Beyond What I Could Ask or Imagine

Little Yellow Leaf, 2022

Watercolor paint and watercolor pencil

4" x 6"

The inspiration for this week’s piece came from my dear friend, Shirley. Shirley has a knack for finding moments of overlooked beauty. Whether it’s kayaking the local rivers, or hiking around town, Shirley loves going on little mini-adventures and God blesses her with the most amazing treasures on these excursions! It was on one such adventure that she captured the image of this beautiful yellow leaf.

A Marvelous Little Treasure, 2022

Digital Photo by Shirley Nelson

I always get excited when Shirley passes along her photo treasures via text. This one was accompanied with a “happy New Year” message which read: “Such marvelous color. Happy New Year & blessings beyond what we could hope or imagine :).” And boy, was she right. The color was marvelous! Her photograph was a beautiful work of art all on its own but to me it was just begging to be drawn. Our friend Loan even commented that the picture already had the appearance of a colored pencil drawing… good idea, Loan. ;)

(Rock shadow color combination taped together so I could 

quickly grab the right pencils at the start of my next session.)

When I began this piece, I was just certain that the striking yellow leaf was going to be my favorite part. The pop of color and vitality of the yellow amidst the stones was almost surreal! I decided that the leaf would be my focal point. Since it was the most important area of the piece, I would save the fine tuning of its details until last. My plan was to block in a general area of color to delineate the space that my leaf would occupy; then render everything around it; and lastly, (when my hand was nice and warmed up) tackle the delicate veins and more subtle color transitions of the leaf itself. 

The first part went as planned. I laid in a basic yellow area of color as a place holder for my leaf and moved on to drawing the surrounding context - the rocks. Upon first glance, the rocks were not all that exhilarating. They were rocks. I toyed with the idea of not even rendering them but simply implying their forms with a wash of blotchy color and some occasional contours. However, as I stared at the photo, something wonderful happened. I noticed that all the rocks were different colors, and not at all “stone colored” as I  had imagined. Some were blue, some had flecks of different colors, and one was almost pure white! I then thought to myself: “I bet I have all those colors in my watercolor pencil set. What if I tried to match each one true to it’s unique color?”

 

It was time for test strips!

In my last post, I shared about the difficulty of beginnings; how it can be hard just to get the proverbial ball rolling. This week, I faced a whole new challenge - pacing. I have found the adage “slow and steady wins the race” to be absolutely true in my art time (with the exception of gesture drawings of course). Every once in a while though, I get so excited about how a piece is turning out that I find myself rushing. A little voice creeps in my ear and says, “Hurry up! I just want to see what it looks like FINISHED already!!!” 

This is exactly what happen as I rendered the rocks. As soon as I found that I was able to match the color tones of the rocks, I got excited. Then, when I added a little definition to their contours, I got more excited! The more I painted, and the closer I got to the original photograph, the more excited I became, and the faster my hand wanted to go. 

Getting caught up in the moment of creation is a beautiful thing but giving into the temptation to rush to the end is not. For me, rushing is dangerous because it leads to silly mistakes and sloppy rendering. My mental dialogue goes something like this:

Oh this is going so well! It’s going to look SO COOL! Ooops, that was a mistake but it was just a little one. It’s going to be so neat to see how this all comes together, just keep pushing through! Oh no, there was another, but that’s ok, I’ll be the only one that notices that mistake. No big deal. Oh no, wait a minute, that was an area I was really looking forward to drawing and I just slopped through it. Quick, I need to rinse my brush, ooops, that was my coffee not my brush water. Maybe this one is a draft.  

Thank God I have an ever present helper - The Holy Spirit! He is with me in everything that I do; big things, little things, even art things. His gentle encouragement helps me find motivation when I need help starting, and He also lets me know when it’s time to take a break. His assistance was absolutely critical on this piece. He opened my eyes to the complex beauty to be found in simple rocks and inspired me. The Spirit also helped me to immediately identify the voice of temptation and deal with it. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for granting me the self control to step back when I needed to. Thank you for blessing the work of my hands and giving me the patience to finish well. And a special thank you to Shirley, for sharing God’s treasures. This little photo was a blessing and what it inspired was beyond what I could ask or imagine.