Monday, May 15, 2006
Thoughts about my current Work in Progress

Title: "He Is"
Medium: graphite mechanical pencils
Surface: Bristol Smooth
Size: finished piece will be 20x30 inches (this is only a small portion)

This concept came to me one night back in November of last year while sitting in a restaurant with my husband drinking coffee. The restaurant was fairly quiet and we were talking about a book my husband has been writing. His project has been going on for a couple years. He's just enjoying himself and frankly I was even surprised at how good it is! And we were discussing this. That's when the concept came me, however it wasn't fully there for me yet. It took until the end of December before I saw the entire picture in my mind.

It usually takes me quite awhile to fall asleep at night, so I always have a very quiet time to think before slipping away to dreamland. It was during these quiet moments that the picture formulated more. I kept a notebook on my bedside table so I could write it down before falling asleep. It ended up filling up a whole page.

Once the picture was fully visible in my mind I contacted people I wanted as models. The main one was hard to find. I needed the right features. It was his eyes that I wanted more than anything else. He also had the correct build. His wife was thrilled that I wanted to use him as one of the models, even though they both knew it wouldn't look like him exactly. He was nervous, excited, and scared to be a model, but we finally got through the photoshoot. We had a good time laughing because we kept cracking jokes to make him relax.

He couldn't sit for me until end of January, which is what held this up for so long. You can imagine how I felt during the wait - like a racehorse in the starting gate, shaking with anticipation! I wanted to start this NOW. However, I now look back at that as being a good thing because I needed to learn some very important things before moving ahead with this drawing. The biggest thing was learning to let go and trust my instincts, and allow my heart to work through my hands. I had to come to grips with allowing myself to feel emotion so I could relate a better piece of work. I'm not an emotional person, still don't care to show it or trust emotion, however I've learned that there needs to be a balance between logic and emotion. As humans we have both and we need to use both.

At times I feel overwhelmed with emotion and need to take a few days away from the drawing. Feeling even a balanced portion of emotion is new to me, so I have to step back. This is a very emotional piece for me, and I hope it will be for others as well, but I can't be a basketcase - nor do I want to be. However, I have something deep inside me that I want to share with others, and the only way to do that is to FEEL. So not being able to start this piece even when I wanted to was a good thing. A very good thing; and I can see the results are showing, at least to me.