Missed Miscarriage

Trigger warning: Discussion of miscarriage, including emotional grief and graphic descriptions of the physical process

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Today, October 15, is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.

I wanted to make a happy social media announcement this week - the week that would have marked the beginning of my second trimester of pregnancy. Instead, I'm making a different sort of post.

At my eight-week ultrasound at the beginning of September, I learned that I was having a missed miscarriage. Though my body had yet to get the memo, the ultrasound showed that everything was measuring only six weeks and five days along, with no detectable heartbeat. I had no symptoms of miscarriage, and over the next few days, while I researched what might happen next and talked to my doctors, I would still never have any symptoms.

And so I was faced with a series of awful options:

1. Anxiously wait several more days (or weeks) for my body to start naturally expelling what the medical field calls "the products of conception"

2. Take medication to induce uterine contractions to speed along the process

3. Get a D&C - a surgical dilation of the cervix and removal of the uterine contents by suction

I read several accounts online of women who had chosen options 1 or 2 (or been forced to endure them by nature, their doctors, or financial limitations), and knew from their stories that the experience was often physically and emotionally traumatic. For one thing, it would almost certainly include some degree of labor-like pains as I “birthed” into the toilet the blood clots and tissue of what could’ve, in an alternate universe, become an April baby and its placenta. Furthermore, there was a chance I could end up in the ER if I started hemorrhaging or fainting due to blood loss - or that I wouldn’t be able to pass everything naturally anyway, and still end up requiring a D&C to prevent infection. It all sounded horrific, from both a physical and emotional standpoint, and more than anything, I didn’t want to do it.

Option 3 carried its own risks - as any surgical procedure does - but on the whole it seemed the “least awful” to me. At least a D&C would get the physical process over with faster, less painfully, and on my own terms - something I longed for in a situation where I felt like I had so little control about what was happening. (It is worth noting that my husband has health insurance through his work which covered the majority of my D&C, and we have the means to cover what’s likely to be our $1000-1400 out-of-pocket expense. I didn’t have to factor in the financial cost when making my decision - a privilege that I wish every person had when weighing important options about their health.)

I told my doctors I wanted a D&C, and they quickly scheduled the procedure for me, on the day that would’ve-could’ve-should’ve been one day shy of a nine-week pregnancy. My first pregnancy was thus completed in the span of exactly two months, from July 13 to September 13.

Left: At my 6-week ultrasound on August 24 we were told that everything was measuring slightly behind, at maybe 5 weeks 5 days - but that it was common for dating to be off by a day or two that early in the pregnancy, especially if there was a chance it implanted later than expected. The ultrasound tech insisted that she could see a fluttering signaling the beginnings of a heartbeat, and while it was "still too weak" to officially measure the heart rate, she remained optimistic that it was just because it was so early that a day or two can make a huge difference in the embryo's development. We had no reason to believe I would have a miscarriage, and the ultrasound tech spent time showing us which parts were the gestation sac, yolk sac, and fetal pole.

Right: In the two weeks between my early ultrasounds, I watched some of my early pregnancy symptoms lessen or disappear - while other pregnancy symptoms ramped up. Part of me worried that I might be having a missed miscarriage, but as this was my first pregnancy and I had nothing to compare it to, I had no REAL reason to believe that these changes meant anything. Still, I was much more nervous going in to my 8-week appointment on September 7 - and not just because I'd told more people about the pregnancy in the interim and was getting rather attached to the idea of being pregnant and becoming a mom. The ultrasound tech at my 8-week appointment was much quieter, making her measurements quickly and silently. Before she said the words, I already knew. She handed me tissues while I cried. After a moment, she said: "This may seem weird, but would you like a picture?" I didn't think it was weird. I was grateful. And even though I already had one from my 6-week ultrasound, I said yes, I wanted another one.

Pregnancy loss is a grief that is hard to reconcile, with very few answers to explain why, and very few memories or pictures to draw on for comfort. And all of these feelings are compounded by changes in hormones, which come crashing back to pre-pregnancy levels after weeks of steadily rising. I am not often a crier about Big Things - I tend to grieve more silently - but there were days before and after my D&C when I was surprised at how emotional I felt.

