Michael, I can't attribute this thought to anyone in particular, but I've read it so often that perhaps I'll get past the copyright lawyers. It's often said that courage isn't the absence of fear, but the willingness to proceed in the face of it.
It's also said that someone who doesn't have the sense to be afraid in the face of danger or even uncertainty and the unknown is falsely courageous and often foolhardy and sometimes so silly that no one even takes them on. The fact that we tend to have a cultural admiration for that behavior -- especially when it works out (though we're perversely willing to make fools of the failures, too, as if we couldn't be or haven't been fools) -- doesn't make the "artist's block" any easier. Makes it harder, actually.
I think your reticence isn't a problem at all, but an indicator of professional attention and concern. In writing circles, it's called "incubation". You know what you have to say, you know what you want to say, and you know where you're going with what you've got -- and you put that into the pot to boil around for a while.
You do it during your day job, and you do it during your sleep. Connections, phrases, words, and images, come to you. Some of them surprise and excite you -- you suddenly see all kinds of new ways to proceed and make your point.
You frantically search for endtable lamp chains at 2 a.m., pens that work, and you jot those notions down on grocery receipts, or pink slips telling you that you'll be painting a lot more next week. You've read of other professionals' taking 2 or 3 days, or longer, to sort out the setting-up and the get-going. We've all seen, too, the folks who charge in with bravado and no plan. It takes a real pro to make that pretty, and, well . . .
From Joe Singer:
Quote:
Can a portrait be painted by rushing in helter-skelter, plopping the subject down in the nearest chair, squeezing out paint, and slapping out a reasonable likeness of her?
You bet it can -- and too often that's just how portraits are painted. But this is morally reprehensible.
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You can't edit anything -- by which I mean you can't fashion it or accept advice -- until you've written the rough draft. The rough draft is what all the wannabes will never produce. ("I could writa book," they'll tell you, over cocktails. "Wish I had time to paint like you do!" they'll say. Goofballs and airheads, I say.
It isn't a small thing that we're doing here. It's a courageous thing. Most of us approach every commission with a mixture of confidence and gut-twisting fear. But if we don't, we're fools, because the fun isn't in the sure thing, it's in the risk. Otherwise, Wal-Mart has an arts training program.
Let's hear it for rough drafts, and first lines, and charcoal sketches and oil sketches, and getting going. Ninety-nine percent don't get that far, so if we're looking at your progress post on this Forum, give yourself a pat on the back, and then get back to work.