Simplicity. Lines. Space.
Since travelling to Singapore in the spring and now China and Taiwan in December I have felt a growing affinity to asian art and themes in my work. I love the lines of bamboo, the circles of lily pads, and the spare brushstrokes and space found in sumi-e paintings. I’ve been searching out sumi-e art online and studying which styles and techniques resonate with me.
It’s amazing what can be expressed in a few lines in space: Beauty, peace, grace.
While I strive to achieve the same effect in a photograph, I often can’t. I can’t always get the right angle. The background may be distracting. There is no space to be found.
And so this month, I tried something new. I created the lines in space myself. This image is a digital painting created start to finish on my iPad. It’s inspired by a photograph I took of bamboo, but it’s not a photograph. Much as I love photography, there are moments of frustration that I can’t capture what I want. There is a freedom in creating from scratch, and leaving things out. It allows me to express myself when the photograph just isn’t quite right.
Simplicity. Lines. Space. They call to me.
A new direction? Maybe. Or just an expanding of the circle. There is space in my art for all manners of expression to coexist.
Happy New Year! I’m back home from my holiday travels. I was gone for the last two weeks visiting family in Colorado. It was a much needed rest and now that I’m back home I find that I’m ready to take on the world again. Whew. I was worried there, for a while. December was rough, from a creative perspective, as you can probably tell from my sparse postings. But having the time to relax and start creating again at the end of the month was just what I needed. It allowed this new direction, the interest in sumi-e painting and exploration of digital painting techniques on my iPad, to emerge.
On my trip I created photographs and played with digital paintings alike, finding it a spectrum of expression that bleeds together from one end to the other. After creating a base painted image I used many of my usual photo apps to add color and texture to achieve the desired effect. It all connects, I couldn’t have created this without the knowledge and techniques I’ve developed in my mobile photography. So that’s why this non-photograph is in the Photo-Heart Connection. I’m not going to draw imaginary lines on what art is allowed or not allowed in this practice. It’s all my art, and if it has a heart connection, something to teach me, that’s all that matters. I’m done with placing things in imaginary boxes and drawing lines around them saying what “is” and “isn’t” allowed. I threw out those rules last year.
So if you’re not a photographer, join in with us too. What matters is the heart connection in your art, not the medium it was made with.
How was December for you, creatively? What connected to your heart, in this dark time of the year? Share it with us. The link up will be open through January 12.