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Week 3 Recap - Grit and Grace

One of the main reasons for taking Katie's class was to break out of my comfort zone. While I started my art journey creating watercolours, it has been many years since I have relied solely on paint as my medium of choice. Further, when I was creating solely in mixed media, thematically they stretched from abstract to scenics. Rarely, if ever, did I focus on people and virtually never, portraiture. So imagine my distress when this week's lessons were all about faces. Ack!

To say there were some misses would be an understatement.
One morning I drew and scribbled over face after face after face. Re-gessoing the canvas, I'd try again. I wasn't sure if I would ever get over the hump.

Mid-week, I did a longer meditation, turned on the music, closed my eyes and surrendered myself to the process. This was the result:


Okay. Not stellar. A little muddy but it was a FACE! Imagine my surprise when it began to dictate the direction. I was humming ... literally AND figuratively. The process completely took over and the final result was, I think, a message from Spirit.


Comfort zone? Gone! I've been blasted into new territory via hyper-drive. Even though my previous process was frenetic, it often wasn't directed. More like a timed event. Paste as much shit down as I could in 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1. STOP! This current phase is still frenetic but broken by giant pauses to listen. What do I need to do now? Where does this need to go? As soon as *I* start directing, the process goes downhill in a hurry. Things get muddy again and my brain feels swathed in giant bundles of cotton batting.


Take this journal spread above ... I stopped working on the right side when I stopped hearing what else to do. I did however continue on the left side. For me, they tell very different stories ... one (mr. dog) on the precipice of 'what's next-ness' while the dude has lost all life, bunged down under my undirected smoodging around.


This one (above) I'm really excited about ... still a work-in-progress. But look at how alive and vibrant it is?! Lots of stuff going on here. And again Spirit Dog comes out to talk. Is that my face behind the crow mask?? I dunno. Looks remarkably like my Bear & Crow dude up above to me.
I can't wait for where our final week will take me!

And finally, I thought it would be fun to see the progress on the Big Painting starting from when I initially created this canvas 10 years or so ago.