"The Drawing Board" and The Drawing Board
I'm back to both kinds
The Figurative Drawing Board:
My Plot Outline for the follow-up story to Farewell, O Syria is exciting, but I have a couple of big gaping holes that have me stumped.
I’m fascinated by my chosen historical context. It screams for someone to dramatize such consequential events. (It would make a great opera!) I’m trying to integrate simultaneous historical catastrophes AND weave my fictional characters through the external plot. I have meaningful internal torment to put them through, and some solid narrative ideas, but there are time gaps that feel too inactive. I can’t put everyone in a coma for four months. Hmmm.
I have enough experience in creative problem-solving to trust the process. But, oof, it’s scary when it feels impossible. I’m asking the big questions: what if this or that, but more importantly, what if I throw out the whole thing? Not in defeat, but in a freedom that this phase of the project allows, rather than after I have 100,000 words written. This is a time to hold the ideas loosely and let them shift or fly away completely.
For now, I’ve clarified three primary issues and think I will walk away for a few days. Sometimes all it takes is a nap. Meanwhile, I have research to review. I often find my ideas in the historical record. The most obscure, unrelated tidbit can send the imagination in a surprising direction. So, we’ll hope for that.
The Real Drawing Board:
It is a new thing for me to have complete freedom in visual art. When I was twelve, I was smitten with scenery and lighting design for the stage. Since then, 98% of my art has been in a specific context: scenic art, design illustration, furniture, murals, commissioned paintings—always with a specific project to serve. Clients waiting.
This open-ended, do-as-you-please thing is strange. I have several broad subject-matter categories that I am driven to explore, so I’ll be a long time before exhausting the “what”. But which process? Which materials? What style? What mood?
I’ve spent much of the last year learning about printmaking—which I am loving! I’ve been experimenting with its limitations, pushing against the supposed boundaries, and trying hard not to pressure myself to create “finished products”.
As someone who has used my visual art skills primarily within a profession, this freedom is like a desert journey without a map. It requires quite a mind shift.
So far I’m all over the place, from dark moody prints to silly decorative collages, none of them yet ready for prime time and all of them a bit of a mess, either technically or compositionally.
As with the writing, I’m trying to let the process do the work, but there’s a loud voice in my head screaming that I should Be More PRODUCTIVE!
Oh, hush, tyrant!
Go do something fun this weekend!
As always,
Lausanne
Really resonant piece about that tranistion from client-driven work to creative freedom. The desert journey metaphor is perfect bc that shift from always having a specific project brief to "just make whatever" can feel paradoxically constricting. I had a similar experince after years of commision work when I finally had time to just... create without constraints.