Finally finished: 5 new HaBits pictures

Jeanette Bohn
Nov 27
3 min read

Painting "Family Trip" by Jeanette Bohn — Family Trip

It was just one of those weeks. In addition to two trips within Germany (with just about everything that can go wrong when travelling by train), I had three deadlines on three consecutive days.

On Saturday, I handed over a commissioned work (great joy!), on Sunday I hung my wall at the artists' Christmas market in St. Paul's Church, and on Monday was the deadline for a tender I had been working towards for weeks.

Now I finally have time to reflect and share it with you. Since I consider the commissioned work to be private, I would like to show you the new HaBits motifs, which I have already teased several times.

Painting "Best Friend" by Jeanette Bohn — Best Friend

HaBits 2.0

I painted five new pictures for the submission. The deadline was both a challenge and an incentive for me. I may still lose the competition (keep your fingers crossed for me!), but I have at least won in the sense that I now have five finished, large-format pictures that I can exhibit. A little time pressure sometimes does me good ;)

Those who are familiar with my HaBits pictures will recognise the style – nevertheless, I have developed them further in terms of theme and technique, breaking away from the square format and choosing scenes in which the focus on technology pushes every other reality into the background.

Painting "Me Time" by Jeanette Bohn — Me Time

Ready or not?

Have you ever wondered how I know when a painting is ‘finished’? Even though there is no objective standard for this, it is a mixture of the following considerations:

Are there areas of the painting that bother me? If so, I should probably change something.
Is the work interesting from both near and far – in its entirety as well as in its details?
How does the painting feel – do I feel like I've gotten the most out of it? Do I like it, would I like to show it?
Am I afraid that every additional brushstroke will make the work worse rather than better? If so, then it's time to stop!

Painting "1:0" by Jeanette Bohn — 1:0 (Final version, even though some areas remain "unfinished" on purpose)

Rocky roads

Occasionally, I reach my goal straight away with a painting, but much more often there are phases in which I am dissatisfied with the work and have to find out why. That is the creative process, which, by the way, I would never want to leave to AI. Because I grow with my tasks – and I don't want the most likely solution, I want to find MY solution!

That takes time, and I have to look at the work again and again – ironically, I often do this digitally and try out how it could continue. With the brush, everything turns out completely different – usually even better, more interesting. This can be seen here in the example of ‘Echo Chamber’, where I first had to find a composition and consider if I wanted to play with bold black elements before I decided to work with a silhouette and emphasise the spatiality of the scene more strongly.