This image found itself when I understood what it meant to me.
Like many of these projects, a rough sketch where I was exploring something technical, but something more interesting – or the potential for it emerged.
At this point I try out a few lighting approaches but become stuck – not feeling much meaning in any of it. So instead of flailing at it while my interest dries up like so many other times, I fire up a text doc, think very carefully, and try to tease out the nuances of what I was feeling and thinking existed in embryonic form when I drew it, and what it means to me.
This was one of the first times I’d done this, and it’s since become one of my favourite parts of the process: Uncovering the truth.
The answer, once trying to be clever or appealing is out of the way, is simple and unpretentious:
It’s a tender internalised calm moment, and the lighting reflects that. So it’s warm in a close personal direction that speaks of inwards or ‘to self’, and the cooler light is from a direction more ‘outside’.
But I guess this is about more than comfort. It’s also stepping into the unknown, unafraid. The awakening of the journey of becoming your own creature, of understanding and accepting the strange things within that cannot be put into words. Of letting go of the provided systems of judgement in favour of your own experience.
With this understanding, the technical aspects immediately start to fall into place. The colour cast, lines, light sources, and how the treatment of the face should go as it develops.
The psychological positioning of light sources this way makes instinctive sense, but it’s interesting that external forms can be used to represent both internal and external things; and it’s something I’d like to explore more later.
There are still some lingering questions though, about what kind of finished statement or question this would be heading towards. I’m very tempted to add symbolic or borderline elements in, but anything I’ve tried has felt superfluous.
An increase in canvas size. Still not in the habit of working with added space around the intended composition for online or print purposes.
