I know it’s fashionable (and enviable) these days to just pour yourself onto a canvas without any planning and see where it goes, but after many attempts, that’s just not the way I roll.
You see, I love to explore ideas and see how many angles I can come at something from. Redefine it, put it on its head. It gives me something to push against, and it’s immensely pleasurable doing it.
So, while knowing this, I’m going to move a little from the Tropical Houses topic I’ve been exploring over the last year, and pivot a little.
I have two ideas that I can’t quite differentiate, that are both equally interesting to me:
look up
Horsepower
The first has visions of rooflines, animals in trees, palm trees, tree tops, clouds, stars.
The second has fields of horses, cars on driveways (perhaps blurred), lights, movement.
I think the first idea seems slightly easier, well within my comfort zone of things to cover. The second, will be much harder to create without it seeming twee or kitsch or naff.
What’s wrong with doing both, you ask. Well, nothing really; often creativity is about saying “yes, and” rather than “either, or”. However, there’s a balance to be found - spreading yourself over two topics could dilute the idea pool a bit. There’s a limiting factor of time. How can I best get a multitude of these ideas out?
Sketches? Thumbnails? 100 day project style painting?
The danger here is to keep putting off starting until I have all of the answers to the above, when really the advice says to get started. In whatever way you can, however you can.
Be prolific. The time is now.
And as I write that, I know I should get out my sketchbook... but I’m sat in the sun, relaxing. And maybe another half an hour thinking about creating might just be what I need... doh.