Saturday, December 10, 2016

End of the Art Hiatus, Part 1

I lost my passion for drawing. Even my photography floundered. My heart wasn’t in it. I’d think about it; see scenes I’d like to photograph or draw, but I couldn’t seem to get my act together. My website needed updating. How could I make changes when I didn’t know where I was as an artist? My writing, too, suffered. I didn’t have definition for myself-as-artist. Do I give up and try to focus on one thing?

I can’t remember when it started. After my mum passed? Did it stop all at once or did it just wane away?

The drawing went first. The multiple drawing boards and easels with half-finished drawings sat untouched. I lost my passion for photography. All the things I used to love to photograph: old dilapidated buildings, trains, rusted things, flowers, critters, birds … I didn’t care anymore. I lost heart in my art, in myself as an artist.

While I could never give up writing, I struggled with what kind of writer I am. Just as with being an artist and not in one medium, my writing, too, covers multiple genres. I can never fit into one category (and society loves boxes no matter how “open” people try to be). 

I am not a one-medium artist! I AM writing. I AM photography. I AM drawing. (I know, most people think I’m crazy.) 

2015 became the year of selling one house and finding and buying a smaller one. It happened fast in one aspect, but it took so much energy to pack, to get rid of excess, to take care of everything that goes into the whole process. I had no room in myself for art. 

Once the physical move was completed, there were all the renovations. I had planned on revamping my art career in 2016, but the renovations went on and not only drained the bank account, they drained my energy. I did accept a challenge of doing a photo a day with a couple of others, and, of course, I journal every day. 

Then came the trip to a wedding in Wichita to which I drove all by myself; very stressful, very emotional. It wasn’t until I returned that something new began awakening in me. I made time to start reading again and, like many years ago, what saved me was reading about creativity.

I first began getting new insights into my writing with the after-the-fact lessons regarding the trip. The photo-a-day project was certainly instilling a new passion for taking pictures, especially as there was the opportunity to share the photos. I realized how important it was for me to share my work. And, I sold a couple of photos; one that had been printed in the newspaper and one that was posted on Facebook.

I’d been thinking about getting back to drawing for a long time. I started by making light sketches of my kitty, Pele. I filled pages in a small drawing book – most not very good. I decided to get back to the easel, but those drawings I’d started a couple years ago and never finished, drawings taped to the boards and other places, were not “talking” to me. I didn’t feel them anymore. 

I took down the one on the stand-up easel and taped on a blank paper. I went through photographs and chose one I’d considered awhile back and already had printed. Suddenly it wasn’t just about charcoal, and just as with this house, it’s all about color. I need color! I had been putting “hints of color” with pastel in my other charcoal drawings, but these new drawings were going to be more colorful with brighter shades.

Outside of adding those hints of color to the other drawings, I’d never really worked with pastels. I assumed, because they were kind of chalky like charcoal, they’d behave like charcoal with smudging and erasing. I assumed wrong. 

Pastels are very different. They don’t blend like charcoal, and oil pastels are different from soft pastels and do not erase at all and don’t smudge/blend well. Once a line is down with the oil pastel, it’s there! Colored charcoal pencils do not show up on pastels.

I struggled with this first-back drawing as I learned to work the charcoal and pastels together. The brighter colors, though, are exciting. Pastels are more similar to painting, in a way, than drawing. I layer, I erase for light, add more layers sometimes with color sometimes with charcoal. The drawing came together.

Then I had a revelation: My style of drawing is along the style of impressionism – and I’m not a fan of impressionism. How can I like what I’m drawing if I don’t like the style? (which I wrote about in the last blog)







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