Possible

February 10, 2010February 10, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 14 Comments

Creative possibility comes from getting it wrong.

Studio mess – my home – time to de-clutter. 8’X11″ charcoal quick sketch.

“Oh, I could never draw or paint like that.”

“I’m not a writer like you.”

“My photographs don’t compare to yours.”

If I had a dime for each time I heard these comments or others like them, all of my creative work could be used for charity fundraising because I would be independently wealthy. The sad thing is these statements are not true. They are lies we come to believe because we compare our attempts with finished products rather than the process that lead to their creation.

Here is a best kept secret: creative excellence comes from getting things wrong. Yes, wrong. As I commented on Coffee Messiah’s blog this morning, one of my drawing teachers, Glenn Howarth, was fond of saying things like: “It is the shoulder or wrist you struggle to draw that teaches you the anatomy of an arm.”

This is why I have committed to showing you my first morning “awakener” sketch. These first sketches are to engage me in the creative process. My sleepy eyes begin to frame, compose and dig at the relationship between elements I am about to sketch. My stiff arm and hand begin to respond to these relationships. In these first sketches, few mental barriers about “getting it right” have been erected. My judgment is left aside – these are not “keepers” they are “awakeners.”

In a three-hour drawing class, I often do 30 quick sketches that progressively increase in length until it is time to settle into the last hour-long sketch. When I am doing a photo shoot, I may take 150 images with maybe three becoming “keepers.”

Hours and days of exploring “that which is not yet quite right” leads to the creative possibility for success. This is where we discover our unique creative expression. This is where we learn our craft. We learn what is possible by getting it wrong.

My first quick sketch of the day is to inspire you to say to yourself – “hey, I can do that!” And you can.

Here is the last of my chosen three out of 150 shots of mist…

View and purchase full resolution image here.

Sprout Question: What do you do to strengthen your creative possibility?

p.s. Glenn Howarth was the most outstanding art instructor I have had the pleasure of working under. I am forever grateful for the few short years I was in his figure drawing classes. Glenn Howarth died last year at the age of 62. Very little of his thinking and work is on-line but here is an article he wrote that was published in Canadian Art and Art Resource Directory: “Pictophile – Plein Air Painting”

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

Unstuck

January 28, 2010February 22, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 10 Comments

Unstuck is so much better than being stuck. Thank you Tobin, Laurie Sue, Robert, Ryan and Sam for answering yesterday’s Sprout Question: Has there ever been a time when you were stuck and finding it difficult to finished a creative piece? What did you do?

Here are the results of yesterday’s work where I tried a number of the suggestions offered in the comments on the previous post “Stuck.”

But here is how it will be cropped when framed.

View image in full resolution here.

Yes, I think this is my last edit to take out all that isn’t adding value to the final image. It is the photographer in my that likes to trim.

Arbutus driftwood and Sandstone may never be in the category of “one of my very best paintings” but I have a huge sense of satisfaction in having it “done!” Besides, I have long ago stopped deciding what is best or worst in my work because I have seen people overlook my favourites and purchase something that I was reluctant to keep (my mother has saved a few pieces from my compost pile that I am now glad she did).

Best of all, I can now move on to other work – like using my new water miscible oil paints. I haven’t painted with oils for 30 years. I am so excited to get started – after laundry and other chores of course… or maybe painting first then chores. How does that sound? Like celebrating right? Shall we?

Sprout Question: How do you celebrate when you have a creative break through?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

Stuck

January 27, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 19 Comments

I’m stuck. The painting above is about half to three-quarters finished and somehow I have become attached – invested. The arbutus driftwood, sandstone and tide pool have drawn me into a deadly web of “don’t touch it!” When I’m painting with watercolours, more than with any other of my creative processes, I must work from a place of detached emotional clarity. Watercolors are transparent like steps in the sand. Every move shows until you start a new sheet (or the tide comes in).

Sometimes, if I wait for a few days the next step will become clear and release me from the fear of “ruining everything.” I’ve waited two weeks. Nothing. Sometimes, if I move the painting to a new location and see it in different light I can decided what is next. Still nothing. In fact, I’m even more attached than before I took the darn thing out of the studio. Yet, I know the painting is not finished. This means only one thing. I must push through allowing my intuition to guide me into new learning.

