Flying Girl and the Winter Dawn, or Change11/7/08 AEDM #7
Golden Fluid Acrylic
A new way to inspire a painting when I am exhausted and brain dead with a head empty of ideas:
Reach into my bag of paints and withdraw three bottles (two small and one large [which are my whites])
It is almost like pulling a word from a bucket of collected words. I used to do that when I taught High School English and when I led women's workshops. I would collect "juicy" words, concrete, specific words with lots of connotations, and whenever I needed a word prompt for a poem or a journal entry or even a story, I would reach in and pull out one or two or three.
So I reached in to the bag and pulled out a zinc white, bone black, and then another zinc white. Gosh, i said to myself, I need another color! And I pulled out paynes gray. then I pulled out titanium white. Then I pulled out the very dark prussian blue hue, and I decided, well that's it, the universe wants me to paint in black and white today.
It didn't really turn out black and white.... I almost feel like I cheated by making it mostly blue toned. But it did guide my paintings.
I did the flying girl figure, and her dress flowed out behind her and all of a sudden it was the sky and I pictured her a kind of Snow Queen, but one bringing a new dawn and there was the painting.
Voila.
Inspiration can be fleeting, when you are looking for it, but sometimes if we stop chasing it and just allow our life/experiments/chance happenings to BE the inspiration, hey, it's right there in front of you after all.
Nanowrimo total wordcount: 17,915 (2320 yesterday)
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6 comments:
It is hard to keep up with flying girl this month--I'm amazed and impressed you are writing a novel and painting! You inspire.
I can't keep up, either, Marta. I'm just running to keep from falling. But I seem to be getting somewhere with it.
I don't think I'll know what's happened with it until January... 'cause you know what happens with the holidays.
But January is a good way to refocus and start new paths.
To me, she looks like the Snow Queen pulling her sleigh. I love these Flying Girl posts, and the idea of limiting your palate. For me, in prose, I think I do it more with simple templates rather than word choices.
Squirrel, I was JUST thinking about constraints and how helpful they are. The whole flying girl series is just one constraint. Paint a FG. Within that constraint, I can do anything I want with her. It gives me a place to start, and from there I can allow my imagination to fly.
And I think they help with writing, too. I agree with a simple template. I remember in college I took playwriting, and it was intimidating, so I limited myself to 4 characters, each representing a person in a conflict. They showed up, they presented their conflict, they were vanquished. I got an A on it. :) But you could see the difference between how well the simplicity worked compared to the other ambitious first time writers.
I know there's a place for complexity, but me, I like the constraints of simple things.
I am that high school teacher, and I was just teaching the kids about the importance of connotations verses dennotations. This language of our transforms into art and art can sometimes transform into language....and then some things just remain ineffable (one of their vocab words this week!)
I love your flying girl. She reminds me of my dreams, in which I always have the ability to fly.
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