Back to Pyrography, and Musings on Success

I got a bunch of 8x8 squares of wood from David and Thom for Christmas and this is the first time I've tried them out with my wood burning pen.  It turns out that they are just wonderful surfaces for the purpose.  I was inspired by a picture in New Mexico Magazine of this beetle.  I have no idea how big it is, but I gave it scale with the background leaf.  I also thought the veins in the leaf added more "essence of bug."

After I did that one yesterday I still wanted more time with my wood.  Like just about everyone who likes horses, I love pictures of horses running in water.  The splashing water presented a challenge that made the image even more appealing. I'm not sure what I did looks like splashing water, but I like it anyway.  Pyroghraphy is such a rewarding medium............quick and good-looking.  I'm not sure I would want to do anything much bigger than these (fear of boredom), although working after you have the general subject, it's fun to go over and over, tweaking the values.  Big is really not my thing.  Even though I am working a lot of the time, I get tired of the same thing, both subject and medium.  "Jack of all trades, master of none" fits me perfectly.

My old friend Janet has worked on the same thing all her life......watercolors that blow your mind.  Every time I see something she has done, somehow it seems that she is still improving.  This in spite of the fact that the last thing she did appeared to me to be the best watercolor a human ever painted.  I don't know how she continues to get better, but she does.  Janet is a person who knows how to set a goal and work hard to reach it.  We were both once new painters in the Bangor Art Society.  We became friends, and I watched her strive for one goal after another........a show, a sale, a contest, a prize.  Now she is a member of the American Watercolor Society and a couple of other national organizations.  You can look her up on Google and find many pages about her.  She wins prizes all over the world and sells her work for thousands of dollars.  There are articles about her in magazines.  I watched her climb the ladder of success with dogged determination, and she let nothing get in her way. When we stated out, we both entered our first juried show.  It was a show of miniatures. Both of us won prizes and we decided to send our masterpieces to a bigger show in Florida.  Again we both won prizes and both our paintings sold.  For Janet it was first step.  For me it was a last step.  I had entered a show, I had won a prize, I had sold a painting out of a big show.  To me, the goal had been reached.  All that remained was more of the same.  It was just a matter of scale.

So here I am, not sorry or envious.  I am full of admiration for us both.