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