The creative process is a fickle one – there are days in
which every mark you make on your
creative surface seems to magically fall into place and life is great… and then
there are days, weeks even, in which everything… well, doesn’t.
For me, the last three MONTHS have been challenging - things
just haven’t been going “right” and the past four pictures I had worked on
were, let’s say, “less than successful”.
It wasn’t until recently that I came to the understanding that
these pieces weren’t failures (not entirely), that these previous efforts were simply
part of the evolution of my creative process and that even if the pieces were
not successful as a WHOLE, there were PARTS of them WERE successful and could be utilized as ideas for future pictures.
It was also brought to my attention that I have not been
posting any of these “less than successful” pictures on social media and
therefore have not solicited any constructive feedback – what is working? What is
not? What idea could be pushed further?
Without any feedback, it is difficult to assess any
progress. So, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am adding the following
pictures of mostly completed work that I found myself struggling with:
I seem to gravitate towards working on larger pictures, so I decided to design a Mandala series consisting of 20x20 inch pictures. The first picture of the series started off with some difficulty as I had decided to divide up the picture into four sections: one large area for the main picture, two border sections for the left-hand side and bottom of the picture and a square on the bottom left. Overall, I am attracted to the idea for the series, but I found that I was getting hung up on the designs for the panels and spending FAR (seriously, FAR) too much time worrying about them. In the end, I thought that the picture wasn't working because the main design seemed to be at odds with the panels:
There are sections of the picture that did seem to be working well - close up of main design (top):
Second attempt to get the Mandala series off to a start. I had high hopes for this one - I liked the way the overall design was evolving... but, in the end, it looked better before I started to block in the shapes:
This 8x8 inch picture intended for the Journal Project was abandoned after I had difficulty figuring out how to balance the overall design:
Another 8x8 picture intended for the Journal Project... this one has similar issues to the picture above.. just not sure where to go with this one... yet:
This is the latest 8x8x picture for the Journal Project - it's off to a decent start. I couldn't resist and divided up the space into two sections, similar to the idea used in the Mandala Series:
 |
| Journal #10 in progress |
 |
| Journal #10 completed |
 |
| Journal #10 Detail: Top |
 |
| Journal #10 Detail: Bottom |
And, just in case you thought I forgot: I named this piece "Monkey Gone to Heaven" after the Pixies song. Why? Because EVERY SINGLE time I hear it, it becomes stuck in my brain for DAYS and I heard it on the way to work while I was working on this piece. I love the song, but when it came time to write this post, I realized that I had NO idea what the Pixies were talking about.
Just in case anyone was wondering, according to www.songfacts.com: "The song's cryptic lyrics which many have tried to interpret are, according to the band, meant to be surreal and meaningless, built around the title."
In the end, the song title choice for this piece was far more appropriate than I had originally thought.
As artists, we need to keep challenging ourselves, to push
our ideas and tools to their limits and, as such, there will be growing pains.
I fully believe that I am on the threshold of my next artistic phase and what I
am seeing now – the aforementioned “less than successful” pictures – are merely
a product of those growing pains.
Here's to the next artistic phase!
Jenn White
White Rooster Studio
Copyright © 2017 White Rooster Studio. All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment