My Process On My Artwork

I’m a perfectionist. I’ve always been this way and sometimes I feel it limits my work from becoming better. I’m a planner. I always approach things with the approach that I have already rehearsed in my head. Confusing right? I know! How hard can it be to just start making a line and see where it goes from there? I’m always afraid I won’t like what I start and it will be a waste of paper or something.

Over the years I did work which I’ve obviously planned before hand and lately some that just happened by chance. In general, when I start to do my work I’ve always got a pencil and eraser at hand. I make rough sketches and when I’m finally happy with the result I draw it again with pencil on the final sheet. In spite of the numerous rough sketches that I’ve come up with I’m always under confident of what the end result is. In this case I would like to talk about maybe 4 – 5 pictures and my process.

In this picture you can see it is a picture that I copied from what I saw. I was so scared to go out on my own and draw something so, I decided drawing something that was already made would be easier. So I started off with the pencil outline and continued with water-colours. Another scary thing is that water colours is an alien medium to me. Hence I was very apprehensive to use it. Once I was use to this medium I felt a little more comfortable with it and went to make similar paintings.

For this project I was give a brief that the seat had to be designed to look like a kings throne. For this, I researched different looking thrones and then came to a conclusion. I first drew a rough sketch on paper and showed it too the client. I was given a selection of tiles to choose from but I had to keep in mind the theme colour of the room- yellow.

After the design was approved, I drew the design on the wall as a guideline for the mason. After he made the seat in cement, I drew out the pattern on the seat and chose the colours. That was it!

  

For this project as well I followed the same method. Only this time there were more colours and more objects to draw. This one took much longer because it was all 4 walls.

 For this pretty gate I decided to paint it very bright and exciting colours because it was for a school and hence children should look at it and love it.

A year ago, I attended a workshop on Pen and Ink. The art teacher introduced some new working styles where I wasn’t allowed to plan anything. I was just to go with the flow and whatever turned out would be interesting to see. This is one of my works.

I started off by making random lines and then I used the shapes that it accidentally formed and made more patterns inside. I was suddenly amazed at how not planning was such an awesome feeling. After a few of these kind of pictures I became more confident with the way I work.

One year later, and I’m still obsessed with this kind of art. This is a picture that I just  finished. When I look at the two, I can see a big difference. Firstly I got so obsessed with this art that I invested in rotring pens to improve the sharpness of the picture. Also my hand is more confident of not being confident. It makes swirly lines without having to worry about the picture getting messed up because I work without a plan.

I think in the beginning, everyone has a certain process which evolves over time. We tend to see a pattern in the way we work, and we try to find a process that goes well with that pattern.

My process of working will evolve over time, but for now....its still in the process! :)