What I Want for 2012

Practice Painting #1

First, without sounding too negative, I want to state what I DON'T want for 2012. I don't want a bunch of expectations of myself that, when not met, leave me feeling like a failure, a loser, a procrastinator, or just plain pathetic.

What I DO want for 2012 is simple...to learn to paint for the process alone, to have fun, to paint what I want, not what will sell, to develop my style through my mistakes, not my masterpieces.  In this post, I asked myself "Why can't I just paint 50 paintings of nothing and not care? I'm not getting ANYTHING done anyway...what harm could it do?"  So now I'm taking the steps to embrace the process simply for the process and starting my 50 Practice Painting Series. I remember reading something from Claudine Hellmuth quite a while ago where she mentioned after about her 50th painting she started to see her style emerge.

So here I go, painting for the sake of painting, to see what unfolds when I'm consumed by the process instead of focused on the product. To see what discoveries I make along the way, hoping to turn frustration into fun! Painting #1 above started as a blind squiggle drawing as suggested in Wyanne's e-course "Paint Free."  These faceless beauties are what emerged from my squiggles. I think they're kinda cute in their own unique way!