Just Drawing What You See

It would appear that there comes a point in the flow of an artist's work when things are not as coherent as they used to be.  The ideas don't come as easily as they used to.

For pretty much all of the time that I've been drawing, it's been my habit to try and put together composites of sorts that I find aesthetically pleasing in some way or another.  But the last few drawings that I've produced, that have been composites of the sort I've been in the habit of putting together, have fallen kind of short of the mark.  It's been my wish to produce at least one more piece of work that could get the same kind of admiration that some of my work has gotten in the past.  But, it would appear that such is not going to be the case.

Now, I'm not too bent out of shape about this.  In fact, I'm not very shaken up about it at all.  I'm still feeling the urge to draw, but, the kind of certainty that I used to feel about it isn't there.  I'm kind of getting the urge to let go of the more "abstract" ideas about the kind of work I wanted to produce.  Any serious work I put out now, and perhaps later, is going to be more along the lines of simple work.  Little or no embellishment or decoration.  Nothing too fancy, just the basic elements in and of an image, whatever that image may be.  If I'm going to endeavor to produce a drawing that's "busy" enough to impress, my focus will be more about the indigenous details of a given subject, rather than the details I might "make up" around it.  Just concentrating on the beauty that's already there.  No more trying to manifest style and technique from other artists.  (All things considered, I haven't the skill to do that anyway.)  It's just about what I see, not what I can dream up.  (For most of it, at least.)

I guess there comes a time when you've just got to concentrate on what's there.