I must firmly say to my self: “It is water, colour pigment, and paper. That is all.”

If a muddy puddle of coloured water with mushy paper is all that is left by tomorrow, I shall compost it in the flower bed. If I end up with a finished painting, I will consider it the first in an exhibit I’m building about the arbutus tree. Either way, I shall take a photo of the results and share them with you.

Sprout Question: Has there ever been a time when you were stuck and finding it difficult to finished a creative piece? What did you do?

p.s. If you hear little from me until late tomorrow, I’m painting…or possibly composting.

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Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

Good Luck Creativity

January 26, 2010January 18, 2011 / Terrill Welch / 10 Comments

View image and purchase of “Arbutus in the Fog” here.

My partner of many years (and the lovely man who has recently become my husband – December 10, 2009) and I have a banter that goes something like this…

I ask with raised eyebrows and a tone of dismay “how did you ever end up with a wild and crazy woman like me?”

With his eyes snapping, he responds “just lucky I guess.”

The truth is my wildness is not of the usual kind – having mostly to do with my vivid imagination and free spirit. And his “good luck” has mostly to do with acting on his preparedness when the opportunity presented itself. But we shall not be entertaining you with our love story today.

What I want to talk about is good luck and creativity. Some time ago, I read Deepak Chopra’s definition of “good luck” in The Seven Spiritual laws of Success (1994). Every since reading his description, it has embodied much of my perceptual understanding about what constitutes good luck. His exact passage reads:

You can look at every problem you have in your life as an opportunity for some greater benefit. You can stay alert to opportunities by being grounded in the wisdom of uncertainty. When your preparedness meets opportunity, the solution will spontaneously appear. What comes out of that is often called “good luck.” Good luck is nothing but preparedness and opportunity coming together.

So there you have it. Now what does this mean when it comes to our creativity? If we are writing, drawing, painting, taking photographs and enhancing our skills daily we are more likely to be prepared when the opportunity arises. When we have “good luck” by this definition we are overjoyed by the unexpected success that befalls us. This is certainly the case with these two images (one above and one below) that I share with you today. In each of these photos the exact coming together of the elements in the images are not likely to repeat themselves readily. In both cases I was prepared. I had my camera with me on my daily walk. I was watching, searching the beauty and the mundane around me. Then as if by magic the image was there – waiting for me, inviting me to capture it.

View and purchase “Holding the Moon” here.

Sprout Question: What part does “good luck” play in your creativity?

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Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

Path of No Return

January 13, 2010January 13, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 8 Comments

View image in full resolution here.

Yesterday I wrote about redefining the concept of “underpainting” and “overpainting” to include moving from a digital photo through digital processes leading to depicting other art forms such as oil painting and ink drawing.

Today, the image I share with you has little resemblance to the original digital image. Yet it feels more like what I experienced in that moment than the original photograph. With rising tension, I digitally worked to create this image, changing one thing, then another and yet another. Like the children in the fairy tale, I was so delighted and excited about what I was doing that I place no marks on the path for my return. Yes, I have the original photograph. But the here-to-there is lost in the same mental processing as happens when I physically paint.

In the image above, Cedar in oil, I now have only the one image left that is the voice of what I want to express.

Dr Bob Deutsch states “The creative communicator is an alchemist of thought, attending to the reasoning of emotion” in “Marketers Need to Better Understand Creativity” This statement seems right – validating. (Note: this reference is to incredible well-written article about creativity published today January 13, 2010)

Sprout Question: Accepting that you are a creative alchemist, what do you want to express in your art that isn’t available before you start?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

Redefining Underpainting

January 12, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 10 Comments

View image in full resolution here.

In focusing on creativity as a main adventure in my day, I am facing an internal struggle with what is “true creativity” in my creative process. Technology allows me to create in new ways I couldn’t have imagined ten years ago. In this process, I want to redefine “underpainting” to include the first selected and chosen photographic image.

