Musings on the Creative Process

I don’t know if it was my typo or an overly enthusiastic spell checker, but somehow my intended phrase “photo compositing” became “photo composting.” It got me thinking. After a bit of reflection I decided that this spell-checking revision actually had some merit. The creative process is a lot like composting. All kinds of discarded ideas and projects inform and support successful future endeavors.

For every image of mine that hangs on a gallery wall, there are countless others that never see an ounce of ink. Those discards represent hours spent training my eye, learning new techniques, and endless experimenting. They send me on tangents that need to be explored and occasionally lead me to a better idea or more successful path.

Healthy compost is made up of a combination of materials and during this long winter I added a new element to mine – a drawing app on my iPad. Instead of spending my evenings watching Apple TV, I spent hours experimenting with an Apple Pencil using it as if it were a calligraphy pen, pastel crayon, or oil brush. What a treat – a fully equipped art studio with no clean up required! Over time all this playing with brushes will hopefully refine the subtlety of how I use my graphics pen to enhance the light in my images.

But enough about winter and compost. Warm weather will be here soon and with openings and workshops.

Hopefully the snow is gone by the time you are reading this.