Artist’s Back to Basic – July 2019

“piggy-backing” other ideas. Piggy-

backing is the process of joining two

ideas together. Woolworths trolleys

were invented because someone

joined the idea of carrying a basket

of groceries and using a skateboard.

(true story!, or so I am led to believe)

In my case, I have been racing

the clock with my swimming,

so I wanted to include a time

measuring device. The old masters

used an hour glass, or an old

man with a beard to represent the

passage of time. Salvador Dali was

known for his melting clocks.

A second example of piggy-

backing: the combination of the

flags above the pool, which are used

to stop competitors when a false

start is declared, together with my

racing the clock, brought the idea of

including a starter’s gun to mind.

Once I had exhausted these ideas,

I used the critical thinking concept of

PMI (plus, minus, interesting) to filter

them. By discarding the minuses, the

pluses had a good chance of being

used, whilst the interesting ones

could be used as “fillers” if needed.

Developmental thinking

stages of the painting

At this point, I started sketching some

thumbnails. The first one (shown

here) was rejected because the

line of the flags and an imaginary

line through the leg come together

as an arrow directing your eye out

of the picture frame. In the second

sketch, I changed the angle of the

flags to stop this. I also shaped

one flag as if it were fluttering in the

breeze. The intention was to make it

different, thus attracting the eye and

leading it back into the picture.

You probably noticed in

the first sketch, an hourglass

shape on the left. My reasoning

for including it is twofold.

First, as mentioned previously, the

passage of time. This represents

a) the year I have invested in

Teacher’s Pet