New Shoots, take two

Sometimes you make something as an experiment and accidentally end up really liking it.

That’s what happened with New Shoots.

The first version started as a little experiment in letting myself play with a different technique, and deliberately removing the expectation that everything I start should become a finished work of art.

I dived in and just started putting digital paintbrush to canvas, building up layers of leaves and branches wherever they seemed to need to go. And as I kept going with it, I realised it was actually working. When I’d previously gotten myself all tangled up in trying to sketch the intricate layers of leaves and branches, this freer style did a pretty good job of capturing the overall ‘impression’ of the gum tree I was trying to depict. Working in this way allowed me to let that be enough, instead of trying to build a replica drawing of the tree and then being disappointed that it doesn’t ‘look right’.

New Shoots version one.

In the end, I was very happy with the result. I started thinking about getting it professionally printed, to take to the next Illawarra Art Society stall in Bulli. Or, to put in my shop on my website. But when I really thought about it, I realised my lack of planning had a downside – I’d made the canvas too small. The resolution wasn’t going to be good enough to scale up for art prints.

So, I decided to have another go, and in the process, I discovered something else that wasn’t quite working!

What else wasn’t working?

When I opened a new A3 canvas, so it could be printed nicely, I initially approached it in the same way I had version one. But as I started slapping paint on, I realised something important: the leaves just didn’t make sense. I couldn’t identify which branch they were supposed to belong to, and that was a problem for my Autistic brain. Apparently, I can only take chaotic foliage so far!

It was back to the drawing board then, this time with a sketch! (Oh no – did I not learn anything from the experiment, then?)

New Shoots, take two initial sketch.

Don’t worry, all was not lost. I didn’t go back to rigidity and overplanning, or even trying to be super accurate. The point of the sketch was not to recreate the exact gum tree, but to provide enough structure to use as a jumping off point. Realistic enough to make sense and not be distracted by annoying thoughts like… But does that leaf even go anywhere, or is it suspended in mid-air for some reason?

And I worked out a pretty cool advantage of using a digital program like Procreate – I could sketch each individual branch onto its own layer (rather than random leaves being on separate layers, as I had done the first time). That way, I could still create the vision of the chaotic gum tree, with leaves upon leaves upon leaves, but the chaos was contained, and it made sense as a whole.

New Shoots, take two with individual shapes filled in on separate layers.

Fewer layers overall

Another thing I wanted to approach differently this time was my use of layers.

I’ve been trying to use fewer layers in my digital artwork lately. This is partly because it makes my workflow less complicated – it can be annoying to constantly switch between layers all the time, and mistakes do happen when I’ll suddenly realise I’ve been painting on the wrong layer for ages. Disaster!

But also, I’ve recently been doing a little more physical painting again, and one thing I’ve really enjoyed is the way different layers of paint interact with each other. Colours overlap, mix and influence each other in ways that can create a lovely depth and complexity.

Of course, you can do similar things digitally using blend modes and other techniques. But I’m enjoying trying to bring a little more of that organic quality into my digital work by working most of the colours on a single layer.

I still ended up using quite a few layers in New Shoots, take two. But this time they were mostly there to help me control the overlapping branches of the gum tree. And that made a difference, both to the finished image and to the process of making it.

Learning where to put the detail

There’s another lesson I’ve been slowly noticing as I look back at some of my older work. I tend to have a hard time not trying to capture every detail – I want to add an outline to every leaf, draw every vein and every little blemish.

But if everything is detailed, the overall effect is overwhelming and confusing to the eye.

I’m learning that I need to be more intentional about where I put the detail – saving the most attention-grabbing marks for the part of the work I actually want people to be drawn to and allowing the background elements to become a little quieter. I definitely haven’t mastered that yet, but I think New Shoots, take two is a step in that direction.

The way I structured the layers meant I could actually turn down the opacity for some aspects, like the leaf outlines, and let them fade a little, while keeping the focal points more vibrant and detailed.

So, was take two better?

Maybe I can’t answer that objectively. I still like the first version because of what it represents. It was an experiment that got me to stop overthinking and start making, and that’s valuable in itself. If I hadn’t made that first messy version, I wouldn’t have discovered what I wanted to change.

That’s probably one of the things I’m enjoying most about making art at the moment – getting the opportunity to learn from ‘mistakes’, or from things that didn’t quite go right. As a teacher, I tell my students all the time that mistake are part of the learning process, knowing full well how much I hate to make mistakes myself (hello, I know I’ve mentioned perfectionism before!) Well, now is my chance to actually practise what I preach: to embrace the mistakes, be a little more vulnerable, and see what I can learn from them.

Maybe that’s what New Shoots, take two is really about. Not getting it right the first time, but being willing to look again, notice what isn’t working, and have another go. I’m pretty sure I’ll look back at this version one day and find things I’d do differently, too. And, for once, I think I’m going to take that as a good sign.