Enhance.
Enhance.
Enhance.
Do you remember the scene in the 1982 classic (OMG I love this movie) Blade Runner, where Harrison Ford is using what now looks like arcane (but at the time was mind-blowingly futuristic) technology to zoom in on a photo. There was one word he used a lot (no, not zoom-in)
Enhance
Enhance
Enhance
Like a mantra, each time he repeated the word we got to see deeper.
In the late 2000’s I started a graduate program in Western Medical Herbalism. I didn’t complete this study due to financial constraints, and it still breaks my heart - maybe one day I will get back to it. There is a part of this wild woman that remains very much a hedge witch that speaks to plants. And there were many profound and meaningful moments in the studying that I did, but one experience that sticks with me still, a genuine moment of utter, full body awe, was in one of the plant identification modules. Using a scalpel we cut lavender flowers in half to look at them under a microscope. I don’t quite know how to put into words how very transformative this experience was. I know I became light headed due to lack of breathing. I was impatient that I had a partner and I had to share the microscope, I felt like I wanted to dive into this whole new world, as though it was made just for me. In fact, the lecturer had to twice tell me to step away from the microscope and actually do the analysis and description. I had fallen into some faery world though, and could not look away. I stayed after class and looked at other flowers and leaf structures until a couple of hours later he finally kicked me out altogether, though he had a wry smile and a look in his eyes that he knew exactly what I was going through. He had been there, done that, and after four decades doing it could still find that same joy.
Enhance
Enhance
Enhance
awe [ aw ]
noun
an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful
It was more than a decade between then and when I picked up art again, and another couple of years until I got serious about pursuing the honouring in pigment of wildlife specifically, and almost exclusively. But it was only when I started making realistic coloured pencil tutorials on Patreon, when I had to explain in actual English words (and not just the gibberish of awe) what I was doing with every new pencil picked up or section of feathers or fur started, that I really started to grow my deep observation skills, and more-so, understand their importance, and inherent magic.
When I am painting, my work is realistic, but a little less, hmm, absolute. What do I mean by that? My painting is more painterly, I am capturing, at least at them moment, a more romantic, almost literary feeling, striving to get just a glimpse of the enchantment of a Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece in my own pigment strokes. My coloured pencil work is not hyper-realistic, it is not scientific, but it is almost both of those things. I go into a level of observation in my coloured pencil (and graphite) work that I do not replicate in oils. This was not a conscious decision, but rather one I have seen evolving the more that I paint (which I adore, let me tell you).
With the dry media, I think it is the fact it is a pencil I hold rather than a brush, I am in control in a different way, after the familiarity of four and a half decades of controlling a writing implement. I understand after hundreds, thousands of hours of this style of artwork, exactly how the pigment from pencils layer, how they work beside one another. I have a greater level of expertise in coloured pencil work, I guess is what I am saying. I still feel like a beginner when it comes to oil painting.
I feel like the two types of mediums allow me to express my observational skill and my love of the wild in different ways - no one better than the other, but complementary, symbiotic. But this writing prompt, oh, this writing prompt, has made me understand that my coloured pencil work is very much a case of
Enhance
Enhance
Enhance
Take this barn owl wing, for example.
(Yep, that is all coloured pencil - many, many (many) tiny strokes and layers on layers on layers).
This is over a dozen hours in the making, for a section the size of my hand. The subtle shifts of colour, the tonal variation, the markings - I was so entranced, so deep in observation, so utterly absorbed by the pure magic that is each in every variance on each and every feather, that again, I had - I have - that all encompassing feeling of awe. I am seeing these pinhead shifts as though they are planetary size, and I want to see deeper and deeper still. How can this even be? How can nature have made a creature, a single feather, so incredibly intricate. How are we not all losing our minds over how inconceivable this is? Even typing this I am wondering if, in fact, I have lost a bit of my mind over it, and you know what I am absolutely ok with that.
How many colours do you think you can count in this section of barn owl wing?
I can't tell you for sure, but it would be over two dozen. I don't see brown or orange anymore. I see sepia and walnut, burnt umber and van dyke, bistre and nougat and more. I see terracotta, orange yellow, burnt ochre, brown ochre, cinnamon and russet and so much more, to say nothing of the blues and purples and palest pink.
This is one of the gifts of this work, spending time contemplating colour and being humbled to learn that no matter how hard I look, how hard I try to honour that colour complexity, I will never come close to the real thing.
Sometimes I wish I shared a studio with other humans so I could stop constantly and say OMG look at this! Look! At! This! Can you see that unexpected shift from rose to burnt ochre just there, with a slight incursion of an almost naples hue? HOW! How did nature do that? How incredible is it that this is the one and only occurrence of this exact pattern EVER and ALWAYS. And how are we not little piles of jelly and exploding sparkles at the wonder of it all?
I am writing this and shaking my head, a big goofy smile on my face, eyes lined with silver. Sometimes I am not sure if my heart (and mind) can handle all the beauty of this, the expansiveness of it - it is both so large and so small as to be not only overwhelming, but almost suffocating. But, oh, it it not something I would ever give away. I only want more - I only want to see all the birds and the animals and their individual markings. I want to hold every hair and feather under a microscope and look deep into these beings eyes and explain to them how preposterously wonderful and beautiful they are. I want to give myself over to the awe in absolute purity, my heart thumping at the present of presence that being alive at this moment in time is, sharing molecules and space with all of this beauty.
Come, wild one, bring the utter gift that is you closer to me, so I can see you, really see you, and marvel at the incredible wonder of you as individual, as my kin, as a part of this wild world we live in together.
Enhance
Enhance
Enhance
(This is a special-extra-completely-unexpected post that came about as part of a writing group and course I am a part of. It was terrifying to get all of this done in an hour, but also exhilarating, and really taught me more about perfectionism too. Please forgive any typos or grammatical nonsense, it is from the (wild) heart, and was also a lot of fun! I encourage you to step outside your comfort zones too!)
Beautifully utterly fascinating. I get a bit sad when artists sometimes distain realism in other’s artwork - sure, they say, it’s technically incredible and shows great skill, but there’s no feeling in it... well pah, to that, I say. Read this. I say. And tell me that there is no depth of feeling and awe and completely sublime stunning artistry. 🩶
I'm so with you on the indescribable detail and magic in the most "ordinary" of things. I have a particular love of feathers, with their unimaginable complexity and beauty, and yet they fall constantly to the ground - such richness!