Be more Garden?

      

painting, gardening, animating...

I often look at someone else's work and you think "I wish I could draw/ paint/ animate/ like that" Or even garden like that. I think this is normal, and one of the ways you learn. So you try to copy the style. It's derivative and a bit rubbish. So you rework it and rework it and eventually end up with something that looks a bit like the thing you admired and quite a lot like your own work. The trick is not to give up or fly off at a tangent down another interesting-looking pathway before you have assimilated. Exactly what is it about that style/ image/artist that is so good? why? how?

Then, sometimes, the gardening will inform the painting and the animation will inform the gardening and so it goes (especially when the painting studio is in the deranged jungle end of the garden)

But animation isn't really about the image... it's about the movement - not an avenue of trees but a waving of branches enclosing the imaginary walker and a rustling of leaves and a sense of being in a jagged green and grey ocean rolling past your feet. It's hard to study the movement in an animation, to investigate how that tells the story. It's easier to spot when it's bad but when it's well done...you're just there in the garden, feeling the sun on your face and the freshness of the air.