Happy Sunday everyone!
Here is this week’s painting and photo/painting creation that I just finished working on. My process is simple. I sit down and paint with whatever colors I feel like painting with, creating blobs of color and a few shapes. Sometimes I add paint splatters at the end. It is totally free-form watercolor play. When I’m done painting I photograph the painting and go through my catalog of photographs, finding one (or more) that I think might be interesting combined with the painting.
Then I begin playing with adding the photo(s), playing with blend modes and masks and finally settle on a finished composition.
I love this…
Creating without expectation
Sometimes I am surprised and delighted with what I create. Other times I think, “That didn’t work so well.”
But it doesn’t matter because the joy is in the creating, not in the results. Children do this all the time, at least before they’ve learned to self-censor and begin judging their own creations. But we adults are less good at it. I often feel the need to apologize in advance to readers of this blog, saying things like, “This is what I painted this week. It’s not really very good and didn’t turn out how I wanted it to turn out…”
In fact, I just erased a sentence that said something like that about my creation this week. It is so tricky, talking about the urge to apologize without somehow making a disparaging or dismissing comment about my work.
Repeat after me…
The joy is in the creating, not the results
Judging the stuff we make has been programmed into us from an early age—at school, at home, and with our friends. When my daughters were in grade school and I signed up my youngest daughter for an after-school art class I had an interesting conversation with the very seasoned amazing teacher of the class. He said, “I have to get to these kids before they reach third grade. Because by then they are convinced that they can’t draw and they are no good at art.”
I felt sad to hear that then and I feel sad now thinking about how many people miss out on the healing joy of creating because they are convinced that they are no good at it.
If that is you—if you believe that you are no good at art and that keeps you from trying new things, stop saying that to yourself! Like any activity in life, the more you practice something, the better you get!
“Be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.”
― Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
The more we practice, the better we get
My 11-year-old granddaughter started playing violin last summer. Her first efforts were painful to my ears. But she keeps learning and practicing and keeps getting better and better at it. If she had given up at the first awful sounds she made, what a loss that would have been to her.
I speak from experience. During my school years I played clarinet and then later on, bass clarinet, in our school band. I also took piano and organ lessons and played the organ in our church occasionally as a teenager. At first my playing was pretty awful but with many years of practice and playing I grew my musical skills.
Though I’ve never picked up a clarinet since high school nor do I play piano anymore, my experiences in band and playing piano were some of the happiest experiences of my school years. Through them I developed a lifelong love of music.
Give yourself the gift of creating. It’s one of the most healing, long-lasting gifts you can give yourself. And also give yourself the gift of not judging what you create, especially at the tender beginning stages of your creating.
“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner—continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you—is a fine art, in and of itself.”
― Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
May you walk in beauty.
Photograph of the original painting
Original Photograph
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