I’ve been practicing people lately. I don’t mean detailed, portrait-style people, (although I hope to at another time) I mean dreamy, watery, impressionistic people.
The funny thing is they are really just blobs for the head and a carrot underneath. You see, the best way to paint or draw is to ignore the voice in your head that tries to label objects. If we think “This is a person”, we get all knotted up trying to paint what our head says a person should look like.
Instead paint (or draw) shapes: this part is a blob; this part is shaped like a long triangle. I am always amazed at how the strange shapes turn out looking like the object they are supposed to convey.
When I look at these shapes, I see mysterious women in bulky coats walking away from me. What do you see?
That is incredible. You know, it is amazing to remind ourselves through the creation of art, that when we over-think things, or over-analyze, we end up keeping ourselves from creating and limit the potential of the art to teach us something. Every one of your “women walking away” seem to have their own poses and outfits and personalities, that I’m guessing manifested through their own will by the release of you pre-meditating them as people as you mention. In music as well, I have learned that the studying and over-analyzing must eventually give way to just “doing.” Only through the actual creation of art can it be given liberty to become something. Often something you don’t intend or know it can become.