doing things differently....

I've been enjoying the school holidays with my children and we had a weeks stay with my parents.A great time away and learnt so much about myself, still. When I came through my front door at home, I felt differently, about a lot of things. I could feel change in the air....it was kind of weird but these days I just go with the energy. another week of school holidays really wanted to do something creative...and still play and have fun with my 7 daughter Shaiyl and 10 year old son Cade.

I felt inspired to collage, and draw and just fiddle with paper and stuff....some pages in my journal.Perfect! Oh I've called my journal "The POwer of POsitive Journalling"! with pages, images and affirmations with meaningful messages. I want to remind myself daily about how I want me to be in my life. And for a long time I've been yearning to create with female portraits. I knew this would take a bit of inner work...not so long ago I was told by someone who I respected in the 'art' world to give up painting those sad eyed girls and do some real painting. Consciously or subsciously I took that on and chose other ideas to create.Amazing how one conversation can have such an impact. Makes me very aware of what I say about other artists creations. But this has given me the opportunity to really want to create with women's portraits, from my heart and not my head. Anyway last week I began drawing. I know she is not perfect, but I am ok with that. So I scanned her and began.

I had just read a couple of great articles in CPS. One was about doing a number of backgrounds at the same time, to save time. The other was about putting the focal point down first and just gluing down what images are at hand.That sounded a bit scary. I have always painted my backgrounds first and planned out the image, with bits and pieces flapping around the table, wanting to get them just right.Time to do things differently! So I gathered up some courage, printed out some of my drawn faces, collected all the magazine pages I'd been saving for something?, and glued them down, without conscious planning. It felt very daunting and confronting. I was not in control. Nervous? scared? excited?

That's when I realised that the unknown in art is quite exciting.Don't be afraid Nic, just keep moving through it....And it was great, it felt really freeing. And is probably the reason why I get so bored with one style of art. I always knew, to some extent what the outcome was going to be. I had the image all planned out in my head. No wonder I change my style of painting so often...for me this feels good, working through the fear of not knowing, trusting and working with what I've got. OMG how exciting is that! (and just a bit scary too!)

These pages are all created from the one drawing, I wanted to see how versatile One face could be, and work with a constant. to me she has done her job, with 3 pages feeling and looking very different.ahhh.....I can highly recommend if you are looking for a challenge, a new way of creating, try creating in a way that you haven't tried before. For me it was swinging to the other side of the bridge...focal point first instead of last. Scary and exciting? is that possible in the one sentence. guess so.