A whole day for art!

Today was unusual in that every member of my family is either busy away from home until late tonight or out of town.  The car has been able to rest in the driveway for the entire day.  Woohoo!  Like every day, I come home after the morning drive to school and immediately see every bit of mess, every glass or plate that was delivered to the kitchen after I had done the dishes, and the unfinished paint job in the family room.  After a couple of hours of picking up, washing, vacuuming and reorganizing, I realized I was wasting a rare gift - a free day.  I put away the sponges, the cleaners, and the vacuum and got out my watercolors.

Once again, I cruised quickly through my book of Tim Burton's work and started playing around with pencil, pen and paint.  Let me point out again that I have no idea what I'm doing.  As I've said before, I quit after a single day in my one and only art class after having the instructor take my sketch pad out of my hand and write a big, fat "F" across the page.  Day 1.  What a jerk.

Learning to play around and shut up my internal critic is getting a little easier. Making more time for art will be easier when my son finishes school (I have one of those widgets on the computer that is counting down the days).  I'm not sure I'll know what to do with myself that next day :-)

Back to the fun stuff.  So this is the silly stuff I did today, all of it inspired if not flat out copied from Tim Burton.  They are about 2" square.  Initially, I was thinking of artwork that I could sandwich between glass and solder, making a pendant.  There are a lot of soldered pendants on sale online, but they all appear to be prints or copies or clip art, but not original artwork.  I thought it would be fun to make something with an original piece of art.  Of course I wouldn't try to make and sell something that was a sad attempt to replicate another artist's work - this is just practicing with painting. 

 

 

Today's bit of wisdom for me came from the fabulous Debbie Fecher Gramstad who told me it's all about the journey and the daily practice.  Every day that I play around and work at making it more mine and less influenced by someone else's work, it will become more of MY art.  Today was a good day in terms of turning down the volume of my inner critic.  I think I managed to actually mute her today.

Today I am also going to resume another practice Debbie reminded me about, the gratitude journal.  Today I am grateful for a day to paint.  I am grateful for the space to play and for the opportunity to create without a clock or a watch ticking and poking me to do something I "should" do.  I am grateful for not having to wear shoes for nine hours.  Woohoo!

This was a good day.