Throwback: A Rare Repro

Recently I did a rare recreation of an old watercolor painting for a customer. I say rare, because I almost never revisit paintings. I guess I feel I might not be able to capture the spirit of the original. 

But I took this on partly because this is a long-standing loyal customer, and partly because I wanted to see if I could do it, maybe improve on it armed with greater experience and knowledge. Of myself, the subject matter, and some of the natural elements in the composition. 

For reference to the original, I used the only print of this painting that I have in stock. My approach was to block in things just like the original, then see if I felt like adding a little something as far as color, lighting, form, etc. Here's the process in a few photos.

print next to new sketch

starting color wash

details

fleshing out the background

finally, the hands

done!

I have to say that I was surprised that I didn't end up altering much. Given more time, I might have done so, but since there were constraints and a budget in place, I had to find a stopping point. Also, I could now imagine recreating other versions of this concept. Learn more about the inspiration behind this piece and purchase the print I have available in my store at the link below. 

TBT: Childhood Creative Sparks

It's throwback Thursday, which stirred up a memory of a creative beginning I had long forgotten. Today I'm reminiscing about a game called Mouse Trap. You may remember it- may have even played it?

image source: Google

It was a game that involved building a contraption that required syncing a series of moving parts domino style, to get an end result (trapping a little plastic mouse). 

The Rube Goldberg inspired gizmo had to be assembled prior to playing. At some point during the game, landing on a certain spot or drawing a particular card would call for the mechanism to be triggered, dooming the losing player's mouse to being trapped.
The cause and effect parts of that game could very well have been the beginnings of training my brain to continually dream up creative solutions. I say train, because even though I've always felt creative, it took years of training my mind to see all kinds of things for their creative potential, and to automatically brainstorm multiple ways to make projects work using found (or bought) things. That didn't just happen, lol. It's a creative muscle I built further through school projects, problem solving at various jobs, and personal projects.
I think anyone can develop a skill to compliment a passion or talent through practice. Do it enough and it becomes automatic.
Anyway, the game is a fond memory. And maybe a good example of snowballing something simple into something I use constantly to this day.❤