Kenny Rogers sang it – you gotta know when to walk away. I tried a new and unfamiliar theme last night, wanted to visit the 30s and Art Deco. It didn’t work from the start – I didn’t have a feel for the images or the era and tried to bluff my way through using color and line. Along the frustrating way, I learned a lot, particularly to stick with what calls you and don’t try to force your art in a direction that you want to control when you don’t feel the story. See the photos and the resulting cover-up. The first three show that it wasn't bad -- it just wasn't RIGHT. As I'm always saying, there's more than one right answer in art and design, but this wan't one of them.
The more I read in the book Art and Fear, the more I realize this, taken from page 56, “One of the best-kept secrets of artmaking is that new ideas come into play far less frequently than practical ideas – ideas that can be re-used for a thousand variations, supplying the framework for a whole body of work rather than a single piece.”
I still have thousands of variations to explore in themes that I love – Asian, Renaissance, surrealism. . for example, the rooster (last photo) in the now-recovered false start of a cover has a lot of potential and a story to tell. Can’t wait to see how he turns out.
