Uninspiring Inspiration

     Well, I feel compelled to write something here tonight, but I have no idea what to write. You could say that I'm bored out of my mind and trying to motivate myself to actually work on something. I thought about telling the world a little more about myself, but it seems a little self-centered and boring. I'm really not all that interesting to talk about, even if I try to act like I am. Anyway, I suppose I should talk about something art related. Let's see where this takes us.

     Occasionally someone feels the need to ask me deep, artistic questions, and most of the time I don't have any good answers for them. I think for some reason, people always assume that all artists have these deep, expressive, passionate, creative souls that defy logic and order. I really wonder what a scientific genius like Leonardo da Vinci would think of the modern view of the artist. For instance, my mother can't stand that I like symmetry and balance. When we have to work together on decorating or setting up a display, she'll often say something to the effect of "You're an artist! You're supposed to be creative with it, not have it all spaced out evenly! Put down the ruler!" Really? When did that happen? Apparently people who are obsessive-compulsive can never be artists. It's a good thing no artist ever relies on ratios or perspective or rulers. Other people will stand in front of one of my pieces and ask things like "What does it symbolize?" or "What does it mean?" or "What inspired this?" That's typically when I blink slowly at them, point to the piece, and go, "It's a face. It was pretty... so I drew it." Ok, so maybe not all of my pieces are that simple. But seriously. Why does everything have to mean something? I get that some people create really abstract, symbolic, or meaningful work, and that's awesome. If that's what they want to do, cool with me. But why do all artists have to be lumped into that group? This part of my rant is starting to sound like my previous post on art. I'll stop sounding like a broken record now.

     What was I talking about? Oh yeah. Deep, artistic questions. Ok, so I can't really answer questions about meaning and parts of my soul being in the work and all that jazz, but I can answer questions about inspiration... sometimes. Sometimes it really is just as simple as "I really liked that person's face, so I drew her," or "I saw these really cool beads, so I brought them home and just put them with a bunch of other beads that matched." Other times, it's slightly more complex, though often not much more. Sometimes, I'll see another work of art that inspires me, so I'll take an element of that work, whether it's the style, mood, technique, or materials, and I'll try to incorporate it into my own piece. For instance, I really liked all of the elegant but unrealistic swirling lines in Linda Bergkvist's piece entitled "Kareena" so I tried to incorporate a small piece of that in the hair of the vampire in "Blood Moon" (forgive the glare at the top of the photo; the original drawing is in a frame).

     Continuing with this piece as an example, other times I simply take inspiration from the things I like. I love vampire mythology and novels (no, not Twilight... sorry to all you sparkly vampire fans, but I stick with Anne Rice... just don't mention the movie version of Queen of the Damned... that might actually be worse than Twilight). I also love Amy Lee, the lead singer for Evanescence (ok, maybe I don't love her personally since we've never met, but I love her voice anyhow). So for this piece, I took some basics from Amy Lee's appearance, added in features of my own appearance since I had to use myself as a model for the shading, and turned the resulting creation into a vampire. I also happen to like the full moon and cherry blossoms. Ta da! You have the whole picture. Combine Linda Bergkvist, Amy Lee, vampires, cherry blossoms, a full moon, and a little touch of yours truly and you get one of my pieces. No deep, meaningful experience abstracted on paper, just a logical stream of thoughts and preferences. Uninspiring inspiration. Gotta love it. Anyway, that's enough about inspiration for one night. Maybe I'll elaborate on it more or cover it from a jewelry standpoint later on, but for now my fingers are tired and I need to find something less exhausting to keep me entertained.