Inflorescence

After hearing Elizabeth Gilbert talk about purpose-anxiety as a creativity killer (and recognizing this as a blocker in my own art practice), I challenged myself to create something just based on a spark of inspiration without worrying too much about what I would do with it after it was completed. My spark came in the form of my neighbor's beautiful dahlia flowers. When I saw them, I had an immediate desire to incorporate them into a piece of art. I started by designing out my reference, cobbled together from half a dozen of my own photos and vintage photography. Then I made a first attmept in charcoal, but I wasn't skilled enough with that medium to achieve what I wanted, so I switched back to my comfort zone: pencil. It was very challenging to make the switch back to fully traditional art after doing digital art for so long. I kept wishing for my layers and eraser tool! I wasn't quite able to achieve the vision in my head, but I still feel really proud of completing this. I felt a little bit of my old artist self coming back to life. I actually finished this last year and was waiting to get this framed and photographed better before I posted, but I don't know that I'll get around to it anytime soon, so for now I mocked up something quick with a stock photo from Unsplash by Angèle Kamp. Perhaps I'll update this post with more detail in the future. Graphite and colored pencil on paper.