Don Stewart —
Dragonfly
— Sometimes the obvious is the hardest thing in the world to find.
I had been struggling to create a dragonfly composite for a long time. A very long time. The outline was perfect, and the variety of shapes in the segmented body and wings offered endless creative possibilities. But what should it be made of? “You’re kidding, right?” asked my wife, a commercial illustrator with many years of experience and insight. “Have you tried, maybe, dragons?”
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Hummingbird
The Hummingbird was created as a bouquet of flowers, with varieties selected not just for shape, but for their color palette as well: Rose for the ruby throat, green anthurium for head and beak, and a multi-hued Bird of Paradise for the beating wing. The mum, hydrangea, crocus and orchid allow for color schemes to vary a little from piece to piece, but each one is unmistakably the familiar American hummer.
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Cat Fish
Sometimes a picture idea is just a gift from the ether. I’m sitting in my booth at a new fancy craft show in Baltimore, or DC, or Richmond. Looking up from my clipboard (which doubles as my lap top desk journal, sketchpad and rain hat) I see my neighbor, the terra-cotta artist, hang a pair of fish on the wall. The sentimental sculptor had them facing one another as if they were kissing. To me they made a cat.
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Tiger Swallowtail
Tiger Swallowtail was one of the first composite pieces I was ever inspired to create. The design waited in a file folder for fifteen years, among a loose assemblage of notes, reference photos and magazine clippings, while I tried to decide I was good enough to make an attempt. I wasn’t, but I tried again. (And again.)
Eventually the rough pencil sketches were carefully cleaned up and re-drawn, only to be put away for another five years. Having finally learned to sketch the tiger outlines, I stopped, unable to believe I wouldn’t ruin them completely by trying to add stripes, and permanent shading.
At some point it became clear that I either had to force myself to take the risk, or give up on the project.
Would I screw up the drawing? Yes. Hopelessly. Does it matter? Not really, since I was the only one who knew what it was supposed to look like.
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WOW! These are beautiful and fantastic.