Be the Flower not the Pear!

Some of you may remember me talking about taking a painting class in the fall. While I enjoyed the entire 6 weeks -- I am pretty hard on myself when it comes to making art. Quite a few things I ended the night with I didn't like. The one painting I love love love was on a CHEAPO 3.99 wood panel from Wal-Mart that I'm afraid might crack the wood on the top is so thin. Need to fix that somehow...... but I digress.  Learning to paint and painting pretty things are two things that don't always go together. Even the masters of painting painted things they hated and weren't really that attractive. It's a learning process.

On the last two nights I brought a HUGE (20 x 30 I think) wood panel to paint on, along with an idea of a painting that I wanted to use for inspiration -- a photo of a bowl of pears I had taken. I couldn't wait to start -- I was pretty excited to paint my biggest painting to date.

After first 2 hours and 55 minutes this is what I had.

I hated it. But that is an understatement really about what I felt about it. HUGE understatement. It was ugly. super dooooper ugly. Even my husband said it wasn't the best thing I had ever painted, ha ha. I had to promise everyone in class that I wouldn't do anything bad like run over it with my car until the next week.

Anyway, I brought it back on the last night and added more ugliness to it trying to "fix" it. That just was NOT going to happen! Nothing could fix it. It was too planned. To fake. To flat. to ugly. too everything.

I gave it another 2 hours and 45 minutes and hated it even more, but with a palette full of paint that I couldn't waste and 15 minutes left I decided to make some changes, lol!  I grabbed the biggest, stiffest paint brush I had and the dark green paint and went to town. Hiding my dislike and letting my ARM do the work not my brain. I didn't think about pears, flowers or even circles or color. I just let my arm work. and my heart.

And this is basically what I ended up with. You can see a few things left from the original -- but you can't see them in the first picture I shared because I hadn't painted them in yet, ha ha.

The purple on the bottom and the white and the blue circles at the top. That's all that was left of the original. When I left the studio I was in LOVE with it. And brought it home to percolate. inspire. sit and just be.

I put it in a spot that I walked by 30 times a day -- and I often stopped to look at it. I drank my coffee standing in front of it. pondering it. thinking about it. feeling it. being it.

I slowly started adding things here and there to it. An outline in black. Some red instead of blue circles. Some texture in red. stencils. more stencils. some scraping. and then some more stencils. and some sharpie. and some metal stamps. and and and until it was complete. 

And then -- after several weeks and 20 or more 10 minute sessions here and there, it was completely complete. and I love it.

It's the little details that I love. Like this.

and this.

and especially this!

oh, and this too!

So, the moral of the story -- don't put yourself in a corner with a project by completely planning it out with a preconceived notion of what you want it to look like. Feel it and create from your heart and it will be beautiful!

That's all for today -- stay tuned for our Saturday reveal of the Whatevers!! Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!