Skip to content

Tear it to shreds and become enigmatic

After been given this gorgeous commission to do for the two new businesses that are starting up, and I’ve been told to use a Fantasy Fanny (The English version, not the American!) as the logo for them both by the client since she loves that concept, although with different colours and personalities to each one,  I spent most of the latter part of last week working on them. I followed the brief exactly from the client, regarding colours, and sizes (A5 size, about 8 x 6 inches) and by Friday afternoon when I had got as far as I could with them, I knew that they weren’t… right…… they weren’t good enough, and that I could do a whole lot better.

I rang the client and told her that I had done two paintings as she requested. Sharp intake of breath from her, she was so intrigued to see them. BUT, I cautioned her, I was treating them as working drawings, so that she could see the colours, the shapes, the styles of what I had done, and see which parts she was happy with, and which could be improved upon.

We talked for about forty minutes about the businesses she is planning and her ideas for the future for them, that may well include my input in more than I had first considered. And made an arrangement for her to come and see me on Monday morning. Acrylic paints

Ok, I’ve done as much as I can, now its down to her feedback….

She arrived on Monday as we’d arranged, and on greeting her I asked if she wanted a coffee? No, far too keyed up with that, she wanted to see the artwork…

Ok, I smiled, and lead her into my studio, and showed them to her, but adding as she looked intently at them, that they weren’t good enough… And asked her to tell me what was wrong…

We spent the next half hour looking at them and throwing ideas together to improve them, and the following hour, and the one after that….. and the one after that…! Three and a half hours discussing ideas, talking about colours, and styles.

When she left I was as usual when I speak to her, all fired up with momentum, and ideas, and itching to get going with the colours she and I had described.

And there were two things she had said that made the whole process far more exciting as far as I was concerned..

Firstly, when we had discussed the sizes I was working to, I said I was used to working to larger sizes where I could stand and put my shoulder and elbow behind my artists hand, and be creative. Whereas with the smaller sizes, I was being careful and not as creative as I would have preferred…. She laughed and told me to do them bigger!

And I had also mentioned that I love to play particular rock/dance/club tunes that have a good beat that get my artistic juices going and add to the creativity. She laughed again and said “Put some Enigma on!!” and I laughed in delight and said “Yeh, that will do it, I love Enigma!”

And do you know what, after I’d drawn out the larger sizes, both exactly the same image, the same sizes on the identical boards, I started, and put Enigma on loud, and it worked! The paint flowed better, my creativity flowed better and the images already look better and they’ve only had the background stripes painted in. Infact it worked so well I wanted to finish off the parts I was working on, and didn’t put my paintbrushes down until gone 9.30 last night….. dinner was late!

5 thoughts on “Tear it to shreds and become enigmatic”

Comments are closed.