Sometimes having a
brilliant idea comes in a instant. However, giving life to that brilliant
idea sometimes can take quite a while.
For example, I remember reading
that it took 8 years for Salma Hayek to be able gather all the money and
collaborators necessary to make the movie Frida.
My great idea came
more than 3 years ago, when in a flash, I imagined how great it would be to create
an image of a blue-eyed redhead wearing beautiful henna on her hands.
First I had to find the
perfect redhead with sparkling blue eyes. Not a small feat, as I'm sure you can imagine. Did you know there are a lot of redheads
with pretty brown eyes?!
My search finally ended last summer, when one of my henna clients, — a lovely young woman named Lily —, came by my studio for another henna session, flaunting her gorgeous hennaed hair and her crystal clear blue eyes. She had just graduated from acting school and
I knew she would be the perfect model for my henna project.
She was delighted at the thought of being able to play the henna muse and we tentatively schedule a
date for sometime in the fall to do the henna and photo shoot, but because I
still wasn't clear on what kind of design I wanted to create, I decided to
postpone the project until I had more material.
More than 6 months would pass before
I started seeing clearly what kind of background I needed to use to get the contrast I wanted create, what kind of
dress and accessories the model would wear to complement the henna, what kind of henna gloves I
was going to design (mid or full gloves, fingerless, etc.), what angles I would shoot, what poses, what style,
etc.
This long creative process is often like working on a
complicated puzzle where you work on building the contour first. And then you try to put
together some same colored pieces together. Then slowly you've formed big
chunks and manage to place them where they belong in the big picture, until
suddenly everything come together to form the completed puzzle.
We finally got to reschedule the
henna session and photo shoot in April. And I have to say, after 3 longs years, it was
worth the wait!
