Drawing using pencils, metallic silver on toned and printed paper
Cropped image scanned onto white background. My son (though he would deny it.)
Today, I was once again, trying to organize paper, just paper. I am ready to write. I tell myself over and over, I will write today.
Today as I was sorting to gather all of the last 2 years of research on my latest women series (more to come), I kept finding jottings and sketches and ephemera. Ephemera includes articles , photos, preliminary and just-because sketches.
This sketch is one of the few efforts to record my boys. Their personalities escape me visually. The girls I know visceral. Been there. Done that.
I thought today, this is not bad in capturing him or someone like him. A subject can see his/her own image interpreted by the artist, and deny any relationship. Which is OK. Often the person grows into the painting. Sometimes they are so familiar with their faces in the mirror, reversed that they cannot imagine another angle.
I have done self-portraits, precariously clinging on the bathroom face bowl while checking the mirror. Who is that old lady and why is she staring at me? Happy Halloween.
I am researching an artist of mixed race, dating 1800s. One critic of her work describes her as having white features from the eyes up, and signs of her other parentage by her thick lips and coffee-colored skin. The comments are from another long-gone era but echo today. This gifted lady was reduced by this critic to her ethnicity and not her talent. (Fortunately she received fame and some fortune with her talent.)
Who knew?
With all of the tools we have for organization, it is still difficult to organize paper. What if you throw away something you will need? Once the piles are made, then what? My papers are all sizes, all subjects, all precious. I find at the mid-pont, that I cannot remember which pile is for what. And today, I took this sketch to the computer to share with you as a way of preserving it.
Did you know?
I have been a sometime blogger for a long time. Last year I sold one of the women series (Rosa Bonheur). I have been working on these paintings for nearly three years. Selling one put a lot of pressure on me to determine what the exit strategy would be to complete the series.
I decided that for an exhibit, 30 paintings would be the magic number. So I have been for months selecting the last ones. Every time I counted, the number to-do seemed to expand. Now I am up to choosing the final two. My list of good choices has grown beyond any definite closing number. I am committed to 30 or maybe 31 because of the sale. Pretty sneaky, I say.
Those of you who show and sell your work will understand that just finishing the work is not the end. Documentation, promotion, framing, if paintings, etc. Where was that business plan, carefully written last year? I know that my iPad chews up the very data I have stored.
Getting organized
1. Put all of the pertinent files in one place.
2. Keep your reference material close at hand. I have accumulated, books, articles and online information.
3. Make a format that will set the style for each painting. Later you can adapt for promotional requirements.
4. Have that place where you can think and write which has lights, water and a way of telling time.
5. Take a break periodically whether you want to stop or not.
6. Do not think and write. Write and then come back to edit. If you know something is not accurate, mark it, write a question, or in some way leave yourself a note.
7. When you are certain, ask someone to read it, read it aloud to yourself or someone else, tape it and play it back. The flow will not show up at first.
Now, if I can just follow my own suggestions…and file those papers off the floor.
LE ARTISTE BOOTS 