Friday, June 12, 2009

Flying Girl is Many People, or Sketch Faces Pattern

Flying Girl is Many People, or Sketch Faces Pattern
012/100 in 100 Creative Challenge, 6/12/09
Golden Fluid Acrylic and Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils on Moleskine Watercolor Paper, 5x8"

This is only two colors of paint and a sienna pencil. I like the interplay between paint and pencil, how it changes the color of the paint. I painted outside of the face sketches first, and then the inside, because I didn't want them to blend too much. I didn't want to paint over the drawing, I wanted to incorporate the drawing. So there are still edges. Still places where there is only pencil or only paper or only paint.

Is this creepy? The ghosty little half formed faces? I still like it.

Sometimes I feel like we are all made up of a million different people. A million different choices. A million different personalities. A million different answers.

Then we do something like paint pictures or write stories and those people show up. Made out of nothing but imagination and some paper.

Sometimes I am amazed that paintings I do today weren't there yesterday. They weren't just unformed, they didn't exist. It's not like they grew out of something else. They weren't anything.

Afterwards, sometimes, it feels like they have always been there. Like they are significant or familiar. Some gain in importance, some fade. My first flying girl was way back in 1992 in college. I did not know that she wasn't just an expression of my anxiety and excitement over my upcoming graduation from college. I did not know that she would reappear in various forms over the next 17 years. I didn't know that she would become significant again almost two decades later.

Where do these mysteries come from? Who are these mysterious selves we hold inside of us, and in what form will they show up next?

6 comments:

ELK said...

one of my favorites ~the colors and the sketch...so true

tekeal said...

not creepy at all. really, really wonderful in fact. (ps. i may still join you in your 100-dance, but i'm not there yet.)

Rowena said...

take your time, tekeal.

sometimes these things appear before us and get under our skin, long before we are able to do them. I felt the same about dragonfly's 100 days of sacred art, which I discovered about 2 weeks before I started painting every day the first time.

Sometimes it's nice to have a deadline, but sometimes we need to go at our own pace.

Amanda Fall - Sprout editor said...

Rowena, this may be one of my favorite posts yet. The words & Flying Girl are about equal for me in inspiration. The faces are beautiful--works in progress, signs of who we used to be and who we may become...

I, too, am often amazed at our creative processes. How can it be that one moment we have a blank canvas (or page, or whatever), then suddenly something is born out of us where before there was nothing?

Choices...what if I hadn't chosen to participate in this challenge? I can't imagine not having these experiences over the past 12 days. I guess that's all the more reason to stay open and receptive to life's invitations.

LOVE your last line.

Arlene said...

Wow, Rowena - these just keep getting better and better. I love the faces - that they are visible but not completely formed. As if we still have many faces we haven't fully shown to the world yet. Amazing. Your painting and your words are for pondering and going inward. I love that!

Leah said...

Oo, I really like this one. Love the pattern the face sketches create.

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