anika mari

An artist friend of mine commented on the recent stone print I completed and mentioned that she never would have thought of doing it. She then expressed and interest in borrowing my brain for a day. Well, I’m not sure how I’d lend out my brain, but it got me to thinking about what thought processes I went through when creating the stone print, and I realized I glossed over those thoughts in the last post. Consider this a little expansion.

The process that I undertook when creating the stone print embraces the randomness that comes when in the midst of creating art. When I set about to create a new piece, I generally have one of two starting points: either I have a subject I want to depict, or I have a set of steps that I want to take. While the former sometimes incorporates some of the random unfolding of ideas, the main distinction is the spark of the idea. When I start a painting or drawing with process in mind, generally the results tend to be more abstract, and I have no idea what I’ll end up with when I’m finished.

When starting a process focused piece, I might begin with a framework in mind, as I did when creating the black and white drawing below, or the recent tapestry drawing I completed.

in this drawing I started with the v shaped framework and added the details as I drew

The other starting point is a specific kind of mark that I want to make, and the piece unfolds from there. That’s what I did when creating the stone prints–I decided that I wanted to see what would happen if I painted a stone with watercolor and pressed it onto paper.

After the print marks were dry, I added the “cocoons” around some of them, only because they looked a little bare, and not as round as some of the other prints.

I added the lines because there were a few little splattered drops of watercolor that had landed here and there, and I used them as starting points from which I drew lines to connect to nearby stone prints. Can you spy the little green dots from which the swooping lines are drawn?

I filled in the resulting shapes with gray watercolor because the compositions needed a little more weight; something to anchor the piece together.

Hopefully that provides a little more insight into the inner workings of what my brain is doing when I’m making art. It’s not very mysterious; generally I just take it step by step, responding to whatever happened previously, but I must admit, sometimes the results surprise even me!