the versions so far, together

It’s fun to assemble them.  One gets ideas from the group also.  I look at four different ways I drew the same thing.

A recurring dream … one that I have while awake.

But there’s more to this dream ….

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repetitions for a mythological garden

Let it never be said that I lack a work ethic.  I have made several versions of the foliage imagery.  I enjoy going over it again and again.  It’s incredibly scribbly.  Many little bits of leaf, many pieces of light and shadow — and yet also many ways of thinking about the organization of the large forms.

I did this drawing using Stabilo CarbOthello pastel pencil.  Then put a bit of watercolor over that.

I have lost count how many variations this is.  I love this motif, but it’s just a part.  I need to figure out how it will relate to the other sections of the idea.  I haven’t even made the first compositional drawing yet.

It’s just one part of an idea.  Each time I draw, each time I write, I get a few more bits of the idea. It’s like lucid dreaming.

sight reading a page inside the book

Scribbling out the idea … it’s like sight reading in music.  I’m not sure how the music sounds yet.  I haven’t actually heard it.  I’m reading the parts, getting figures in my head.  First I have to find out what is there.  Later I will look for interpretation.  First comes practice.  At some future juncture my hands will go straight to the notes.  You must assimilate the music.  It has to go from the page to the interior of your head.  You have to hear it a while, get a feeling for the whole, discover its anticipations, its revelations.

There’s a beginning, a middle and an end.  I don’t even know what the beginning is.  I compose the visual music at the same time that I learn it.

 

foliage abstractions

I got an idea for another imaginary garden, dream garden, mythological garden — a motif that has drifted in and out of my head over the years.  So I have begun just scribbling aspects of it.  Drawing and redrawing it in sketches is a way of also redrawing it in my thoughts. I’m not sure the element of foliage even comes through the drawing, but the large abstract movements do.  They need to be developed too — perhaps more than the descriptive element of foliage.

this songbird sings a porcelain tune

I’m wondering if he should be added to the picture up-coming, the bouquet of flowers with the window and the wise old owl.  He might make a nice addition.

As currently planned there will be a songbird on the side of a porcelain vase.  Adding this fellow means that there will be two songbirds — one flat, one three dimensional.  I like that.  Don’t know why.

 

 

 

I will have a window

Actually I will have two windows!  This one has stuff (not pictured) in front of it now.  But I will have a window that I can sit in front of — that I can look through — windows for dreaming — windows for drawing — windows for arranging the light in still life.

Ah!  I will have a room with a view.

the other side of the room

This side of the room will stay the same — but it will be much less cluttered — except for the still life table — I love that clutter!!  There’s a book cabinet not pictured that has to be relocated.  It is ginormous.  Ai yi yi.  Will deal with that in time … all in good time.

Eventually I will have nails in the wall above to hold the still life drapery.  Goodness, this wall needs painting.  (Will think about that later too.)

You can see the little owl peeking out from under the table.  He’ll have a starring role in an upcoming picture.  So that’s some glad news.

I become the little choo choo that could, I’m “thinking I can” all along the way ….

staying motivated

If you started reading a couple days ago you know that I’m reorganizing my studio.  More than that I’m reorganizing my whole house — perhaps my whole life.  I started reading Marie Kondo’s book “the life-changing magic of tidying up” because I knew I could use some help motivating myself to do this rather large and necessary task.  I have become a real self-help book aficionado.

We live in marvelous times.  No matter what the challenge, someone has probably written a book about doing it.

Live blogging the thoughts I have as I go through these changes helps me dream about where I want to be when the task is complete — not just where the stuff will be — where I want me to be.  Mentally, physically, spiritually.

I find ideas and dreams along the way.  Pictures that were behind other pictures in the stack see the light again. They suggest innovations.  It’s a wonderful, wonderful process, house-cleaning is.  But it’s a lot of work too and sometimes the destination seems so far off.  It’s important to stay motivated.  All this stuff pictured above has to be moved!

Along the way the rest of life needs attention.  Dishes must still be washed, dogs must be hugged, groceries purchased, lawns mowed ….

 

a blank canvas

I have been thinking about this picture for months and months.  I got a new canvas — a big, brand new, white canvas.  I want so much to begin.

Always a balancing act to begin new things, finish old things, keep the everyday chores humming, to adjust my schedule to the calendar I keep with others.  But a bit here and a bit there, and incrementally one makes progress.

I am not sure exactly when I’ll start work on the new picture — and it’s the same motif as featured in the post “almost a year ago.” But in this drawing — in this version — the flowers are smaller relative to everything else.  And this is the version I’ll do first.  I might also paint that other version (who can tell).  Somehow, though, this is the one with the magic in it for the present.

I have decided how I’ll start, too.  I am going to draw the composition using blue paint, drawing it in lines, just as above I drew the motif using a pen.

It’ll start all blue and white.  Then I’ll see where it goes from there.

 

Off white

I’m painting the kitchen.  The walls will be white.  The colors here are effects of the camera and the photo editing software.  But you can see the texture.

This is the blank wall, like the blank sheet of paper.  Only this blank sheet is much larger than a sheet of paper and I won’t be putting any pictures onto it — not any permanent ones anyway.  I might look at it and imagine my drawings.  Or I might daydream about some other summer day.  It’s my personal movie theatre upon which I can screen the films I have inside my head as I work.

I think it’s good to imagine something there.  To project.  And it can be the beginning of the impulse to draw.