The faerie appeared first, only a wisp of pencil line, still faint and somewhat hesitant. Once she was more confident, the objects around her revealed themselves. I watched in wonderment. With the miracle of digital photography, I captured the scene as it developed.
There seemed a tale to be told so I kept going with what only started as a concept sketch. A winged faerie, a mythical spirit of nature, had captured my imagination. She would bring the illusion of enchantment to any of the alpine scenes that I favored both in person and in artwork. Would she tell me the story?
She would not speak of the place but gifted me with a magnificent peak and a profusion of glacier lilies. I imagine she was there for only a few moments before flying away to greet the local resident pikas, marmots, and mountain goats.
I
reflected that the creation of hand-drawn visual art remains a magically iterative
process with starts and stops, considered evaluation, erasing, redoes, and a determined
progression towards expressing, and even exceeding the original concept.
Sometimes the vision is vague and allowed to reveal itself during the creative
process. This involves permission to unleash the active mind and eager hand and
dare to make mistakes. Letting things happen. It encourages us to confront the
struggle between decisiveness and spontaneity. It seeks the balance between
practiced skill and effortless expression that somehow feels intentional.
Despite
the inevitable moments of frustration, we must remind ourselves that the rewards
of the artistic path are not about the destination. The journey is the gift.
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