Work In Progress Wednesday: Birds and Fearless Painting

My newest journal page, sketches of a few common birds in my yard. The right side has been colored, while the left is still waiting on that.

More often than not these days, I find myself looking at my brushes and paints and sighing. When I crack open my journal or a stark piece of crisp new paper, I freeze up and feel uninspired. Do I think this is just burn out? Possibly, but it doesn't really feel like it. It's a stifling sort of feeling where my brain goes 'what to draw... what to draw...' and coming up with nothing at all that tickles its fancy, shuts off.

Somewhere over the course of the past ten years, I became a perfectionist when it comes to my artwork. Doodling? I don't do that. If it isn't something that I can envision clearly finished in my head, I have a hard time even starting. The process of creating has gotten sort of lost and I focus a lot more on the finished product. You'll find it not only in the lack of sketches in my 'sketchbook' but also in the pages of my art journal. These days it's not a haven for experimentation and randomness, it's become a sort of scrapbook or a pictoral phone conversation; if I don't have something of interest to report I don't bother.

I've become uptight about creating, I treat it almost like a chore that I need to make time to do. Sometimes, and this pains me to say, I feel guilty for leaving the dishes or the laundry to go paint or work in my journal. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, there's no outside reason for this... in fact the dude is so supportive of my art that he's constantly bugging me to go make a mess, to quit my day job and chase my dream of being a paint covered house wife. The simple fact of the matter is, I'm not very kind to myself and I have some issues to work out when it comes to how I view the way I spend time - as in, I need to realize that if it makes me happy it's worth doing. Last night I read a blog post that bitch slapped me, it was as if my 20 year old self walked into the room and knocked my head on straight. It set off the light in my brain that made me realize that not only have I been feeling guilty like some crazy person, I've also become nearly incapable of relaxing - in general, but very much so with my art.

And so, I'm going to do something about it. I signed up for:

And I'm going to share it here with all of you, with my family and friends, with my amazingly awesome husband so I have some accountability and won't chicken out - because in all honesty guys, I have a bad habit of backing out of things that scare me. And this scares the control freak in me, a lot. It scares the part of me that doesn't allow me to fully meditate, to let go and just let things happen, the blockade on my path. And I'm hoping that doing this will allow me to tear that bitch down, brick by brick and put me on the path of all around fearlessness. But even if it just starts with the art, baby steps are still steps forward.


P.S. I'm also getting my creative toes wet over at Twinkle, Twinkle with the Summer of Color 2: Ice Cream Inspirations project. You can check that out by clicking on the image in my sidebar, it's free and promises to be fun!

P.P.S. Part of this adventure is going to involve a destash of a lot of some supplies. Part of the process of letting go for me, means physically letting go of supplies I don't need/want or won't ever use. Once I go through stuff, I may have an 'internet garage sale' here on the blog. If anyone's interested in some crafty stuff for cheap, let me know. :)