The dance of the Hyacinth, getting to grips with bigger pastels and plants with minds of their own

Hyacinth Inclination, pastel on fabriano,  40 x 37 cm 

In order to understand the anguish I sometimes have to go through to finish a bigger drawing I thought you might like to see what I began looking at and what I finished looking at and how far my drawing departs from reality in order to make the image come together… if it does.
Below you can see what I saw when I began drawing on Sunday morning, late afternoon and  today, when I think I have finished.

when I first set the still life up

at the end of the first drawing day

when I finished drawing today

When I visited Peter Clossick in his studio with the NEAC, he showed me three books that he felt I should read.  The other morning I downloaded Aesthetics and Painting by Jason Gaiger.  Because my painting and drawing degree was practical above all and I love looking at pictures and consult them primarily for advice, apart from painting book essays,  and what I read for the art history part of my degree, I am not overly genned up on the philosophy of painting.  I am finding the book enlightening and it's making me think in different ways.  For example, that old query: 'what are you trying to say' has a different set of questions, or at least they are expressed differently and they are making me ask them of myself differently.

So when I came to the studio yesterday evening, after reading another slug of the book, quite dejected about the ten-or-so hours I'd already put into the drawing and how much of a failure it was, I was wondering about whether the world should be expressed as it is or in a perfected way.  Do I need to bother with the colour of what I actually see or is the still life a stimulus for something I want to see.  I know I used to think that way…The NEAC scholarship has pushed me towards being accurate in my observation and that means I hit this snag.  What if the colour doesn't work?  

That's what happened yesterday, the colour didn't work.  I hated the colour in places.  The composition was bitty and I was ready to give up. The book with its analysis of opposing viewpoints helped me find a way around the snag - I would simplify what I was drawing - not wipe it out as Peter suggests (that makes pastels muddy depressing)- erase and use the side of the pastel to reject what I see in order to see what else can work. As John and Mick and Peter would say 'it's not a copy'.

I found something similar to the colour so that I could find a different 'reality' I and draped it behind.  The picture would become a postcard and I'd let the hyacinth collapse and the tulips splay. When I was done and it was dark (9pm) the left side and the right side weren't speaking to each other. This morning after reading another few pages of Gaiger I was thinking about the marks versus the objects and how to create excitement in the marks which add to but are distinct in themselves. That thought helped me to bring the sides together.

Bigger pastels of live things are troublesome but perhaps that working harder is a good thing? Sandy Larkman asked for something big and colourful for Brushstrokes, a charity that raises money through art exhibitions. Maybe I'll exhibit this one.