Sometimes an idea can take a long time to emerge. When it’s something new, a new technique, a new medium, a new experiment, it can be confusing. Sometimes, I get stuck and put work aside. Often I come back to it in a few days or a week. Occasionally, it can take longer. With this artwork, it has been years. So, is coming back to an old artwork possible? My head is in a different place now.

This work, featuring the Cranberry Heath plant, uses a photograph I took. I printed it out in greyscale, and sectioned it into squares. My idea was to colour the flowers using inktense pencils in full colour. Then, I wanted to scale back the vibrancy in each surrounding square. The outer squares would have either extremely desaturated colour, or remain as greyscale. The photo below shows where I got to.

Picking Up Unfinished Work

This week I pulled out all of the artworks I’ve put aside to look through them. I wanted to know if anything gave me fresh inspiration. The Cranberry Heath image and a few others appealed to me. So how to pick them up again?

Given a lot of time has passed, my ideas have slightly changed. I don’t think it is possible to occupy the same head space I was in years ago. So the question becomes, am I going to spoil this work if I pick it up now?

I initially wanted to outline the squares in a very thin black line. Unfortunately, I slipped and made a mistake. This is one of the reasons I put it aside. The only change I have made is to go over the thin inked lines with a thicker inked line. It now looks like this – underneath a second work I’m trying to pick up.

Synchronicity

Looking at the two images in the photograph, above, I can’t help but see the synchronicity in colour and the shape of marks. My current thoughts turn to collage, but I don’t have anything concrete in mind. I guess they will both go back into hiding until after the Arts Trail. Perhaps then I might explore my new ideas. I haven’t done a collage before.