I mentioned in a couple of my progress blogs that I’d been painting. I have been experimenting recently with space nebulae.

Had to teach myself the valuable lesson of having fun once again a couple nights ago during my painting session. I was trying so hard not to mess up a painting I was working on, even though it was study painting and I should have been exploring concepts rather than trying to do a “masterpiece.” So guess what happened?

Yep, I messed it up. I was so not happy with it. I decided to play around with the mess I had on my canvas.

Wow! Rather than pulling my paint with the brush over the canvas, I started to push it. Because I had such a mess, I was getting incredible results. Well, I thought they were. Here’s what resulted:

While waiting for this one to dry, I started a new canvas and I just let this playful state I’d reached have at it. Here’s it’s result:

Because I needed to let it dry, this is where I stopped for the moment. I’m sure there will be more to come.

Here’s the start to another piece:

Lesson: if you’re struggling, do you have expectations attached to what you’re doing? Are you so longing for perfection that you’re frustrating yourself? What would happen if you loosened up and let yourself play a little?

I keep having to remind myself that my inner artist child needs to play. These are smaller works or study pieces for crying out loud. Even if it wasn’t, there is absolutely nothing that says I can’t paint the canvas over and start again. It’s like throwing out pages of a manuscript. So you spent a little time going down the wrong path. Who cares? Did you see something interesting along the way? Did you learn something? It’s impossible to go the wrong way and not learn something from it, even if it’s to follow street signs better or that it’s better to risk a turnoff so that you can get going in the right direction again.

Now, go play.