When new things appear on my radar that require me to put in more spiritual work to deal with them, I tend to focus on one aspect of the situation until the focus becomes my focus and I lose perspective entirely. My illustrating project has taught me much about dealing with the things life throws our way by stepping back and regaining that perspective.
I’m done with the book cover and almost done with the first page. I’m using oil pastels and am having a wonderful time pushing color around a page with my fingers and various other objects I find around the house, such as Q-Tips and nail files. The backgrounds are particularly challenging. My face will be so close to the paper as I work the colors together to blend and put shadows and spears of light where they belong, that I sometimes look at the pastel lines and think it’s not quite right. I’m focusing on each little spec and stroke and think to myself, this isn’t how I wanted it to look. In my mind I picture a beautifully blended background of color, but up close it isn’t measuring up. Then my shoulders ache and I back way and I sit up straight. I look at the picture and am in awe of how it comes together. I tack it up on a bulletin board in my kitchen and spend a lot of time looking at it from across the room and thinking, yes, I like it. It is right. How different it looks in it’s magnificent entirety. I spend more time looking at it while I do other things around the house. I notice things that need to be touched up, added or changed. I would not see these little tweaks or the magnificence of the whole picture if my nose was 5 inches from the page and too focused on one aspect of the color.
This project has taught me to step back. Not react. Get a full perspective and spend time walking around it from afar. If being an illustrator has taught me anything, it’s taught me about being in control of myself, as well as the crayon, and not to start scribbling furiously when sunflares cross my radar. (Yes, the sunflares were over by 3 pm yesterday, but they, too, left their mark.) Instead of grabbing my phone and hurling into action, I stand back and stay quiet and look at things from afar. I see the tweaks, but I recognize the beauty of the scene in its entirety.
And so, as another day goes by, it’s hard. Hard to remain quiet and still. It is where true courage to get the job done sometimes lies, and….I have written.
Photo – my own digital painting…with an unknown quote.
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