Centering and Simplifying

When I posted this watercolor sketch on Instagram, one of the comments (thank you, Michael) was that it seemed to capture "the essence of carnation". I thought about that quite a lot, wondering what happens when this occurs. What helps the artist get close to the "essence" of a subject, and is it something that can be "explained," let alone taught?

Sitting down one evening to do this particular piece, several things were going on in my mind. I was drawn by a vase of evergreens and carnations remaining from the holidays, while also wanting some respite from a long day and the constellation of anxieties, sorrows, frustrations and anger with which many of us are living. So I wanted to do something absorbing and, hopefully, to capture some of the beauty and peacefulness in front of me. I decided not to work in my studio, but right there on the living room table, so I brought out my watercolor palette, a large jar of water, sketchbook and brush, and adjusted the position of the flowers for the light angle I wanted.

Then there were a few minutes of considering potential problems. I wanted to do a direct watercolor -- with no pencil under-drawing, or pen-and-ink line -- because I felt that a spontaneous watercolor would better capture the delicacy and emotional feeling of the bouquet. Another issue was how to handle the white flowers against a white background, because their edges would be very hard to see. I decided I'd paint the shadows on the petals, and then add some pencil lines afterward, if needed.

The final questions were the placement on the page, and where to start. I began by mentally calculating the proportion of vase height to flower height and width, and estimating where these would need to be placed on the page. I then started painting with a brush line indicating the top edge of the vase (the whole vase appears in the full painting, as you'll see in the video below) and built the picture from there, placing the flowers before doing any of the foliage. I painted far fewer flowers than were actually in the vase; I just chose representative ones at interesting angles. As soon as I began painting, I became very quickly absorbed in it.

The painting itself took about 30-40 minutes. When I'm working on something like this I'm in a state that's somewhere between meditation and extreme but wordless concentration. I'm not talking to myself in my head, and I'm moving pretty fast because I want the strokes to be quick and alive. I don't fuss over things, but try to create an overall impression as rapidly as possible. The color choices and color mixtures are intuitive and come from experience; this just comes with learned technique and practice. As Zen teaches, you have to master your tools and technique first, and practice over and over so that you can let them go, not think about them, but rely on them when you are in a flow of action. During that time, your attention can be concentrated not so much on what you are doing but on becoming one with the subject -- seeing it with fresh, clear eyes and penetrating to what is essential, while leaving aside whatever is not.

Obviously, that is a goal, but not something I usually achieve! Nevertheless, without understanding it as an ideal, and without having put in years of thought, meditation, and technical practice, I don't think I'd ever be able to come close. Oddly enough, children sometimes approach the essence of things better than adults. They have so much less of a filter; they haven't been told what matters by other people or society, and they haven't learned to care what others think of their efforts -- that judging voice we become accustomed to as adults is not in their heads yet, but --sadly -- it will be soon. As adults, we have to un-learn a great deal in order to open up again.

The result of this process is a picture, yes, but it can also be a period of time that is enormously refreshing. We center ourselves, we concentrate, we forget our ego as we work, absorbed in color and form and the wordless communication between eye, hand, and spirit. It's a journey, and a space in time. There is no way to describe this in detail; as with many things, it's easier to say what it's not.

The detailed drawing above was done on the following day. Here I was trying to see the difference between a careful rendering of the flowers and what I had done in the painting. It's the opposite of the extreme simplification of the watercolor. The drawing was a helpful study in understanding "Chrysanthemum:" its frilliness, the skirt-like stiffness of the petals, the whorls of tightly wound petals that form the centers, the way the darker pigment is concentrated in lines on the edges. Although the drawing is still quite loose and spontaneous, it didn't create the sense of time-standing-still and complete absorption of the watercolor painting, because I was thinking about all of those things and how to explain them in words.

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Some of you have been asking for some watercolor videos, so I made this short one, which shows me painting one flower from the previous composition, and talking about simplifying what I was seeing while painting. When I watch it, I notice technical things that I don't think about at all, like where I am holding the brush, how much pressure I'm applying. It's helpful for me to watch too.

(Click at lower right to view full screen.)

 

And here's that little sketch from the video so that you can see it better.

I wish everyone some moments of rest and renewal in the coming days. You don't have to be an artist to experience the kind of time-out-of-time that I'm talking about here. Look around you - something is calling for your attention. You don't need to paint it or write about it, just look... and then look deeper for ten or fifteen minutes, being conscious of your breathing, and see if you don't feel that something has shifted for the better.

 

Comments

[Sharyn Ekbergh]

Hi Beth, What is your Instagram page called?

Sharyn

[am]

For some reason, my blog reading list has not been letting me know about your posts. I thought that you just weren't posting and came to your blog to see what was up.
It is a joy to find this post. I look forward to catching up with all that I have missed!