When struggling with a thing you don’t want to do, go do art?
In a fit of wanting to just Do An Art Thing, I printed out the mandala from Mandala Microsample on some plain copier paper and busted out the colored pencils.
What I learned from that was that pressing the pencils hard enough to achieve bright colors made my wrists ache. I also didn’t like the way they didn’t blend well.
Which turned out to be a perfect moment to be lured out to one of those “non-painters come paint and drink” places. I painted a thing and it’s not great and it’s in acrylic and it’s not the subject matter I would have chosen and yet.
And yet it got me working backwards of what my “do the thing I know how to do first” inclination and so we did backgrounds before foregrounds and gosh that worked, huh.
And yet it got me doing wet on wet and blending on the canvas not just the palette (I mean, the “palette” was a paper plate, there’s only so much one can do) and some of it not actually blending but being textured and gosh that worked, too.
And yet it reminded me that I have a stack of canvases and brushes and oil paints and such in the closet of my office/studio.
So now what?
Somehow the next step doesn’t seem to be painting with acrylics or even oils, but markers and watercolors. I’m still not sure how that worked out, and I’m deeply unsure if it’s working. At least I’m putting in hours towards the ten thousand, eh?
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