“The Source of My Intent”
“It all comes back to the source, eventually.
The journey may be varied.
There may be excuses,
delays.
Time may collapse into itself.
Anything might happen,
but what matters is the starting point;
The source of My Intent.”
Everyone has an intention and this is my illustration of it. It is more important than ever to place value on where a person is coming from. There are so many misunderstandings and judgements these days. Everyone is perched to point fingers. But what are you perched on little birdies? What is your foundation? Where are you coming from? Do you even know? Do you care?
I think of the Socrates quote “The unexamined life is not worth living” as a way of describing the initial inspiration for this piece. I started to wonder what it would look like to be right there in the beginning of our thoughts and intentions. What would the skeleton of that body look like? I knew it had to be something beautiful and natural looking, but from the outset, I wasn’t sure of all the details. This is where the creative process came in. It can be a little scary not knowing how it will look in the end, but as scary as that can be, it is equally exciting.
As you can see from thess photos of the early stages, I started out with an underpainting sketch in raw umber from a photo I took. Then I laid down a first pass of very bland color, focusing on form.
The photo was a simple lily flower shown here.
Then I veered off the roadmap (meaning the image of the flower) and started in on some intuitive layers and imagined color. This led me to pick up on some previously applied details, and then make them have a new life. In this phase I really let myself be guided by my reactions to what was already there. I let the layers intertwine in new ways, and I created new ways to frame the energy of the flower petals.
I chose to include a wide spectrum of color undulating from cool to warm so as to cover all of the possibilities in life. I also had a wide range of hues for the same reason. The whole idea of this illustrating a person’s source of intent made it feel even more important to not leave any hue out of the mix, and also to honor that sometimes life can be golden and uplifting and full of good times and sometimes we can get caught in the shadows, or we could encounter struggles. These struggles are just there to make us more vibrant and more wise. They add to the spectrum of what we can handle as individuals. They add to the beauty of our collective personalities. The ultimate personality would be one of all hues...one that has blossomed into it!
