Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Preparing Price Lists, & Show Graphics
I always think preparing the graphics for the show will not take too long, and I am always wrong. After more than 5 hours of work creating, price lists, bidding sheets, labels for all the paintings, a bio page, and coming up with ways to hang all of these in a charming fashion... I remember why I wanted to "just paint". I enjoy graphic design, but it is never a quick and simple process.
Painting to me is almost the complete opposite work from graphic design. In painting, you are working with something you can touch and push and pull with the brush. You can make strokes that are grand or tiny, lush or scratchy. Painting to me is closer to gardening than computer graphics... When you garden, you are seeing colors and shapes, and modifiying them, watering, pruning here and there... Until you feel it looks better. This is a lot like painting from life.
When you sit at the computer, it is a tense effort to lay out the graphics you need through a program that is not a canvas. By the end of five hours, I am hunched over the keyboard with achy shoulders and neck, squinting at the light coming from my old iMac... This pales in comparison to the days I can be outside, standing in nature, painting with broad strokes and listening to the birds and feeling the warmth of the sun with my dogs at my side. I hope the joy of nature and the dramatic beauty of the landscape where we live comes across to people in my paintings. It's been more than 15 years since I thought computer animation and computer graphics were awesome and omnipotent. I wanted so desperately to be a computer animator. Today, I can honestly say I would much rather be outside, painting than doing anything on a computer, in a hospital, or in an office. I consider myself lucky to have the computer skills to promote my paintings in designing graphics for cards, flyers and show material, yet I also hope to not have to do this side of the business very often.
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