I was right. I’ve made some sort of breakthrough. This picture is alive in a way that none of the earlier ones have been.
Some of it is improved technique. I’ve learned how to handle my materials more competently and gained some knowledge of which brush to use in which circumstance, though as far as that goes I’m pretty basic.
Mostly it was a breakthrough in seeing. Not in the extremely realistic sense — if I wanted literal detail, I’d take a picture. But in the sense of “this is what *I* see.” It’s still representational, no question it’s leaves in a vase, but it’s about the colors, and the effects, and the fact that the leaves are dying. So it’s bright and cheerful and kind of creepy all at once.
I don’t know whether this is anything that can or will carry over to my writing. It seems to be about me, not about the words. But the words come from me, so there’s a connection.
And I seem to have stopped worrying about the mechanics of writing and editing — I’m thinking about the story and how it works, not about how I’m going to do it. I’m getting out of my own road.
I find my art improved my writing and vice versa. It’s good that you are thinking less about the mechanics and more about how the story works. Shows your growing
The same with your painting. I had a breakthrough in a drawing workshop last year…. the instructor had us draw what we felt as opposed to what we saw… after that my drawing changed and I now get a depth and feeling into my art that I didn’t ever have before.
Thanks. That’s an interesting comment about drawing what you felt. I was looking at one of the art books my instructor keeps around the room — Charles Burchfield, the American watercolorist. About this painting, Burchfield wrote that he started trying to depict a house in the neighborhood, but it only came alive when he stopped trying to show the particular object in a location and started to include everything he felt about gothic houses. (I’m paraphrasing.)
In other contexts, for other artist or other times, the exact depiction of the house as it is might be the truth that’s trying to break through — the solid reality of things. My paintings from last week were about a particular slice of feelings, stormy things and rather dark.
Hooray for the breakthrough, and for it applying to both expressions of yourself!