Remember last time when I said that I was working on the last piece of a triptych I started seven whole months ago now? Yeah, well, nevermind.  

I messed up the paper size for this last piece, the other two are both 22 x 30” and I accidentally used 18 x 24” paper for this new drawing. I was originally going to ignore that because I was planning on buying the same sized frames for them. But after getting one of the 22 x 30” pieces framed I realized how awkward this 18 x 24” piece will look in a 24 x 32” frame. 

So it looks like I still have a triptych to finish! 

I probably won’t make the last piece for a while, I had really wanted this drawing (pictured below) to be the last part. 

I wanted this triptych to represent three out of the seven stages of grief. The first piece:

being “denial.” 

The second piece:

being “bargain.” 

And the piece I just finished was supposed to represent “acceptance.” This last stage was one I really struggled with, I didn’t want this triptych to be overtly sad or depressing (despite the subject matter.) 

The first stage and drawing (I Wish Your House Was Real), “denial,” was incredibly easy for me to come up with. I wanted a figure to struggle with something (the cloth over their head) and an easy fix (untie the knot around the chair) but the figure going for the hardest possible way out (trying to claw the cloth off.) Maybe not depicting denial in a “straight forward” sense but where’s the fun in that. There’s more I could point out about this piece but I prefer letting the viewer come up with their own answers. 

The second stage and drawing (I Wish You Were Real), “bargain,” was a little trickier to come up with, if I remember correctly I think I redid this one twice before settling on what it is now. I feel like this one is extremely straight-forward, or at least a lot more straight-forward than the first part. The figure is, literally, between two objects (same design of stool but made from different materials, one wood, one metal.) Neither object or stool is necessarily the “better” option compared to the other. Either choice will leave an absence on one end, disrupting the balance, so why should they let go of either?

The third stage and drawing, (will be titled- I Know You And Your House Aren’t Real), “acceptance,” was by far the most I’ve struggled with a concept. The first piece I started was much, much darker than I wanted it to be. Again, I did not want this triptych to be extremely dark or depressing, I was not trying to capture the stages of grief in a sense where they relate to death. I wanted these stages and concepts to feel much broader than that. But the first time I tried to draw the acceptance stage it was extremely dark and did not feel right at all for the conclusion of these pieces. I forced myself to draw about half of it before I realized I hated it and was causing myself to lose interest in drawing all together as a result. Drawing started feeling like a chore rather than something I did because I genuinely adored it. So I put the triptych on a backburner and focused on work and finishing out the spring semester. I tried a few more times between February and May to draw or sketch out another concept, I had a few failed attempts at making anything I wanted to so, once again, focused on other priorities. Then, last month in June, I felt ready to take another crack at it. And of course I came up with a concept that would have been a pretty good conclusion but used the wrong size paper. 

I’m starting to feel like this triptych is cursed and I should never attempt to make another series again. 

But, it’s been seven months and at this point I have to finish it. Eventually. Probably not for another month or two.

So, then, I’m left with an 18 x 24” piece with no title. Congratulations, after 700 words you have reached what this blog post is actually about!

Titles.

Coming up with titles for my work is probably one of my favorite things about drawing. It’s equal parts fun and extremely frustrating, especially in cases like these where I have to abandon what I thought the piece’s title would be. I typically don’t name my pieces until I’m 90% done with them. I think the only time I really came up with the title before starting the drawing was with “I Wish Your House Was Real.” 

I try to start with the very broad concept of the piece. I’ll ask myself “what is this about (broad)” and slowly get more and more detailed with questions while interrogating myself. I knew this piece was, still, about acceptance, even if it no longer pertained to the series. And more specifically this piece is about life cycles. I’m still messing around with the double exposure effect so I tried to keep that in mind as well. So, with everything about this piece in mind, I really, really thought about it and came up with, drum-roll please: nothing. 

I could not come up with a name for this piece to save my life. 

And in rare cases like this one, where I absolutely cannot come up with a single “good” title for a piece, I turn to my last resort. My notes app. Sometimes (almost daily) I’ll come up with a random title or concept and will either write it down in a random spot or will sketch the worst thumbnail I’m capable of making:

This was the original concept sketch for “I Wish Your House Was Real.” 

Thankfully I didn’t have to look too far into my notes app this time and saw a “sentence” – it was really more of a jumble of misspelled words than a sentence. At one point I had written down “something about bones, but like OVERgrown.” I think this was supposed to be a drawing idea and not a title idea, but whatever! It gave me enough to work with to title my latest piece so I was happy. Obviously I can’t title a piece “something about bones, blah blah blah” so I changed it to “Your Bones Should Grow Over Mine.” I think that was probably the closest I could get to finding a title about “acceptance” and life cycles. 

I don’t normally title my pieces so haphazardly, I like thinking through each piece’s title and finding something that fits my drawing 100%. But, having said that, sometimes you need to just randomly name a piece without thinking so hard your brain melts and you end up with naming something “January.” True story. 

One last little paragraph, Derwent pencils are the best pencils to ever exist. I don’t know enough about pencils or what I’m talking about to properly verbalize how amazing these pencils are. So, forgive me, but I’m going to describe these pencils as creamy. I’m also starting to think I just don’t know how to sharpen pencils, like Faber-Castell, these tend to break or chip when being sharpened. Not as badly as Faber-Castell but it’s noticeable enough that I might also start sharpening these with my knife instead of my sharpener. As I’m writing this I realized that I have been using the same sharpener for about four years now and my issue is probably 100% a user error. I’m going to go buy a new pencil sharpener. 

Hope everyone’s having a nice summer break and staying cool during the heat wave!