This takes me to my passion for the concept of “underpainting” which I tend to use even when painting with watercolours. What has got me musing, and experimenting, is the technological advances that allow me to start with an image I’ve captured in a digital photograph and then begin “overpainting” until it is rendered as an oil painting or ink sketch in further digital applications.

( I’m not a photoshop artist nor have I yet ventured in the direction of actual layering images to gain a photograph that gives me a desired finished product. I may at some point – but it has not come to that yet.)

This is my question to self: “Is the finished work (which I am pleased with) having begun with a photographic “underpainting” and resulting in an oil or ink “overpainting” while never picking up a brush or hand-mixing a colour a legitimate creative process?”

Here is another example where I am equally satisfied with the “overpainting” and the original photographic “underpainting.”

View image in full resolution here.

View image in full resolution here.

Sprout Question: How do you define legitimate creativity in your own creative processes?

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Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

Last Rose

January 11, 2010October 1, 2011 / Terrill Welch / 14 Comments

(image may be purchased here. )

I just have to share my news with you.

I’ve known for some weeks now that one of my paintings was going to be printed in a quarterly literary journal – because the editor asked for permission.

Well, at 3:29 pm PST Friday, January 8, 2010, I received the following email:

Dear Terrill,
Thank you again for the use of your watercolor. It’s lovely and has already received compliments. Below is a link to the journal. Just click on the River Poets Quarterly Autumn 2009 pdf file. The painting and poem is on Page 11. http://www.riverpoetsjournal.com/RiverPoetsJournal-Links.html
Warm Regards, Judith Lawrence

The best part – this came right out of the blue. I had no previous connection to the River Poets Quarterly Journal, or to the editor, Judith Lawrence, nor did I make a submission. I had posted the image with my article Last Rose of Desire which is now posted on Creative Potager as “The Crone’s Passion” (I must ask how she discovered the painting.)

So please, choose your beverage of choice and celebrate with me. Raising glasses high, smiling and giggling… “To creativity!”

Sprout Question: If you were to receive a surprise request for permission to publish your work, who do you want it to be from?

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Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

Afternoon Delight painting

January 7, 2010January 7, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 8 Comments

View image in full resolution here.

In keeping with Creative Everyday’s 2010 challenge theme for January of “body,” I have chosen to revisit this 1993 water-colour painting Afternoon Delight.

The image of the original water-colour painting is now rendered in oils for printed on canvas. The original painting has had three standing offers on it for years but I have been unwilling to part with it. Now I can offer a print of the image that I am sure will please those desiring to purchase the original… not the same but close.

My first paintings were in oils. I switched to water colours when my children were small because the medium was less toxic and had a faster drying time. I am thinking of going back to using oils or maybe one of the newer acrylic brands. Revisiting this image and using new technologies has again inspired me to venture into other painting mediums.

Sprout Question: Of your creative work, what can you revisit to inspire your current creativity?

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Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.

Surprised Oil Painting

January 3, 2010January 13, 2010 / Terrill Welch / 2 Comments

My photo shoot yesterday produced mixed results in the low and uneven afternoon light. However, sitting quietly with one of the images, during the editing process, lead me down an interesting path. After several turns, a shoreline photo is transformed into a black and white oil painting of Bennett Bay on Mayne Island.

View the full resolution of Bennett Bay Mayne Island here.

When we are prepared to be surprised and allow an image to call us forward, not just in the beginning of the creative process but all the way to the end, sometimes magic happens. I almost through this original photo image away even though I liked the composition because the mood was different than I wanted. But I just couldn’t get myself to press the delete button and I started to play with the image instead. First, I made the image black and white (as it was almost there already). Then I used a simple program to change it into an oil painting – nothing complicated, just editing tools I had at hand. With a bit more fine tuning, I now have an image that is no longer “really” a photo or ‘really” an oil painting. Setting these judgments aside – I am happy with the end results.

Sprout Question: What creative process might you try if you set your initial judgment about what is legitimate “creative work” aside?

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Purchase photography at http://www.redbubble.com/people/terrillwelch

Creative Potager – where imagination rules. Be inspired.