I don't know how you function, but I tend to do things in stages when working on creative projects. Between my day job, available energy and general demands, working on projects tends to happen on more of a "when possible" time frame.
And then there's the issue of ideas and inspiration. My sub-conscious has an unending supply of ideas which it sends in steady streams to my conscious mind at all the wrong times; while I'm trying to fall asleep, during my sleep, while at work, in the shower, driving to and from work and on. Bottom line, rarely at a time when I can actually jot things down. Not that these ideas are terrific, but they seem to run on a reel, repeating in different versions until I can finally spit them out one way or the other. Well, other than actually spitting. (Vile habit.) That reel of thoughts can be overwhelming and make it hard to focus when there finally is time to dabble.
Many of my friends and cohorts in dabbling are faithful journalers. That process can help apply and flush out ideas at the same time. Great process and I have tried it. The good news is it always re-directs me to a specific project. The bad news, it always re-directs me to a specific project and that brain flush doesn't happen. I've tried keeping a tape recorder in the car, pen and paper by the bed, using the camera to catch shots of things that have triggered ideas and so many other methods. Nope. Nada. Nix, nil nay.
BUT, about that working in stages, it has helped me learn to have patience with projects. Some of the spontaneity is lost with my stages approach, but often the slowed process gifts me with a better journey and end result. The journey is better because I'm slowed enough to try more options and find the zone more frequently.
A friend and I were laughing a week or so ago about each having a one day workshop, at different times, with Julianna Coles. She is the queen of getting you to take action on paper with out over thinking. She is a wonderful teacher/guide. The class was a strange cross between boot camp, therapy and driving a 5,000 mile an hour race car. (Dreamt that drive years ago.) At the end of the day, finding out how much I could accomplish in one sitting, by not over thinking, was amazing. However, not something I could do regularly without imploding.
How does any of this rambling apply to the image above? Well, aspects of it were created one to five or so years ago. The foundation of it was done a few months ago. And the final aspects were added this morning. It was fun to do though it flunks the high speed test.
It started those five years ago with an acrylic monoprint in vivid blues and greens. Out of that came a shape that reminded me of a dress on a dress form. Trimmed out, reduced and copied in multiples the resulting (trimmed out again) small images were glued down in a circle. Once photographed, that image could be used in many ways and has been. A few years later I photographed a wonderfully cloudy sky. And a year or so after that the clouds, now in graphic shapes, married a chartreuse base. Today that circle of dresses, in a variety of sizes and opacities, made a second marriage with that cloudy base. And that's that.
Hope you're having a grand Saturday.
