Inspiration and Perspiration

I can feel that I'm starting to be ready to wrap up this series of winter drawings, at least for this year. There are two or three others I'd like to do if I can. But this one beckoned persistently, and because I knew it would be a real challenge, I decided I'd better go for it while I still felt inspired.

On the day I saw this scene, we had been fortunate enough to drive through the Adirondacks just after a heavy snowstorm that had thickly coated every single branch of every tree -- the atmospheric conditions must have been very particular. Since the snowfall, there had been no wind, and we were nearly alone on the roads, so it felt like a sort of suspended animation. We left the main road at some point and drove up through deep woods on a narrow dirt road to its top, and then back down into a hollow where there was a stream. The road was icy, and we figured we'd better turn around while we could. Jonathan got out to take a picture of the water, but on the other side of the road, long ago, someone had made a semi-circular clearing, now ringed by this group of trees, completely covered with thick fresh snow: mostly spruces and larches with lacy branches, standing heroically like characters in a play, or guardians of the woods behind them, flanked by a chorus of bare deciduous trees raising their white arms and fingers. No wind blew, no birds sang or hopped from branch to branch to cause cascades of snow -- just the utter stillness of deep midwinter woods on an extraordinary day.

At the time I hadn't planned to do any drawings, but as this series progressed, I kept coming back to that semi-circle of trees, and felt I needed to try.

The complex nature of this forest scene required a preliminary sketch (above). The overall approach was too simplistic and too contrast-y, but I was just trying out different approaches. I wasn't too happy with the spruce tree, but liked the larch on the right, and felt that the handling of the trees in the background would probably work. So then it was a question of beginning again for real, and summoning the patience for what I knew would be a long, challenging effort.

In most of the drawings in the series, I've been able to work back and forth across the whole scene, or from top to bottom in a logical way. But here, I couldn't do that, because there was so much going on that I kept losing track of where I was. So I developed the picture in vertical slices, worrying all the time that I wouldn't be able to integrate the entire drawing across the picture plane. It was complicated, eye-fatiguing, and seemed like it took forever -- I worked on it off and on for three days.

Then, once I was almost done, I had to work quite a bit on the picture as a whole to make the different areas relate to each other, and bring the overall greyscale into harmony. There are some things I'd do differently if I were to do it over (that's not going to happen!) but in general I'm pretty happy with the final result.

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This process made me think a lot about what happens when inspiration is hard to hold onto -- how do we keep going toward our original goal when things get tough? It's so easy, and tempting, to give up at that point. Part of being a professional artist, designer, writer -- or pretty much any other artform -- is learning how to stick with a project, no matter how difficult it is or how many obstacles come up, and bring about a satisfactory conclusion. If the client has hired you, then that is your part of the contract. Likewise, if the public has bought a ticket to the concert, there is an expectation of excellence.

But for the professional, this also creates a difficulty. When is the result "good enough," and when is it extraordinary? Because most of us know, deep down, that there is a difference. In music, as in all the arts -- and in sports, for that matter -- peak performances do not happen every day. The public may not know, because technical virtuosity may be there, just as facility in drawing or painting may be there, and the public tends to recognize and reward virtuosity. But technical brilliance alone doesn't create an inspired performance or a truly special work of art; it is not the same as artistry that somehow, intangibly, conveys what is going on in the heart and mind of the artist and conveys that to the audience in a truly moving and memorable way. For that matter, the artist often doesn't know why a particular performance felt different, or why a particular painting or drawing or poem happened as it did: you can't "will" it to happen. The hours and hours of practice and preparation that add up to technical facility are the means to the end, but they are not the end in themselves.

There are an awful lot of professionals who do coast along on a combination of technique, repetition of what has been praised or popular, and doing work that is "good enough." Pushing yourself to do better, to continually grow, requires taking risks -- and that means some of the time you're going to fall short or fail. It also means once in a while, maybe not often at all, you're going to do something that confirms why you began this journey in the first place.

I'm not saying that this drawing is extraordinary in any way, just that it was more challenging than the others I've done so far, and required digging deeper into myself to keep going and pull out a result that felt satisfying -- it asked more of me. Looking back on the last two months of work, I can see that I've learned a lot.

I always pay attention when I feel my inspiration running thin. Perspiration - pushing through to a good result - can only take you so far. The poet Osip Mandelstam once made the enigmatic comment that he always knew when he was getting close to the end of a cycle of poems when he started writing about the stars. He had discovered a clue in his own work. I don't have that; I just have a feeling that I'm not quite there on the razor's edge, the way it was when inspiration first hit and the first works were coming. But concentration and persistence can bring you back to a place where inspiration once again takes over: that's the intangible lesson of this drawing, and maybe of those moments standing in the circle of snow-covered trees.

Comments

[Peter]

I think you have thoroughly mastered charcoal rendering of woods in winter. But maybe scenes of the Central New York hills spoke to you in a way the Adirondack woods didn’t. I am admiring your sense of adventure and sheer nerve for haring away from the pavement and driving where you might have a long walk to get out. Did you know the road from another trip?

[Kostas Sarantidis]

There is a certain Chinese quality to your charcoal drawings. Are those smudges intentional?

[am]

Events in my life and the life of a friend delayed my ability to read this post, but I kept looking deeply at the snowy scene top of this post. Thank you so much for writing about the mysterious creative process that involves both perseverance and something else that carries me forward when I am working on a piece that asks to be more than "good enough."

These winter scenes have reached me on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level, especially this one.

[Dave]

"Osip Mandelstam once made the enigmatic comment that he always knew when he was getting close to the end of a cycle of poems when he started writing about the stars."
Brilliant. Yes, one learns to recognize one's go-to themes and to become wary of them.

[Beth]

No, Peter, we didn't know the road -- we were just trusting in our 4-wheel drive Subaru.

Interesting observation, Kostas! And yes, those smudges are intentional - they form the background for layers that are going to go on top (see the picture at the top of this post to see what happened).

am: thank you for being, in so many ways, an "ideal reader" for what I am trying to do here. Knowing that the drawings and writing have touched you is a gift and encouragement for me.

Thanks for that comment, Dave. I agree that Mandelstam's observation is brilliant -- and helpful.

[Priya]

Hi Beth,
When I saw this drawing on Instagram, I decided I must look at it on my laptop. It is a gorgeous and brilliant drawing. From your description of doing it, I can imagine it must have been challenging! It could so easily have reduced into a rubble of black and white marks, but this picture rises above the medium in its magnificence.
Your writing gives equal food for thought. It is so difficult to take risks because the anxiety and fear can at times be crippling. But when you come out at the other end with whatever the result of those risks, the sense of satisfaction is enormous, as it must be for you now.

[Beth]

Priya, thank you so much, this is a real compliment coming from you, a master of charcoal, and I know you know what the challenges of the scene would have been -- in addition to the risk of taking it on in the first place.