Try Something New

I haven't much touched watercolors since childhood. Partly as I'm intimidated by how deliberate you need to be- my style is more "splash and stab." If something didn't turn out right, you just cover it in more paint. You can't do that with watercolors. So for someone like me, watercolor is as much meditation as creation.

Sometimes I have to push myself to create, just to keep at it. If I'm really not feeling into it, I'll try to do something different just to make it more interesting.

This particular night I was stuck in bed all out of spoons, and could not imagine doing anything let alone painting. However my loving partner prodded me into creating something and I decided to use watercolors to paint my dozing cat.

This was more brazen than normal- I'd only touched watercolors once or twice in my adult life, and I almost exclusively paint subjects from pictures. The medium wasn't so different from childhood and brought back some nostalgia; I was using a children's watercolor set with the hard paint that I had gotten from a garage sale for like $0.25. However I still had to paint fast as I had no guarantee my kitty wasn't going to jump down or decide to take a bath at any second.

Such cattitude- she did not like my staring, but went with it.

If I hadn't forced myself to create that night; if I hadn't been feeling overwhelmed, in pain and uncreative; then I never would have stretched to do something different. I never would have painted my favorite painting to date.

If you are feeling so uninspired that the idea of creating something fills you with dread, try something  new. Get some cans of spray paint and a piece of hardwood and go to town on it. Get a pair of latex gloves and fingerpaint with acrylic. Ditch the brush and paint with a palette knife. So it might be weird and probably never going to see the light of day, be reckless and don't give a shit. Do it for the experience, not the product. So be it!