What Will Make You Change

In order to enjoy the next couple of days, I've decided to spend tonight cleaning to get it out of the way.  I have been procrastinating for about an hour by trying to get the "About" page ready for my etsy shop.  Formatting the photos for the page has been a pain that I can't seem to shake off as the photos never quite fit in the window as planned.

I have read that most of the time we change when things become just too uncomfortable.  When we are at our breaking point, true change can take place.  Well, I guess the formatting photos really did the job, as I'm now motivated to clean! 

In the meantime, I'm hoping that the weather will be good for a nature walk and/or city walk with Matthew sometime in the next couple of days - so this will also keep me motivated as to why I'm choosing to clean instead of relax tonight.  :)

 

 

 

Also, Happy Valentines Day to all of you from Portland!  Love to you all, and thank you so much for following this blog.

 
 

Embracing Mess and Cleaning a Palette

Over the past year I have improved upon cleaning my paint palette after every couple of sessions instead of once a month or after a painting was finished...or so I thought.  Somehow, I don't know how, but I found my palette looking rather filled with hardened clumps and mixed swatches of paint.  Someone was painting without cleaning up...was it me?  Yuuup.  So this is how to clean a pallete that is ridiculously coated and could be an abstract painting all on it's own.

1.  Assess the damage.  Pretty bad, indeed.  You could at this point cry about the loss of paint, or you can embrace the evidence of working.  You have overcome resistance and have shown up and created!  You are alive!  You are creating!  You have a mess!  Now, clean it up for crap sake.

2.  Get a couple of papertowels and your palette knife.  Begin scraping off the paint and then begin wipe it on the papertowel.  Reflect about the paintings you created with these colors if it brings you comfort.  Were they failures or successes?  What did you learn?  What would you change about them if you did them again?  Or you can do what I usually do and just go brain dead by looking at how pretty the colors are.  Oh, so pretty.

3.  Usually I like to get more paint up by scraping it, but this time they wouldn't budge.  So onward to this step:  put a healthy amount of dish detergeant around the surface.

4.  Fill with hot tap water and allow to soak for about 5-10 minutes.  You can use this time for sketching out a new idea, singing at the top of your lungs to Seasons of Love on the Rent soundtrack, country line dancing with the random people who just let themselves into your home, steeping tea, or playing fetch with your cat.

5.  Part the bubbles and admire the color.  Good.  Now continue scratching them off calmly.  Don't go all crazy going back and forth with your palette knife here.  That will get you nowhere.  Just be as calm as an archeologist uncovering years of dirt from a relic.  Don't worry about fishing out what you scrape off - you can skim the water out while carefully getting the flakes to stay in as they will gather on the bottom of the palette (don't let the oil paint go down your drain for multiple reasons).  Then wipe out with a papertowel or cloth.  Repeat steps 3-5 until it is clean.

6.  Voila!  A clean palette ready for use.  Usually this is a good time to make a resolution to never let it get that bad again, but it will.  In the grand scheme of things, who cares?  You're working and beating that monster of resistance who can have so many excuses for you.  Messy or clean, whatever gets you to the canvas is a good thing. 

Enjoy your day and thank you for reading!  If you have any other tips for this process, please comment and share.  Thanks!

The Saint of Seizing the Day and Guilt-free Mess

As I drink my last cup of coffee for the morning and plan out my day of painting, I look about the apartment and realize that it needs some attention too.  Curses.


Now a certain artist comes to mind that is making me feel much better about my sweatpant attire, two loads of laundry stacked up and the mild disarray of the apartment.  He makes the guilt melt away.  His name was Chaim Soutine.

Chaim Soutine

He lived at the beginning of the Twentieth Century and died in 1943 at the age of 49, but before that was known as a man of filth.  Don't get me wrong, his work as an artist is truly revered and he was passionate about his work.  In this way, he was wildly successful in how he spent his energy.  He did a lot of paintings of slaughtered animals and figures and for this, he had to have visual references, right?  Well, he did. 


He had an ox carcass in his studio that he kept for so long that the strong stench worked it's way out of his studio causing complaints.  The police were eventually called and they removed it.  I'm sure that his neighbors were cheering.


His personal hygiene also left much to be desired.  He didn't bath often, wore the same outfit for weeks on end and actually ended up having bed bugs in his ear.  IN HIS EAR!!  I think it's fair to say that he took Bohemian living to an unknown level.


So, if you look about your living room and it does not look like a interior design photograph, do not feel bad.  If you would rather spend the day following your passions, by all means do it!  Chiam is the example to help us not feel guilty.  I'm willing to bet that what we feel is messy is Chiam's vision of cleanliness.  So seize the day!  Don't do all of the things on your "Must Do" list that suck all of the energy out of the fun of your life.  The cleaning will still be there after you have your fun.  Seize the day!


Unless you have an ox carcass going on, or haven't bathed for a couple of days...perhaps there are some necessary priorities.


Enjoy your weekend guilt-free, my friends!  INDULGE!  :)




CAUTION:  This post may actually have the opposite effect and may motivate you to clean.  Afterall, bedbugs in the ear is a pretty powerful image.  So if you find yourself in this boat of thought, make your cleaning fun and blare that music!