Simplicity

Lately my creative brain has been bouncing off the walls, exploding with ideas. Yet whenever I have tried to translate those ideas onto paper it just hasn't worked, the image in my head and the image on the paper are disconnected. I thought it was perhaps that the technical abilities of my head far outweigh those of my hands, but in fact I think it's been my tendency to overthink things.

I picked up a fantastic lettering book recently by Michael Clark (an amazing lettering artist) and one of the first quotes I read was:

If we lose simplicity, we lose drama. Wyeth

Or course it was beautifully lettered!

When I simplify my artistic process and allow it to happen rather than having elaborately planned out ideas, not only am I happier with the process, I'm happier with the outcome.

This piece came about after I was looking a some artwork on Donna Downey's site and although her artwork is vastly different to mine, it was the words that spoke to me: 'It's all going to be okay.' and 'You are exactly where you should be.' specifically spoke to me. And this is the artwork that followed. I love flowers and I love pencil. In this case soluable graphite pencils mixed with a bit of windsor and newton watercolour blocks. I toyed with adding words but feel that in this case less is more.

The joy I experienced doing this artwork was fantastic. I was completely in the moment and it just flowed. This is, I feel, how art is supposed to be.

It is a truly gorgeous day in Melbourne today and as my son, Bailey, said to me this morning, the sun is shining and that makes me smile.