The days that follow the end of a long project are generally fairly quiet for me. A visual artist’s performance is silent and solitary. No applause. No curtain bow. Just a quiet pause in wielding that brush or charcoal.
The next project is never far behind. I have been asked to create a short painting series of bucolic scenes around South Carolina. I am obliged to do them because people want them. But before committing to the new work, I gave myself a little vacation yesterday and today. A vacation means making things that have no immediate market value and no one asked for. Instead of starting something from scratch, however, I chose to do some old drawings to "improve" upon. I plucked out a satisfactory but rather boring drawing of a woman seated at a table. I made the darks much darker, the lights lighter, and the midtones more uniform. The figure popped out of the background after these changes. The wall on the right begged for something interesting and eye catching. For that space I added a scroll with a depiction of a painting by the late Chinese artist Xu Bei Hong. Now this drawing seems just a little more special. One more afternoon of reading, rest and planning before I get back to work.
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