Sunday, January 25, 2009

Post 3

My typical creative process:

I do a lot of thinking about a thing sort of half-mindedly, before I pick up a pencil to start thumbnailing. I let the assignment sort of swirl for a while, if I have that sort of time. If I don't I skip straight to thumbnailing. I need a quiet place to thumbnail, where I won't have interruptions. Sometimes I go for a walk beforehand to clear my head of unwanted noise/concerns/panic over my procrastination. When my ideas happen quicker than thumbnails I write them down with words. A lot of time I will write lists of words that inspire the feeling of a piece, or what I'm trying to achieve with the composition: "calm, pastoral, balanced, even, peaceful" or "jagged, menacing, directional, oppressive" ect, and that will help call to mind a variety of compositions. It's easy for me to move from verbal/written to images. When I start on my final piece, I like to have my thumbnail scaled up mechanically to my final size, rather than redrawing the smaller thumbnail large: I always adjust to leave more space than there is on the thumbnail, which annoys me, and I don't like to redraw and redraw on the final canvas. I like best to get big areas covered quickly, across the whole of the composition, in a media I can draw/paint back over to refine. In general, I like to rough out the whole thing, quickly and expressively, then get the details in place.

What it should be:
Especially for three-dimensional work I need to spend more time in the planning stages of a thing. I get impatient sometimes, and often I manage my time badly through those beginning sectors, and sometimes through the finish section. I think I need to be bolder about corrections made to pieces: I am still hesitant about erasing or covering things I like, in fear that they won't come out that way again: I should either trust my skills more, or if they are in fact not up to par, practice more.

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