A life of invention

“Ours is a life of invention,” says Julia Cameron in today’s reading from her book, The Artist’s Way Every Day -- which seems totally apropos, looking at this creation from yesterday.

This time, instead of letting the technique take care of itself and exploring the colors, I let the colors take care of themselves and tried a new technique -- partly intentionally, but mostly by accident (which I'm beginning to think is always the best way).

I started with a fresh canvas (woot! First time I've worked with a clean canvas in QUITE a while) and just sprayed it down with water (which I don't usually do).

I then did the Christopher Mathie trick -- taking the saran wrap off of my palette and applying it to the canvas, moving it around a bit... and that's when I realized I liked the shape it was taking, and the marks it was leaving (I always love it when something else leaves marks and I don't have to; I'm working on that) so I just left it there, all scrunched up, sprayed a little water to get some drips, and then set it flat to dry.

And I love the result. I'm not sure it says anything about where my style will be taking me, and I'm not totally fond of the way the colors muddy up a bit in the middle right, but it's still a cool piece, and it was -- like all the ones I've been playing with lately -- really fun to do.

So. As my husband would say (we all think it's going on his tombstone) -- What did you learn from this? Mostly I think it's a little more unpredictable than I'm comfortable with -- which of course means I'm going to try it again! But it's a reminder that I do need to get more comfortable making marks of my own; I can't avoid that forever.

This is such an interesting time for all of us -- artists or not, we're all living a life of invention right now. We have to keep finding new ways to cope, and for sure not all of them will work, or be a good fit for us. But it doesn't hurt to keep on experimenting; and hopefully we learn more about ourselves in the process. It's all good!