There is so much to process - not just the loss of someone you'd never met but somehow started to bond with anyway, or even the loss of potential: what that baby could've been, what our family could have been. There's the fear of what will happen physically: the potential pain and loss of blood if the miscarriage should start to happen naturally, the possible complications of a surgical procedure, and anxieties about how long physical recovery will take. There's the feeling of being cheated out of a joyful pregnancy and birth and sharing that happiness and excitement with the world - and the awkwardness and grief of telling family, friends, and coworkers that you miscarried, many of whom never even knew you were pregnant. There's the loss of the sense of pride and accomplishment in carrying a child to term, giving birth, and becoming a mother. There's envy towards women to whom pregnancy seems to come easily, and anger that I was not one of them.

There's even difficulty readjusting back to a state of non-pregnancy: planning meals for the week that suddenly aren’t restricted by pregnancy diet requirements, re-adopting my pre-pregnancy blood glucose targets, unsubscribing from weekly pregnancy update emails (and trying to ignore all the targeted pregnancy-related ads on my Facebook feed that I couldn’t unsubscribe to), and packing up maternity clothes I purchased prematurely and never got to wear. These mundane tasks might seem like nothing - but they’re not unlike the tying up of loose ends that many mourners go through when a loved one dies: sorting through their belongings, stopping mail, contacting other people or businesses to let them know of the loss, and paying off medical bills.

There's also resentment stemming from never knowing the cause of my pregnancy loss. I never truly blamed myself, but many women do. I’d read so many articles and statistics even before I’d been through my own that I knew miscarriages were caused by unpredictable chromosomal abnormalities; furthermore, I was fortunate enough to hear from many people (including my very kind doctors) that it was nothing I did or didn't do, nothing I ate or drank, and not even anything related to my diabetes, which is generally very well controlled (and a discussion for another time). But that didn’t stop me from WANTING to find a way to hold myself culpable - because then at least there would be a reason it happened, and something I could do differently to prevent a recurrence. Without that, I'm left with the unsatisfactory truth that life and death are unknowable and uncontrollable; I'm left with a loss of innocence for potential future pregnancies and the fear that this could all happen again.

In my particular case, preparing for my D&C, there was also a longing for my pregnancy to "not be taken away" from me, or (to put in other words) for me to somehow find a way to both get the physical process over with as quickly and painlessly as possible while also not being "complicit" in having my pregnancy terminated. Of course, it was already ended, whether I was "complicit" in it or not - my hCG hormone levels were dropping, the “products of conception” were starting to break apart, and my pregnancy symptoms had been disappearing or gone for days if not weeks. But despite all the evidence from blood draws and ultrasound screens, it was still hard to believe that it was over - and hard not to ask the doctors to triple and quadruple check for signs of potential viability.

I'm sure that initial disbelief affects all women who go through a pregnancy loss - denial is one of the stages of grief, after all, and there are undoubtedly women who pass golf-ball sized clots or survive unimaginable hemorrhaging and pain and still hold out hope for the continuation of their pregnancy - but I also felt like it was a hurdle somewhat harder to cross when I wasn't experiencing any of the telltale bleeding or cramping symptoms. Not only was I upset that my body was unable to maintain the pregnancy, I was also angry that it couldn't seem to "miscarry properly" either, leaving me stuck in a horrible limbo.

Getting a D&C was not a decision I settled on lightly, but one I ultimately chose for my mental and physical health. I hoped to at least avoid the worst of the pain and bleeding - and I'm sure that I did, compared to what it could've been - but in doing so, I forgot that getting a D&C was hardly nothing. My post-op paperwork told me that bleeding for up to six weeks after the D&C was not uncommon (mine lasted on and off for about two weeks), and recommended that I take 600 mg of Motrin every six hours as needed for pain. To be sure, there were days when I had very little cramping or bleeding, and no need for Motrin. But there were a few days, more than I had anticipated, where the opposite was the case and I needed that pain medication to get through the day. A D&C is still a miscarriage.

