Ever have an idea? A very loose idea. That you feel is going to be something big? It’s going to take you to new places. It will stretch you out of your comfort zone and unleash potential you didn’t even you had. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
But what happens when you take that first step forward, and it’s a flop. You thought you would be so inspired that you wouldn’t be able to stop working. But that’s not the case. You’re not inspired. It’s not exciting at all, let alone the way you imagined. That’s how I feel right now. I had this very cool idea that I thought would snowball into a huge obsession. So far, it’s not going as planned.
Now, here’s the thing, I still want to make this series. I just think I need to adjust my creative process to make it work. I don’t always push through if I have an idea that isn’t working for me. Sometimes it’s best to trash the idea and move on. But in this case, I am still stuck thinking about this series. I want to work through it. I think because it’s so different from what I usually do that it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes being uncomfortable is just what you need.
Let me back up. We were given some antique fishing lures from my father-in-law a while ago. When I saw them I knew I wanted to paint them. I’m not sure if it was because I was very invested in the series I had been working on at that time, or if it was because it would be so different from what I usually work on, but I had no intention on making a whole series around them. I just planned on maybe one painting. Well, a couple months ago I rediscovered them in the garage and had this great idea to do a portrait series with them. Now, that’s all I really had in mind. I figured I would just jump in and everything would be great. Well, after painting two small portraits I realized there is a lot more I have to do to make this series interesting.
As a landscape painter, my creative process is pretty straight forward. I find a scene that interests me, lay out how I want my composition, and get started. Now I’m not saying that it’s always smooth sailing, but there is a lot less you have to consider when information is right in front of you. There is a lot I have to consider now. This is kind of exciting, but at the same time it’s a little overwhelming. But I think if I do a lot of preparatory sketches and get in the groove, I will feel more comfortable taking risk and being more experimental as the series progresses.
Another thing that I’m running into, is that I don’t necessarily have a vision of what my end series is going to look like. Normally I have a bunch of different paintings going at the same time (and planned out) and get to see them all together and kind of bounce back and forth between them as I work. With working from sketches and still life set ups, I don’t know how realistic this is. I don’t have a ton of space to have 4 or 5 still life set ups going on and room for all the paintings. So, I may have 2 going at the same time and then have a few side paintings. So we will see how this all goes.
I still feel really excited, but also a little uncertain on how it is going to go. I plan on documenting each week or so to see how things progress and evolve.