creating scents

complexity

Another post on gardenia, accompanied by a sketch of the flower, as seen this morning in the house of tauer, on the little bush, still blooming from time to time in the living room. Actually, it is a sketch done again on the wacom tablet, using an H2 pen emulation. Quite funny, how accurate the painter software together with the wacom simulates a pencil on rough paper. I did todays sketch this morning, smelling the latest version of my many gardenia trials.  Smelling and trying to sketch another flower on 2 dimensions is meditative, and I am the longer the more convinced that painting the illustration and painting the scent are different manifestations of what  happens somewhere inside.

Inside me, that is to say.

Contrary to the sketch, however, the scent got quite complex. A bit non-transparent for sure. Kal brought this up in the comment section of yesterday’s post. The longer I work on a scent the more imminent the danger that I get too complex and try to get too many things into the scent. So, already yesterday, when looking at the formula, I figured that I need to write it out today and have a look at it. “Write it out” means: Instead of writing so and so much of my base x and so and so much of my base y  rather write how much of each ingredient that is in the base. Thus, a formula that still looks sort of neat and sharp ( 20 ingredients) will finally show its complexity.

I am using 2 bases in my gardenia trial(s): A gardenia base that is quite rough and spicy. And a white flower base (green, heady, and heavy, somewhere between lily of the valley, lily and a non indolic jasmine). Both are created with around 10-15 ingredients, and they share some of the ingredients. Thus, in order to have a clearer look at the formula, and where I actually stand in terms of complexity and number of ingredients: Time to write the formula out. Ingredient by ingredient. And maybe I will see a few ingredients that might not be necessary, allowing me to reduce complexity, a bit at least.

On a side note: I love the waxy, dark, shiny leaves of gardenia, with their 3 dimensional structure, and this wonderful obscure green.