Today was a long day. I didn’t sleep last night but drawing progress today was prodigious. I like the big word. It reminds me that some undertakings are big. Life isn’t meant to do just little things. In art, every effort is an attempt to slip beyond boundaries. 

My boundaries are my limits. My limits define the outer limits of MY average. To go beyond today’s average I have to do something new. I don’t think it even has to work, it just has to be new.  When I do new things I cross boundaries and precipitate new discoveries. This knowledge creates long term improvements in my work.

The new, boundary crossing, event in today’s work is the impressionist pencil. Pencils are great for rendering near photo quality detail. At the same time, the pencil is just a tool. It records what I make it do. The background could be drawn leaf by leaf, stem by stem. But what if I think of drawing the background as suggestions of detail instead of trying to recreate the detail?

To do this I put my pencil on auto pilot. My mind goes into the space reserved for patterns and I will the pencil to draw suggestions. I am surprised by the outcomes from this experiment. The overall background willow pattern mimics the patterns of the foreground willows. Further, the impressionist method produces willows that look further away. This was the intended outcome and is probably due to the values within the pattern and the more out of focus look of the willows. A darker value will tend to drive the pattern further into the background. 

Today I’m also thinking of the importance of the dark shadows under the willows. They roughly divide the drawing according to the rule of thirds.  My subconscious must have been working this out because it wasn’t a conscious thought. I like happy accidents.

If I continue writing I’ll blither. I’d better stop.

Return soon to see how the drawing progresses.