Playing with color

Yesterday, for Mother's Day, my sweet boys (all three of them) gave me what I wanted most. Time to do whatever I wanted. That's right. After church, a whole afternoon stretched out in front of me with no obligations. No homework to help with. No hedgehog cages to clean. No soccer of any kind. Nothing but glorious freetime for painting as far as the eye could see.

So.....

I sat in my little studio with my current painting in front of me.

Cup of coffee?

Check.

Candles lit?

Check.

Music playing?

Check.

Fresh painting water?

Check.



Inspiration?

Uncheck.

Creativity?

Uncheck.

Ability to add one single thing to the painting in front of me.

Complete and total uncheck.


AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

Why is it that I can never live up to the expectations of uninterupted painting time? It makes me feel like there's a little voice saying, "Okay, all your excuses are gone. Let's see what you can REALLY do."

I CAN'T TAKE THAT KIND OF PRESSURE!!!

Several times during the afternoon my sweet husband would find me reading, or pacing or playing computer games and gently say, "You need to go sit down and paint. Just pick up a brush and paint something."

And he was right, of course.

But I just could NOT do anything with my current painting. Could. Not. Do. It.

So I tossed it aside and picked up a picture of a chicken that I already had drawn in and decided to take a stab at it. My main motivation was that I had nothing invested in the chicken. If I screwed it up, I could just throw it away. That's very freeing, you know.

So I started. and the first section started out pretty good. But then I immediately screwed it up.
See that kind of purple area on the very front of the chicken? That is a very muddy purple, and MUDDY IS NOT GOOD.

But here's the thing. Once I knew that this painting was ruined, I felt free to try some new combinations of colors. I felt free to make notes right on the painting about what colors I was mixing. I felt free to mix some colors on the background area of the paper.

Some of them are pretty good.

Some of them are seriously homely.

I learned some stuff.

Someone once said, "Paint like you have all the paint and paper in the world." I love that advice. I learned some stuff, and all it cost me was a little bit of paint, and a piece of paper.

I can and will redraw the chicken. I'll use some of the colors I discovered on this rough draft. I will definitely NOT use some of the colors I discovered on this rough draft. I'm betting I'll come up with a pretty darn good chicken.

Best of all, by the end of the day yesterday, my creativity was back and painting was fun again. That's a pretty good payoff for a screwed up picture of a chicken.