I'm a day late and a dollar short. What even happened last week?? Let's review.
Ah yes. Wow that was only a week ago? It feels like a month! It was a stressful week both professionally, personally and artistically. I didn't paint daily like I should have, but I focused on a commission for my mother in law as I needed to do.
I felt better overall with the quality of work I created last week. I painted a few more bonfires, trying out a few more of my ideas. It was a mixed bag--I like the vibrant neon colors I used later, but some of them looked more like burning books than burning wood.
I've been trying to figure out what to do for the piece my MIL requested for her living room. Over the past two weeks I've tried a lot of small color and composition explorations. Again I was starting to feel blocked and discouraged, until I broke out some larger paper. I intended to do one thing, but the simple Z composition that came off my palette knife was so powerful and compelling by itself that I had to leave it as it was and grab another sheet of paper for my original idea.
The lesson I hope I learned this week: I really need to get brave enough to work larger more of the time--I feel a lot freer when I use even a 10x14 piece of paper instead of a little 5x7. I don't trust myself enough to do it though; I'm so worried about "ruining" and "wasting" the paper. Christmas is next week and I have my fingers crossed I'll get a lot of paper as gifts from my generous family. A roll of 100% cotton Bee paper is on my list and I'll be excited to see what I can do if I feel less pressure to conserve paper.
