A Primer on Process
Students often want to know what they SHOULD do.
Bear in mind that when you work toward a “should” you are working toward a result. It is implied in the imperative “should”. “Should” implies that you need to consider yourself constrained by some convention or other, or by someone else’s opinion. I know how strange it must seem to be told “You SHOULD not use the word “SHOULD”, but that’s what I’m telling you. In addition, I don’t want the word “should” to be avoided by constructing workarounds that imply the same thing. In fact, I want you to erase “should” and ALL of its synonyms from your mind.
How do you do this? It’s both harder and easier than you probably think.
First, recognize that your “assignment” is NOT to make a picture, a PRODUCT, but to work in PROCESS. How would you know if you were doing this? If you are working toward a result that is in your mind, you are, by yourself, imposing a “should” and constraining yourself. If you are working in a PROCESS MODE, you will do something to the image through the agency of some feature of Photoshop, and you will see that operation’s result. At that point, you have three options. 1) You can accept the result 2) you can reject the result using “undo” under the edit menu, or 3) you can modify the result using “fade ..” under the edit menu. In addition, you could reject the result by undoing it, then create a new layer identical to the image you are working on (you can do this by dragging the “background” layer to the bottom of the layer box, where there is a little page icon. It will produce a layer above the “background” layer called “background copy”). Then, working on that layer you can repeat the operation, modify it if you wish by changing its opacity and its “blending mode”. We’ll go into Blending Modes later, but by all means, play with them to your heart’s content before we do.
Do you see the difference? With something in your mind that you are trying to produce, you will try and try to “make it happen” and that is a sure way to drive yourself totally insane. Instead, by “letting go” and giving yourself permission to PLAY with it, you try things without a visualized “outcome” and you are then free to discover.
Later, you will have ample opportunity to apply what you have learned to previsualized imagery, if you truly wish to do so. Now, however, you are developing an intuition. People usually mistake intuition for something mysterious, but it is not. Intuition must be given a basis in fact and experience in order to have what it needs to operate upon.
Be sure that you save your work frequently and when you get something that you think is particularly useful, save the next work cycle under a modified filename. That will preserve the entire work up to that particular “state” (that is a term from traditional printmaking, meaning a print of the “state” of a plate prior to the final edition.). Then, you go on working and again, when changes are significant, save that cycle under another modification of the filename.
If you work on relatively modest sized images, you won’t clog your hard drives, but it is true that this is a memory hogging way of working. However, there are lots of benefits. When I work this way, I could easily produce an entire show of one single image in MANY variations.