It took three and a half weeks (and seven pokes for blood draws at the doctor's office) for my hCG hormone to get completely back to non-pregnant levels after my D&C, but thankfully only about one week to start to feel like my body was my own again - that I could count on it to look the way I expected it to look, feel the way I expected it to feel, and behave the way I expected it to behave. Even though I'd been early in my pregnancy, my body had still gone through several changes: by 8 weeks, for instance, the uterus has already grown to twice its typical size - which isn't really visible from the outside, but feels and looks very different to the person it's happening to, as things get more crowded in their abdomen. It was such a relief, then, when I started to feel like "myself" again; after weeks of emotional and physical turmoil, it was a comfort to be back in familiar territory. But that relief was also colored with guilt, shame, and anxiety that were hard to dispel. What if my relief meant I hadn't wanted to be pregnant enough, or that I wasn't ready to be pregnant again?

I tried to tell myself that if I had carried this pregnancy to term, no one would fault me for my happiness at seeing my body return back to normalcy - and indeed, that no one would likely fault me for feeling this way after this ordeal, either, and that I was once again being my own harshest critic. I also reminded myself that pregnancy can be difficult to endure even when it’s at its easiest and least complicated - and that I would never accuse another person who hated or feared the physical changes of pregnancy of not loving their child or looking forward to parenthood enough. But it’s hard to rationalize your emotions away, and what ultimately helped me feel better (about this and so many other aspects of the healing process) was confirmation from others going through similar situations that they felt the same way I did - that it was normal to feel conflicting emotions even over things as seemingly innocuous as the speed/ease of digestion, the frequency of urination, or the shape of my stomach in my favorite shirts.

When I was pregnant, I thought about being pregnant nearly constantly - from worries about when nausea might strike and how that might affect how much insulin I should take, to the excitement of planning the paint colors for the nursery. When I learned of my missed miscarriage and all those pregnancy thoughts vanished, I filled the vacuum they left behind with other anxieties: Was that twinge a symptom of impending miscarriage? Will I “make it” to the date of my scheduled D&C? Is it typical to have these cramps and on-and-off bleeding after the procedure? When will I feel normal again? As more weeks passed and my body healed, it was hard to stop obsessing. I wasn’t sure if I should toss aside all my memories of what I’d been through or if I should continue to dwell on them, to mourn, to read online articles about grief.

And if I do let all the thoughts about my pregnancy loss fall away - what should I think about instead, to fill that new vacuum? Is it too soon to start checking my temperature and peeing on sticks in an effort to chart what would likely be an irregular first couple of menstrual and ovulation cycles? Is it unhealthy to keep switching out one obsession for the next - pregnancy for miscarriage, miscarriage for trying to conceive again?

Once enough time has passed, it all starts to feel like it never really happened. It feels weird to say “when I was pregnant” when I have nothing to show for it but a couple grainy sonograms and weeks-old, already-fading memories of early pregnancy symptoms. It feels like something that happened to someone else. That, too, is painful. This was my first and (so far) only pregnancy; this was the closest I ever came to having a child and becoming a mother. Until I get pregnant again, these memories are all I have. And I don’t want to forget them.

Statistically speaking, at least 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss - and yet, we hardly ever talk about it. It is remarkable, when you start talking aloud about your miscarriage, how many people come back with “me too” - people who you would never know had a miscarriage until you mention yours. To quote Angela Garbes in her amazing book Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy: "Many people are uncomfortable talking about pregnancy loss, so they don't. And it's no wonder - any meaningful discussion of it requires acknowledging death, blood, tears, and items being expelled from the vagina." But just because it's difficult doesn't mean it should continue to be taboo.

I'm choosing to share my story publicly because I want other women who have experienced pregnancy loss to know that they are not alone. Pregnancy loss can feel very isolating - but it doesn't have to be. I am so grateful to everyone who showed me support in the days before and after my miscarriage, including family, friends, coworkers and strangers on internet forums.

