I was going to talk about touring Dubai today but I'll do that tomorrow or the next day......Yesterday we took the sil down to the Bastakia area of Dubai to the Majlis Gallery. There were three reason for this....one - sil has known one of the owners of gallery for years, two - our painter friend Paul Wadsworth had some new work to show us, and three - the area is just plain fabulous. So as I said I was going to talk about doing Dubai but then I was thinking about Paul's paintings......
Yesterday we were priviledged enough to see severeal works in progress which all inspired by his recent trips to Oman. These were all about Oman gardens which are lush. I find Paul use of colour exquiste (and have a large painting of his hanging in our sitting room). But yeterday I was very curious to see his working process. His sketch pads are filled and he's taken many photos but when he begins painting there is nothing on the canvas. he just moves at it with colour and large movements. Slowly the work emerges and details and fine tuning come late.
Looking at a these paintings in the early stages I could see things. i was pulled into the works even though they were raw. When I paint I need to have a preliminary sketch at minimum on the page ( here shows my lack of skill and training). I am afraid to just go for it.
However I realized that that is how I approach my writing. I do a minimum of background notes and a few plot ideas on a sheet of paper and then tuck it away. When I write the first draft it is straight onto the page before the idea dries up then I can come back into and put the detail in......
How do you work?
5 comments:
I've found my process is different for different projects. I write an outline for the romances, a list of themes for the memoir, and for the mainstream novel I'm jumping all over the place, with only a vague idea of how it's all going to hang together eventually.
I paint the same way I write--outline, plan, control. Oh, dear. I even garden that way. I need to find SOMETHING that lets me just splash out.
You have a system them Lianne:-)
Have you tried cooking C.S.?
Paul's work is lovely! With the Dickens Challenge, I've found a lot of freedom in the unstructured nature of only thinking about a chapter at a time. I do have a pretty good idea where things are going, but things are really evolving and developing as I go. I hope this takes me to "the end" and then I can start at the beginning and start to shape and prune. I find it prefer doing it this way to planning too much ahead of time because in my earlier attempts to outline and plot in advance, I found I limited what was going to happen too much. I'm sure that was also tied very much to my inexperience and it's quite likely that I'd have better luck with that approach today than I did two years ago...we shall see!
Yes, Lisa, it's great thinking only one chapter at a time...I'm hoping it helps with my pace problems but we shall see!
I really struggled with this weeks chapter as compared to the others I felt it was too slow but then I reminded myself this is a first draft and I'm allowed the odd slow chapter - or at least i hope I am :-)
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