My first forays back into the studio have found me feeling uninspired and stuck. I know the best way around this is to just sit down, get to work, and focus on getting my hands moving rather than on the results. This often works very well with me because I am a process driven artist and I created in a spontaneous manner anyway.

I grabbed my knife and a piece of paper, made some quick decisions about what I wanted to do, and then began cutting.

I’ve used this leaf shape many times before, but this time I wanted to work smaller and closer together, and end up with an overall form that wasn’t round. Working in a radial naturally lends itself a circular form but I wanted to see how it could work in a more squared composition.

I cut the design until it was about eight inches in diameter and then began working it into a square. It looked beautiful at that point but I decided to keep pursuing the idea. It went through a phase where I thought I’d ruined it but pushed on and came through to the end where I’ve achieved the squarish form (I was never going for a perfect square).

I don’t think I will work this small as a general rule, even though it was interesting to try it out, because it doesn’t read well overall.

Even though this took many hours and xacto blades to create, I consider it a sketch resulting from an exercise and not finished work. It did the trick though, because I find myself INSPIRED!