back in the groove...

I'm back in the groove of working every day in the studio. That's a good thing. The bad thing is I still kind of goof around, jump from one thing to another without finishing everything. I have a bunch of pieces that mostly had been previously begun, that I'm trying to finish. While I'm striving to follow my favorite principle of just do it, you can make more (or buy more), I still haven't gotten all my nerve back. Apparently, that's the down side for me of taking a three month break.

But I have been finding ways to use all the bits and pieces that I have from failed attempts. Thanks to Terry Grant, I now call these piles my 'boneyard.' It's a great way to work--I find it leads to unexpected places. It's only slightly lazy--or maybe a better word would be impatience. I can see quickly how an idea might work, as opposed to working an hour to get to a point at which I can see the idea. So these days hardly anything gets thrown out in my studio.

This method also provides some continuity to the work coming out of my studio. And I feel more inclined to dare to do something unexpected--it is, after all, just a scrap I'm committing to the cause.

And sometimes, just the right scrap turns the piece around. Like this detail, where the blue circle (which I think of as the Earth), changed the composition (which you can't see in the detail) and made the whole thing work.