I’m also choosing to share my story for my own sake. There is a lot of societal pressure to bury this topic, presumably to save other people a few minutes of feeling uncomfortable or sad, and I often feared that no one wanted to hear any of this - let alone hear me “still” talking about it, weeks later. What can I do, then, when talking or writing helps me, but I feel like I’m not allowed to talk/write about it? Share my thoughts anyway, I suppose, without waiting for other people to give me permission to do so. I still want that outpouring of love and support that I would’ve gotten if I’d had happier news to share today; I don’t deserve it less just because my pregnancy is over too early.

To again quote Angela Garbes: "When it comes to pregnancy loss, there is no script to follow. To help a woman navigate it, you don't need to offer advice or perspective. It is enough to show up, however awkwardly, and be there, to listen." Writing has always been a form of therapy for me. Thank you for listening.

Why on earth should that mean that it isn't real?

This post is going to be a continuation of yesterday's post about mind-body dualism, so you may want to start there if you haven't read it yet.

As I said yesterday, though part of me is swayed by the scientific proof of monism - the idea that everything is built out of one category of substance (atoms, molecules, chemicals, cells) - I am ultimately too enamored with the idea of dualism to suspend belief that there is a second, incorporeal substance also at play in nature. We are not just bodies, but bodies and minds (or souls, depending on how you want to label it).

I acknowledge that I am, to some extent, governed by my chemicals and hormones and neurons and all of the other building blocks that create and multiply and manipulate my cells, or communicate between them. I even understand that when I dream at night I am in actuality at the mercy of coincidences and firing neurons; that what I choose to interpret as a story, with colors and faces and emotions and conflict and resolution, is not created or influenced by a separate substance (my mind, my soul, my intuition, creativity, inspiration, a collective unconscious I'm tapping into, or anything spiritual like that) but by the same category that maintains my blood circulation and digestive tract: Atoms. Molecules. Things that science can observe and quantify and explain (or are working toward observing, quantifying, and explaining).

But I care about those stories I dream, or the stories I come up with in the daytime and attempt to put to paper, or the subjects I want to draw or paint - and to write or create art the way I want to, I feel like it diminishes it to think of it through the lens of monism.

Sure, I am able to see color because of the way my eyes work and the cells that make up my eyes; I am able to hold a paintbrush because of the cells in my hand; I am able to retain muscle memory and things I've practiced and learned in school for the best techniques to use because of the cells in my brain. And to some people - the scientifically minded, the monists - this is more than enough, and they can find excitement and inspiration in the idea that everything comes down to essentially one thing, or that everything is born from essentially one thing, and that any differences we see - at the molecular or macro level - are just different rearrangements of the same basic substance.

Good for them! I'm not knocking monism. It's just not how I think of things, and I don't see the value (and in fact see negative consequences) in retraining myself to think of the world that way. I could persuade myself if I really wanted to. I definitely see the reasoning and the merits. But I don't think it matters to my life, and because it is not my gut reaction, I fear that it would take away something of who I am to try to dissuade myself of my belief in dualism.

I am an artist, and a writer. I like looking at art, and reading books. I like writing poetry. I like listening to music. I like being creative. I like thinking of myself as a body and a soul, and other people as a body and a soul. I like imagining that there is this creativity or inspiration that ebbs and flows and visits us and abandons us and takes us on journeys and sets our hearts on fire. I like dreaming; I like trying to influence my dreams in the moment of the dreaming, and I like interpreting them after the fact. I like sitting around and thinking and philosophizing. I like asking 'what ifs'.

I like thinking of my emotions, my mood, my intuition, my dreams, my creativity, my art, my writing, as a separate entity. Something to conquer or challenge or accept or adore or avoid or manipulate or mold or cherish or abhor. Something that is unique to me, but also something that is similar to what everyone else has and experiences - a collective pool that we all dip our toes into once and awhile, and dive into even rarer still. Something that is sometimes out of our control - which is frustrating at times but beneficial at other times. Something that is separate from my physical body and will exist in some form after my body dies.

