopted during those early years was to ask myself, “At what point does my work say all that I want it to say? When have I finished telling the story?” But with this drawing, that principle wasn’t helping because with a super detailed piece like this there is always one more twig or leaf or wispy shadow that I could add or refine. So my problem remained – when am I done?

Hmm, some other solutions came to mind that I quickly dismissed, such as:

Quit when it looks exactly like my reference photo. Very bad guiding principle to follow.  An artist should NEVER be a slave to their reference photo. They should be about creating something fresh and new that tells its own story. A reference photo is just that, a reference, a jumping off place, not an end in itself.

Quit when I’m tired of adding more detail. Well, that would not EVER work because, as I already stated, I LOVE getting lost in all the detail. I didn’t want this piece to ever end! Besides, quitting just because I’m tired of a piece of work is a very lousy reason to quit. Talk about a downer and a letdown ending! I don’t think I’d want to even frame something that I was just plain tired of. That message would come through loud and clear in the artwork itself.

Then I remembered something I learned many years ago from a mentor, and it is actually very simple and practical: Quit when I have started to undo what I’ve just done. Here’s what I mean by that: If I add a little twig to a branch, and then decide, “No, I don’t like that,” and I erase the twig and have to take the time to redo that little area to make it look again like the twig was never there, then it’s time to quit. Trying something and then immediately undoing it means that I’m just fussing, noodling, and I was done 10 minutes ago. Time to put the pencil down and call it quits. And that was what finally worked for this piece.

So the moral of the story for me is that I need to follow TWO guiding principles to know when to stop:

1)     Is the piece telling the story I intended it to tell? and

2)     Am I noodling and having to redo things? Then it’s time to put my art supplies down and get that puppy in a frame, NO MATTER HOW MUCH FUN I’M HAVING. At some point the party has to end…..at least until I get inspired to dig into the next piece of artwork.