One Creative Process

I have recently been trying to catalog my extensive files of templates. In the course of doing so, I have found a mountain of images that are only bare bone beginnings. In other words, they need more work. At the same time, I have been browsing FB and other things, being drawn by colorful images of one sort or another. Then, almost two weeks ago, I found a beautiful image on FB and saved it to my computer. I had no intention of using it for a post, just wanted to study it for the color pattern. I didn’t save the photographer’s, artist’s name or site. My apologies for that. Here is the image:

Keeping those colors in mind, I went back to my filing chore, looking for a template that might do those colors justice in my own field of interest. As I slowly made my way through yet more templates, I would come across simple designs that I had intended to try in the kaleidoscope app, but had never done so. Found this one, which had come from a site offering free templates for mandala coloring.

Which then became this:

And finally this:

Although a bit more intense than my usual choices, that color scheme came immediately to mind. Printed the template on card stock, and just sat looking at it for a while. Knew that I couldn’t use my artist pens, but would have to try it in colored pencils because the areas were small and tightly packed together. Immediate problem. My colored pencils didn’t have the shades I needed. So, I did what anyone would do, lol. I substituted. I started with that densely packed mid-section, knowing that would be the most difficult, but would allow me to see if my substitutions would work. The Heron from the original image, suddenly became a Peacock.

This was a slower process than usual. Several of the colors were made up by mixing two different shades, meaning I had to go over those areas twice, before getting to the next. After several days of on again, off again coloring around other projects, I finally finished it last evening. Then used my Paint program to give it a background.

My heron/peacock hybrid had become a rather fanciful mountain Blue Jay, a creature I actually saw once on a road trip and have never forgotten because of the child-like awe and delight I felt as it flew across my field of vision. The final test is to take it back to the kaleidoscope app and see it it holds its beauty. It’s sort of like a sketch artist flipping a drawing over and turning it to the light to see if it holds true to the shape intended.

Much simpler but still appealing.

No doubt about it, this one is a keeper.

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