Flying Girl and the Carnival, or Life

Flying Girl and the Carnival, or Life
11/6/08 AEDM #6
Golden Fluid Acrylics Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils

This Flying Girl flew in out of thin air. I did not have one single idea in my head when I sat down to sketch it out and I was so tired I did not even want to paint. But I persevered, falling back on my new routine of painting with the TV on, and she just appeared. I think the ferris wheel was the first distinguishing feature that appeared. Then I thought a pale teal sky might be nice and the orange came after that. I've been attracted to orange lately. Autumn thoughts, maybe.

Her outfit took some doing, too, going through many fashion incarnations before settling on this rather business like tweed skirt, orange vest and pale green blouse. And the funky heels were almost an accident.

I particularly like the outfit as a contrast to the carnival, because, despite the fun background, this isn't really a "fun" picture, at least not like yesterday's FG and Magic Cat. Interesting. First a Circus, then a Carnival. I didn't mean to walk along the midway on this one. I suppose tomorrow will be the Freakshow. Well, I make no promises.

This carnival, though, feels more to me like the ups and downs of life, the wheel of fortune turning, top to bottom to top again. I don't know why there are no people in this carnival, it just didn't feel right when I thought about adding them. Sometimes I plan a painting according to meaning, sometimes I just go with the flow and the meaning becomes apparent later.

I don't know if I am creating the meaning from what it "could" mean or if the meaning has appeared out of my subconscious to allow me to understand what is going on in there.

I tend to believe that it is more a message from my subconscious, from the universe, even. I don't know if you know this about me, but I also read tarot cards, and have for the last 20 years. Wow, time flies. To me, this is an extension of creating meaning out of the set archetypes of the tarot. Perhaps creating these FGs everyday is my own oracle. Some are more thought out than others, but they all come from something inside of me that I don't quite have complete dominion over.

Maybe someday, I will paint my own tarot deck. I have been mulling the idea over for the last fifteen years or so. I still haven't seen all these FGs put together without any other images or words in the way. I wonder what it would be like to pin them all up to the wall and just sit with the images of the journey.

Not sure I want to rip up my journal yet, but it might be a fun concept. I've really got to get my scanner and printer back, then I could just make prints of them all. Please don't let me go into that saga. Did I mention my life seems like a not so fun rollercoaster sometimes?

Oh yeah, nanowrimo word count: 15,595 (2357 words yesterday) I finished up my surprising and meaningful and confrontational and even brutal (heh, not so much, I think I could up the brutality just a tetch, as I tend to shy away from confrontation and brutality so it's probably very mild), and then babbled away in the next, nothing, toss off scene. I write to find my way in to the story, I have discovered. Most of my total words are that writing my way in. I wonder if I were to edit it, how many words are the meat of the story? But I will have to wait until December to try that exercise as I do not edit during nanowrimo and I delete nothing. I have, however, found myself going back over my work more than in other years.

Perhaps I am confident in my writing speed and ability to hit the wordcount, and even my ability to turn off the internal editor and my faith that I can get it all done. I am no longer running in fear of not being able to do it. That's a good development, I think. Now, I have actually crafted my pages a little, instead of just doing stream of consciousness. When I find a line/paragraph/scene that I should edit out, I simply hilight it all in red-- the color of STOP! And then move on to where I want to be.

I am enjoying the permission to write something that won't go into the final. Enjoying the permission to write crap, to write shallow characters and pointless description, because I know it is just drawing the REAL story out of my subconscious.

There's that subconscious again. She's busy lately.