Bad art needs practice too!

Quick art exercise of the day - learning to use this long tipped brush to make one stroke leaves / petals. Didn’t go so well. But who is judging!

This beach could use a clean up

Lately, some of my “bad art” has actually turned out good - I immediately took to sharing those pieces with everyone and the tiny ego lapped up all the compliments and promptly forgot the point of this exercise. More so, ego being ego - decided to take the leap and follow expert painters time lapsed videos instead of the step by step tutorials for beginners I had been following so far. Well the proof is in the pudding or in this case proof is in this wreck of a beach that was supposed to be a serene sepia scape - instead of green sky, muddy sand and what looks like a Bermuda Triangle beneath the sun in the ocean. I don’t see sepia anywhere and I am definitely finding no serenity looking at this picture - Infact it’s giving me anxiety that I need to clean it up somehow! 

I am feeling that weight in real life too with way too many big changes in the last week with kids moving to Lansing (more on that later), in-person work meetings, and home maintenance projects I took on. I have to remember that I am a beginner - a beginner grief practitioner. I need to stay with my step by step guided pace. As much as I want to be “back into swing of things” …. I’m just not there yet. If I push myself too hard, I’ll just have a mess to cleanup. 

I am going to keep this dirty beach picture on my table to remind me to slow down. It’s a process. Can’t skip steps. Put one foot in front of the other. Breathe. 

Ambition = Anxiety

Well….here we are. I fell into the trap of taking on a complicated idea instead of the low stakes “bad art” I was making following along you-tube tutorials. I wanted to make this for Diya’s new apartment- but the project grew in size and complexity and became agonizing and stressful. Nothing seems to be working in it despite spending several hours on it. Totally defeats the purpose of why I started doing art. 

Tomorrow- back to bad art - no objective, no expectations. Bad art = quiet heart.