A Cosy Spot of Daydreaming
How an idea begins.
I’ve a habit of forgetting a good idea unless I write it down, so my artist journal remembers things for me. It’s mostly full of musings. The sketches, tests, and studies go in my sketchbook, and the two are rarely seen apart. It gets messy at times, but that's really part of the charm.
All this amounts to a lot of daydreaming about paintings I could paint, and sketches I could sketch, and stories I could write. A lot of these things are never painted or sketched or written, of course. There’s just not enough time, or I don’t think I have enough skill. But the daydreaming is at the heart of my creative process. Very little would ever happen if I didn’t start it with a daydream.
In the wake of a very busy few months, and some of the most stressful weeks I’ve ever had, I've been eager to get started on a new project. And this project has existed as a few pages of my sketchbook for a few months now. It’s time to get to work!
The first pages.
I like to start a new project with a Like List. This is, as you might guess, a list of things I feel very much into at the current moment. My list included things like embroidered fabrics, woven fabrics, greens and bronzes, ladies and gentleman idling about cosy interiors, tea, dogs, early 20th C fashion, Arts & Crafts interiors, the Aesthetic movement, and books. (Always books).
Then comes the daydream—what does something made of all those bits and pieces look like? I wrote lots of pages in my artist journal, and did some blobby thumbnails, and compiled a Pinterest board of inspiring photos and paintings.
I ask some questions of myself, like theme. What is the story I am telling with this series? What is the focus of the series? This time, I want to paint some cosy scenes of domesticity and happiness. With elaborate wallpaper and beautiful furniture, because why not?
And more questions: How many pieces in this series? What sort of motifs? What format, and how large? What sort of colour palettes? High or low key? What medium will I paint with?
I’ll be documenting the process of this project from scrawled idea to finished painting, and hopefully showing how I answer some of these questions along the way.
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