When I started this series I worried about whether I would just create different colour versions of the same sort of doodley flower I started with. Would I come up with anything else? Enough to fill a month? It turns out that ideas come from ideas.
Committing to a series is like an extended brainstorming session. If you have ever been in a corporate style brainstorming session - first of all, sorry about that - and secondly, you may have noticed that they usually begin with awkward silence.
No ideas. Some one well versed in management speak will then usually say something like 'there's no such thing as a bad idea... don't be shy...'
Eventually a small voice pipes up. Hmm. Some thinking ensues. Perhaps a little smirking. Then another voice. It is often easier to criticise an existing idea than come up with a new one. But funnily enough, criticising an idea is the first step to making the idea better. Or coming up with a substitute.
Before long the brainstorming snowballs. From little or nothing in the beginning to multiple ideas. It's like our idea generating equipment needs warming up.
Initial idea sketch and final painting
When I first felt a twinge of doubt about having enough flower faces to fill a month I got out my sketchbook. Made a scratchy doodle of something that looked more like a dandelion than a flower. From there other flowers appeared in my sketchbook. Each idea a little easier to come by than the last.
Now the only thing I have to ask is - is a dandelion a flower?.... well for my purposes, yes. And she looks far too regal to be a weed. But then, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said...
"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”
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