Tuesday, February 07, 2006

teapot no. 29, ugly pot?





















I made teapot no. 29 last night entirely with my left hand; not an easy thing to do. I don't have as much control with my left hand, which is precisely my objective in doing these left-hand experiments. Watercoloring with my left hand is much easier than holding and using colored pencils because: 1) the brush and water feel more flexible and fluid in my hand and 2) it takes more control to maneuver a pencil.... or, does it? It also takes me longer to draw left-handed than right-handed and sometimes I want to change hands because my mind thinks it could do better right-handed. I didn't like the result of the colored pencil in teapot 29, so I watercolored over it--still using my left hand--and thought, how can I post such an ugly teapot in my teapots series?" But, when I began the 100 teapots, I made a rule that I would use the teapot I set out to draw or paint no matter what I thought of it. Besides tricking my brain by doing some of these paintings left-handed and/or without wearing my glasses, I am adhering to my rule to help me become less discriminatory and critical about my own work. What usually happens is that I am surprised when others respond favorably and even like the artwork that I reject. It happened today on Flickr. Already, two fellow artists have responded favorably to a piece of my work that I did not want to post.

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