more moth – Mothra!

The drawing that I chronicle here continues to gain more stuff.  I say “more moth,” but it’s really more leaves — though aspects of the moth evolves as well.  I see the edges of the moth in relation to the leaves, and it’s necessary to get the leaves in there so that everything can be altered later as necessary.  You can’t know what you want to change until it’s there to see.

This 32 x 24 inch drawing is preparatory for a painting.  The painting is larger and includes another element not present in this study.  I have a second more careful preparatory drawing that’s in the works as well.  These are the rehearsals.

A polyphemus moth in real life is large, easily 4 inches across.  This moth, of course, is much larger — though not as large as Mothra.  And it won’t be transporting any Japanese girls anywhere.  Nor is it likely to fight Godzilla — or King Kong — or anybody else.  It’s a peaceful moth.  The leaves in the picture are metaphors, and I wish I could tell you what they stand for metaphorically — I really wish I could.  But I haven’t a clue.

Sometimes the artist is the last to know.  I just paint what I’m supposed to paint.  It was my idea.  But my own brain is very hush-hush and “need to know” about the topic.  The conscious me who writes this blog doesn’t possess a high enough security clearance to be granted access to the Top Secret information …. so there you go.

Once all the leaf stuff is in this version of the picture, I can start moving leaves around.  It is as self-help guru Brian Tracy wrote, “anything worth doing well is worth doing badly at first.”  Not that I judge my moth and its leaves as bad.  Quite the contrary, I like them.  But a rehearsal might go really well too.  It’s still a rehearsal.

I need my practice moths so that my more deliberate moth can sail through its pictorial night and accomplish its symbolical purposes.  And if I do it right, who knows?  My brain might even tell me what it all means.