I don't think my soul will go to heaven or hell because I don't think those are actual places. But I am open the idea of reincarnation. I like the idea of the ancient goddess, where we are all birthed from the same womb, live physical lives, and then are returned to that sacred womb to be reborn into another life (with or without knowledge of previous lives). That doesn't mean I believe in a goddess, or a specific womb that exists. I just like the imagery of it. The Neo-Platonists had a similar idea - this Oneness that we all come from and return to. It's actually almost monist sounding, right? We are all essentially the same thing, born from the same substance, made of the same substance, and return to that substance when we return. But I think of it in a dualist way.

There's this spiritual substance (spirit, soul, mind, unconsciousness, etc.) - let's just call it Substance 1 for the sake of simplicity. And this substance is unquantifiable and unidentifiable and really hard to understand or know or label - because that's kind of the point of it. We can only feel it - in our guts, in our hearts, in our minds. We can't touch it with our hands, or see it or hear it or taste it or smell it or observe it in any way. It's extrasensory.

I like to imagine that we are that substance, at our cores. If our bodies ever ceased to exist, or if we were in a transition state between bodies, we would still be Substance 1. It's our emotions, our collective unconscious, the stuff of dreams, our creativity, our childish sense of wonder, our pleasure, our pain, etc. When we are on earth it is encased in a body, which is a different substance (Substance 2). It has to be a different entity, because it can be observed with our physical senses. We can see and feel and taste it. We can study it under a microscope. It gets hurt or sick, and we watch it heal (or not heal). It is observable, in a real, quantifiable way. It can be categorized and labeled. It can (more or less) be understood.

So we start as Substance 1 and end as Substance 1 (if we do indeed end). We still have access to Substance 1 while we are encased in Substance 2 (our bodies), because we are always Substance 1, whether or not we are at the moment connected to Substance 2.

Of course, at any given moment we can understand, we are connected to Substance 2, because that's the only way we can understand or acknowledge or interpret or observe things at all. I have no proof that Substance 1 exists before/after/outside Substance 2 at all. Perhaps it doesn't. I like to think it does, but it hardly matters (to me) if it actually does or not. I would not act differently in this life if I knew for certain that my soul would or would not extend past by body's life, so it makes no difference.

The point is, that I am drawn to thinking of myself this way, for better or worse. It is so engrained in me to believe that there is some essence to me that is more than just the sum of my bodily parts that I have to think it is a belief I would hold dear regardless of whether or not I had been brought up Christian and taught to believe that we all have souls and which go to Heaven or Hell when our bodies die. I was drawn to color and art from a young age. I loved stories and reading. I have always been drawn to fantasy. I have always put more significance on my mind than my body. It didn't matter what was happening in "the real world" if I had another world I could escape to in my mind.

And I think that, is essentially, why I would really have to talk myself into monism. Because I like Substance 1 better; I could never discard it in favor of Substance 2. And it doesn't make sense to me believe there isn't a Substance 2 - indeed, I would be way too scared to pretend Substance 1 is the only substance. While I like Substance 1, I also often keep my distance from it. It's unreliable. It's mysterious. To believe only in Substance 1 (and thus ignore the "real" physical world) would be to lose all control, lose anything tangible to grab onto, and, essentially, to go insane.

So Substance 2 must exist - it is the rock in the flowing stream of Substance 1, the tangible, sturdy, steady thing to grab onto. And I want Substance 1 to exist - because it's the flowing stream, and more interesting. And so I am a dualist.

But I also call myself an "atheist."

Being an "atheist" doesn't mean I'm not spiritual, in my own way. It doesn't mean I don't like sitting around philosophizing. It doesn't mean I don't believe in something by faith alone. The "something" that I believe in through faith alone, however, is not capital-G God, nor any other god or gods of any organized religion on this planet. There is no Creator. There is no Destiny. There is the Human Experience, and the Soul, and the Collective Unconscious, or something along those lines - but I vacillate between whether or not I think this other Force, whatever it is, has any sort of semblance of control over me and my actions, or even any understanding of me, or anyone else, or itself. Perhaps it is just Nature, going through its cycles as it does; and I am just a part of it, a cog in its incognizant machine.

