Picture Perfect

I'm not an artist but I enjoy creating and recent days have found me sketching incessantly. My fingers are stained a rainbow of colors from smearing pastels and the side of my right hand is blackened with graphite from the charcoal pencil I adore. Most likely this is because it fits perfectly in my fingers. I mourn a little every time I have to sharpen it.

The images for my sketches come to me during the day and are filtered through vague dreams occurring in restless sleep caught at 3 a.m. after an odd combination of coffee and cold medicine (the later is recent and temporary). When I finally shake myself awake and am able to fully open my eyes, I am driven .. compelled even .. to draw the images that have floated to the surface during my brief sleep.

I have spent most of this weekend outside sketching, sitting in the dirt amidst the smell of hay and horses and spring. When my legs finally cramp or nature calls in other ways, I stand and look at the ground, now strewn the remnants of my so-called accomplishments. When I pick them up, they are barely recognizable and I feel detached from them. Strange because mere moments ago they were so much a part of me.

I begin to critically criticize each drawing and one by one they are stacked and put in the re-work pile. One particular drawing has been bothering me for months. I am happy with various elements of the picture at any given time. One time the lines are perfectly even and symmetrical and another time, the perspective is exactly how I imagined. And yet another, all the colors are blended as they should be.

Today I reach a whole new level of strangeness with this drawing. I began and each stroke of the pencil was precisely as I imagined. And the color for each element blended as they might even in nature. I felt so hopeful that I might finally finish this. And with each color chosen and applied, my hopes grew. I would be victorious. This would be my masterpiece. My adrenaline was pumping and my heart was beating faster.. gah!

then ..

disappointment.

Every element in the drawing was perfect. Yet as a whole, the image was jarring and unsettling. Not what I hoped for at all. I put my pencils away, laid the perfect picture on the re-work pile, dusted off my pants and wandered back to the house.

Story of my life.