Today felt really good. I felt a peace which I haven’t felt for a month or so now.
I changed the parameters in my head about my 365 challenge.
For the first 125 days, I pushed myself to create a work of art every single day. For January, February and March I made it through ok, but something changed about a month ago. I found myself getting a bit fearful. Not so much that I couldn’t think of inspiration for a days work, but more I was dumbing it down or not doing what I would like to do because I couldn’t finish it in time. Then it seemed to spiral downhill from there. If I couldn’t get it done in time, then I’d do something else quick, if I did it quick, it generally wasn’t very good…at this point, I started to not look forward to this daily chore.
Well, this is my challenge. It is for me. I feel I’ve sort of grown out of the rules I had created for myself. Luckily the challenge I placed on myself is simply stated as “365 Days of Art & Creativity”. This means I can dictate what art & creativity are.
For the foreseeable future, I want to work larger. I would like many facets to an image. I would like to quietly reflect, compose, sketch, and edit a work of art before I get started. If it takes twenty days to complete a piece of work, I want to be happy with that which I complete. I don’t think I would do that, but taking that stress away, brings the joy back.
I went to the library today and brought home at least 100 pounds of art books. I feel like my possibilities just multiplied exponentially! I can’t wait to get lost in them brainstorming and coming up with ideas. Yes. It is turning fun again.
So today I completed the painting from the other day. A girlfriend gave me this little potted plant as a hostess gift the other day. When I saw it against the orange table clothe I have, I just had to stop and paint it. That is what color does to me. Stops me in my tracks! What I didn’t think about when I arranged this little still life is how do you communicate two different orange objects when in real life they really do look the same? If you used the same orange on both subject matter as a viewer, you wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the two. It would be an entirely flat plane of orange.
My solution was to add alizarin red & magenta to the orange table clothe and yellow and cadmium red to the flowers. The brighter warmer orange comes forward and the darker recedes. It was nice to feel like I had a moment to think this through today. The composition, still needs a little more consideration. This is where you may begin to see a difference. In the future, I could add other objects and work on the backgrounds which take more time.
So today represented a new beginning. I feel invigorated and ready to try to push myself further as an artist.
The journey continues!
Be Creative Mary 