I even (as you can see with these last two blog posts), debate with myself on the issue of my dualism. Do I actually believe there are two substances - mind and body - or do I just really want there to be two substances, because it's a more interesting story, and one that I am immediately drawn to?

So I call myself an atheist because I do not align with any modern religion or its beliefs, and I do not one anyone to get the impression that I do, or that I could be persuaded to. Calling myself an agnostic, I think, is not strong enough to get this point across. But really I would identify myself more as an apatheist - because not only do I not believe in god, but it really doesn't matter to my daily life if god does or does not exist - or even if there are one or two categories of substances in the world.

From the Wikipedia article, Apatheism

I like thinking about such things in the abstract, but have no real motivation to come to any sort of concrete conclusion. I'm fine with sitting in the corner and imagining the world I want to imagine, with its mind and body separation. It suits me. It doesn't really matter if it's "real" or "true" or not, because it's true to me. And even if someone could prove to me that God exists (or doesn't exist), or that everything I hold dear about my "essence" is really just nothing more than neurons firing in my brain or the chemicals and hormones in my body fluctuating their levels to influence my emotions or mood - it wouldn't matter. I would still make art. I would still feel things. I would still write. I would still go on pretending that what is in my mind is important and real - because that's what makes me feel like me, and I think it's what makes me good at the art and writing I do.

I've rambled on about all this long enough. I'll end here with a favorite quote by J.K. Rowling:

The Female Aesthetic - Central Core Imagery

I talked a bit about the idea of a "female aesthetic" in a previous post - so if you're interested in where I'm coming from, it might be a good idea to start there.

The gist is this - In the early 1970s, Judy Chicago created the "Fresno Feminist Art Program" at Fresno State College in California. Her goal was to create a safe, collaborative environment where women artists could experiment with art, learn from each other, and "redo" their art (and art history) educations, which until that point had been exclusively distributed by men (male teachers), thus forcing an undesired male perspective on female artists and disallowing them from developing their "own forms, artistic language, and subject matter." (I'm paraphrasing a Wikipedia article here, only because I am too lazy to go dig out my old art history articles/textbooks/etc. But what I learned in school about this movement is exactly the same thing.)

Miriam Schapiro, Big OX, 1967, acrylic on canvas.Image from Art News
http://www.artnews.com/2015/06/23/miriam-schapiro-pioneering-feminist-artist-dies-at-91/ 

What these fifteen women discovered, working together, was that there were similarities to some of their works - despite the range in media and style (abstraction, realism, etc.). Many of their pieces involved a "central image," which Judy Chicago interpreted as a vaginal/womb symbol. She (and other artists) developed this idea of "central core imagery" further in their artwork into the '70s and '80s. (Read a bit more about that here.)

Judy Chicago, Untitled Test Plate #6, 1974. China paint on porcelain, 14 in. in diameter, 1 1/4 in. in depth.
Image from Crocker Art Museum
http://legacy.crockerartmuseum.org/exhibitions/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/683-surveying-judy-chicago-1970-2010

This is what I often think of when making my own art - this "symbolic vagina." I used this literally for my thesis at EMU (using flowers as stand-ins for female genitalia to bring up subjects like rape, sexual violence, and female genital mutilation).

"Feminine Layers" - 22"x20" Watercolor Painting on Paper, 2009 - by Andrea Arbit

"Silk Caution" - 22"x30" Watercolor Painting on Paper, 2009 - by Andrea Arbit

In the years since, I think of this "central core" as less genital-specific and more like a woman's soul, essence, marrow, etc. These circles, flowers, etc. represent women/femininity/females specifically because of the historic equation with such shapes and female genitalia, but it's not really the genitalia I'm after so much as the elusive "core" of a woman's being, the "meaning" of a woman's life (the core of my being, the meaning of my life). The Brooklyn Museum link I posted above says that Chicago asked for "her vaginal imagery be read not literally, but metaphorically, as an active and powerful symbol of female identity" - and that's what I'm getting at when I think of "central core" imagery, too.

