In the first post, I briefly described my creative session with children Doroteja (8) and Domas (5). In this and future posts, I will tell you how the drawings by these children, their interpretations and photographs inspired me to create a variety of ideas for a Neverland Portrait.
One of our favorite drawing games was to draw something abstract in 10 seconds, then swap the drawings and complete them in a way what it reminds you of. This drawing was started by Dorothea with a purple felt-tip pen, and then I finished it with a black one.
Those, who are passionate art enthusiasts or are well educated in the field of arts, might think that it is rather trivial and cliché to draw a cat for an artists with university degree like me. To which I can answer that I think so too. However, during my still rather short creative career, I had to understand and then admit to myself that I liked some cliché images. Most children like them also, which is another reason why children are my inspiration in creativity.
A second criticism could be that this sketch is more personal to me than Doroteja, and, therefore, should not be used for developing an idea for her portrait. Understandably, compared to the story about the angry spirit and the angry fish, this sketch is far less personal to Doroteja. Indeed, I thought about it before creating these portrait sketches. Nonetheless, I know from experience that there is no place for such critical insights during creative work.
You can never know in advance which idea will have the biggest potential to become a great work of art. Furthermore, sometimes certain parts of one idea determine the success of the next one. Finally, there was a chance that this sketch would turn out to be the most charming for Doroteja, and, thus, win the personal portrait idea ‘competition’. This did not happen but it is impossible to know it during the making.
So when I was drawing the first sketch of Doroteja with a cat, I was thinking that the felting of lines reminded me of cats – soft and pleasant as a ball of woollen yarn; or temperamental and boiling with irritation.
I chose to draw an irritated cat because we are all very familiar with (and at the same time laughing at) this nature of cats. You stroke her, it seems, she likes it. After half a minute she will be enough, and you may notice her annoyance in the tension and grace of the swinging tail. And if you didn‘t, she will explain her mood to you with her nails. So such gentle sweetness often painfully surprises us.
For me, this dormant and sometimes unpredictable danger is a valuable feature for a Neverland Portrait. Fairy tales fascinate us for the adventures, challenges, and dangers, which the hero always eventually overcomes.
Since a painting can convey only a single moment in a fairy tale, the viewer becomes the creator of the storyline of what is portrayed. While viewing a painting, each person have their own interpretations of what they see. Moreover, if the painting has narrative elements, the person spontaneously imagines what could have happened before the portrayed scene and what could happen after that.
As an artist, I seek to create paintings that could evoke in us ambiguous stories that would make us wonder – is Doroteja in danger with this cat, or will she be alright? What the viewer sees, that will reflect his or her view of the world at that point in time. If the viewer sees that Doroteja is in danger with this cat, it is very likely that such a person sees the world also full of danger. And if the viewer thinks that Doroteja will be alright, she or he probably sees the reality with a hopeful and positive light.
That is not to say that these interpretations will show whether we are pessimists or optimists. My interpretations reflect my mood in the present moment, which may have been influenced by the events from the last few days. Since my paintings are also fairy tales, the happy ending is promised.
In these sketches, I searched for ways how to convey a fariy-tale story using lines. The story became a magical tale when I turned a cat into a bear-sized animal. Doroteja, meanwhile, is leaning on it calmly, as if it were a harmless pet. The cat’s body is made up of tangled lines which seem to be soft to lie on. The tail is drawn in fierce and sharp zigzags – large and fluffy, but also capricious just like the face expression of the annoyed cat. In the first drawings, I stretched out the corners of the kitten’s ears and in my eyes the ears became like devil’s horns. In the last two drawings, I turned a small kitten into a more adult and more realistic proportioned cat to reduce the sweetness and increase the seriousness of the image.
This is where my cat-like ideas came to an end, so I moved on to creating a new drawing.
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