Day 91: Less, but Better Words

My traffic spike is well and truly dead.  It back to just me and the words and not a single pair of eyes.  At least that’s what my WordPress.com Stats plugin says.  I don’t know if that tracks feed readers–I kinda think not.  If I get time I might wrestle with Feedburner today.  Though when I glanced recently it didn’t look to have changed it’s chunky UI.

I’ve written of my jealousy of artists being able to make a stroke or two on a page and have a clear product.  I’ve even tried to put my money where my mouth was, but the effort is flagging.  Sunday I drifted through the entire inventory of a art supply store here in Houston looking for books and hope.  I made out pretty well.

Flipping pages in one of the more instructional how-to’s I came across an exercise entitled “Treatments of Water”.  Below the title was some text I didn’t read–how little respect I have for my passion for words.  Below those were five sketches the author/artist may have spent less time on than it takes to sharpen a pencil.  Lingering on the page was not necessary as the gestalt smacked me hard with about four clear thoughts at once: artistry is work no matter how much I think it isn’t, a primary characteristic of water is it’s desire to be level, edges like rocks or glass lend water all it’s interest, and I could parallel this lesson in words.

With wild lack of imagination, or perhaps unintentional homage, my first rendition was of five scenes involving water.  Some less directly than others.

I enjoyed the effort and liked the structure but ultimately I was sloppy in my execution.  I put in too many words and sentences to have truly mimicked the artist’s lean example.  I will be trying this again soon using less, but better words to accomplish more.  Maybe a few of these will instruct me on how to use more less but better word combinations.

Word count: 332