I don't consider myself a painter, and I love to paint. First thing each morning, I sit down to my table, close my eyes and make marks within the square that was taped off the night before (a 3 1/2" square ruler is used as a guide). It started one morning in September, I was wanting to paint, but not knowing what. I enjoyed it so much that I've done it every day since, for 259 days.
I try not to think, to pick up the pencil and just go. The lines show up in all kinds of shapes- abstract, a response to the bird songs outside, something that's on my mind or table top, etc. The great thing is that there are no expectations or fails with blind drawings. After the penciling, I jot down the first few words that come. I don't always know what they mean.
It's traced with a black pen. The meditative feeling of this is centering. Tracing from right to left slows me down, and helps to keep on the pencil line. Sometimes the pencil is erased.
And then the watercolors. These have accumulated over a few years. With tiny magnets on the bottom, they're kept in an old colored pencil tin. Most of these are from Ruby Mountain. I especially love her Ruby's Grey, Pinkest Pink, silvery Spark, and clearly my thing for blue is showing.
Sometimes I focus on one color (today it was different greens), or I might choose one each from the three primary colors- a blue, yellow and red (usually it's a pink), sometimes adding a gray. I really enjoy mixing them to create the other colors, and experimenting with different combinations.
The first months' paintings were mixed in with other notes, journaling, what-nots, and done on both sides of the page. A friend saw this and insisted I only use one side, without other scribblings around them. It's been good to have cleaned up my act around this.
All of the parts of this ritual are filling some need- drawing with freedom, thinking about color, the gestures of painting and tracing. It's become a kind of emotional journal, a way to contemplate some of my connections with certain lines, shapes and colors, and a way to try new things with zero risk. Also, this tiny stretch with a different medium, before a day of stitching, seems to loosen and wake things up. It's interesting to notice how painting informs the stitching, and visa-versa. And, when all else fails, no matter what happens with the rest of the day, something has been made.
I hope that this has answered all of the questions, please let me know if there are any other painting process wonderings!