Plus, this way the imagery isn't limited to ciswomen with female genitals. Anyone who identifies as female - even someone who identifies as male but is fine embracing the feminine aspects of himself - can participate. GNR - Genitals Not Required.

This painting is even older than my thesis works, but still shows evidence of that "central core" idea
"Earring Close-Up" - Watercolor Painting on Paper, 2008 - by Andrea Arbit

Many of my floral colored pencil drawings (especially the ones that are close-ups of the centers of flowers) seem to fit this aesthetic.

"Dying Roses" - 5x7 Colored Pencil on Black Paper, 2014 - by Andrea Arbit

"Radiant Dahlia" - 5x7 Colored Pencil on Black Paper, 2015 - by Andrea Arbit

"Rose with a Hint of Aqua" & "Rose with a Hint of Purple" - 5x7 Colored Pencil Drawings on Black Paper, 2015 - by Andrea Arbit

Many of my pattern watercolors also fit this aesthetic.

I've always enjoyed symmetry, especially radial symmetry. Often in middle school/high school math class, I would use graph paper not for making graphs but for drawing geometric patterns radiating out from a central square or from one of the binder punch holes on the left of the paper. Radial symmetry calms me - it's calming to create, and it's calming to look at.

"Pattern Elizabeth in Pink and Purple" - 4"x6" Watercolor Painting on Paper, 2015 - by Andrea Arbit

"Pattern Fortia in Blue-Green" - 4"x6" Watercolor Painting on Paper, 2015 - by Andrea Arbit 

"Pattern Organza in Blue-Violet" - 4"x6" Watercolor Painting on Paper, 2015 - by Andrea Arbit

"Pattern Tamika in Yellow-Green" - 4"x6" Watercolor Painting on Paper, 2015 - by Andrea Arbit

"Pattern Victoria in Yellow-Pink" - 4"x6" Watercolor Painting on Paper, 2015 - by Andrea Arbit

"Pattern Darcy in Red" - 5"x7" Watercolor Painting on Paper, 2015 - by Andrea Arbit

"Pattern Sherelle in Yellow, Purple & Pink" - 5"x7" Watercolor Painting on Paper, 2015 - by Andrea Arbit

I'm not saying that men can't produce "central core" artwork, or can't relate to it. (We're all born of women, after all; we all know women.) I'm only saying that I often notice a "central core" style in my artwork - not something that I consciously intend, but something that creeps up because it's a composition or a shape that I'm drawn to - and then when I do notice that, I tend to attribute it to my "femaleness" (a "femaleness" I'm proud of - thanks to that Great Goddess article I read in high school, which I talked about in a post yesterday).

Maybe you don't buy that - that there's a female aesthetic, that females and males could experience the world differently, have different internalized symbolism based on the way their bodies are wired. I'm not sure I entirely believe it either; I'd like to think I'm more than my XX chromosomes. But it is something I think about - usually after I've already finished a piece, when I'm on the "other side" of its creation and have the opportunity to step back and consider what it is, what it looks like, what it reminds me of, where it came from.

Using Photography as Source Images

I've already talked a little bit about taking photography to use as source material for watercolor paintings and colored pencils, but there's more thought that goes into the process besides just 1) take picture and 2) create artwork, and today I'd like to focus on what goes on between those two steps.

First, I determine what sort of artwork a photograph would be best suited for - or, more likely, I'll start with a size and medium I feel like working in and go through my stock to see what photographs would work for the size and medium I'm considering.

For example, I've been doing a lot of 5"x7" colored pencil drawings, and so I went through my photographs and found several that I thought would work for that small size. Then I cropped the photographs to be the appropriate 5"x7" size, and printed them off from my computer so that I could look at them while creating the drawings.

Photographs that get up close and personal with the subject matter are great for small colored pencil drawings and watercolor paintings.

"Radiant Dahlia" 5x7 Colored Pencil Drawing by Andrea Arbit

In the drawings below, you can see that there is less detail to the leaves and flower petals in the "Impatiens in Rochester, NY" drawing than there is in the other two, because there is more of the plant visible, and so less space to get in to show the detail. For this reason, I often crop in closely for my colored pencil drawings, sometimes focusing on only one flower.

"Impatiens in Rochester, NY" 5x7 Colored Pencil Drawing by Andrea Arbit

"Rest Stop Zinnia" 5x7 Colored Pencil Drawing by Andrea Arbit

"Barcelona Roses" 5x7 Colored Pencil Drawing by Andrea Arbit

Besides the amount of foliage depicted in the photograph, I also look at the composition. Often, I do this when I am taking the actual photograph, coming up closer to the plant and capturing two or three flowers at a time within the frame. Otherwise, I do it when I select an image, and I crop down until I get a composition I like.

In the drawings above, you can see three different types of composition. There's the dual design of "Impatiens in Rochester, NY," which has the purple impatiens on the left side of the drawing and another plant on the right side. The drawing is almost perfectly split down the middle, so that the two sides take up an equal amount of space.

There is also the triangulation design of the "Rest Stop Zinnia" drawing, which has three flowers. I use this design a lot, because it's an easy way to both create focus (by emphasizing one flower - perhaps the tallest flower, or the closest flower in the foreground) and create balance (by balancing out the largest flower with two other, smaller flowers).

In "Barcelona Roses," there are only two flowers instead of three, but it's a similar idea. The flowers relate to each other, balancing each other out so that neither gets complete focus. Like the "Impatiens" drawing, it's almost symmetrical, with each flower taking up more or less equal space.

Another composition I like to do is to zoom in so close that the flower takes up the entire 5"x7" space and there is no (or very little) background visible.

"Rose with a Hint of Aqua" 5x7 Colored Pencil Drawing by Andrea Arbit

"Rose with a Hint of Purple" 5x7 Colored Pencil Drawing by Andrea Arbit

These designs are more "radial symmetry," since the flowers are centered on the page and the focus is on the petals radiating out from that center.

I do not typically use distance shots for creating my artwork. Even on larger paintings, I take the opportunity to blow up a single flower to several times its "real life size" so that I can focus on its details - and create "new" details for the flower, by imprinting patterns on the petals or otherwise "complicating" the simple image.

2 Rose Watercolor Paintings (in progress) by Andrea Arbit

Each of the two (still in progress) patterned rose watercolor paintings above is 15"x22" in size - but still I chose to focus on only two roses per painting.

I do have a lot of "distance" shots that I love - especially of the places I've traveled to, where I take photos of landscapes and landmarks (like any good tourist) just as much as close-ups of flower gardens. And I do intend to use these someday and make more landscape work. It just hasn't been a priority lately.

Similarly, I made a few colored pencil drawings of still life displays when I was in high school, and intend to do more of those in the future. These types of drawings fit more objects onto a single sheet of paper, and were quite successful.

"Still Life with Drum Set" - Colored Pencil Drawing on Black Mat Board by Andrea Arbit,
2005/2006 - A.P. Studio Art, Senior Year of High School

All that is just a taste of what goes into the process of selecting a photograph to use, cropping it to the right size (and an ideal composition), and transferring the design into the medium I want to use, whether it's watercolor or colored pencil.

For me, a lot of it is intuitive. Before I took art classes in high school and college and learned about the elements and principles of design, I understand that some images just "worked better" than others - I just lacked the vocabulary to explain why.

I remember painting flowers on a t-shirt for a crafts project with a group of girls from my church sometime in elementary school. I selected a stencil that six or seven flowers on it, and traced the flowers onto the shirt as they were on the stencil - in a grid. Then, when I added the puffy paint, I naturally colored the flowers so that three of them had red or nearly red hues (such as orange or pink). Those red flowers "triangulated" and created a triangle emphasis I hadn't consciously intended but had chosen because I sensed that it "looked nice." The mother who was leading the craft saw what I'd done and drew everyone's attention to it, praising it as a good composition.

So I don't often sit down and purposefully think about what kind of composition I'm creating, because I have a pretty good sense of what "works" and what "doesn't work" intuitively. But whether it takes a second of unconscious consideration or several minutes of deliberate thought to work out, it's still a part of the process in selecting a source image and creating a piece of art.