creating art touches my soul

A couple days ago I began drawing a face then I decided to go over the face with acrylic paint.  I'm not familiar with painting faces with acrylic paint and soon that became very apparent to me.  I tried the best I knew how but the whole piece kept going south.  At this point I may be headed for disaster so I started my usual chant "there's no mistakes in art there's no mistakes in art".  I busily applied more layers of paint in hopes to make it right.  OMGoodness...she just got worse.  After some thoughtful consideration I decided to cover the page entirely with gesso.   I had never done that before.  Then a spooky thing happened!  She began peering at me beneath the gesso.  Creepy, huh? It was then I  decided to stop for the night and would reassess it in the morning.

 

The next morning delivered a fresh new outlook and optimism.  Full of energy and my graphite pencil in hand I outlined her face that was lurking beneath the layer of gesso.  I thought it turned out good but decided that I would wait until the mood struck me to continue.








So today would be the day to finish what I started.  I will admit that I wasn't real enthusiastic to work on her.  I dreaded the idea of using acrylic paints because that brought back memories from the beginning.  Yet I knew that the way to get better at something is to keep trying.  So acrylic paints it would be.  I had gained wisdom from the experience of the original piece several days ago so I mixed retarder with the paint.   The retarder slows the drying time and allows time to manipulate the paint.  That was a wise choice and it made all the difference in the world.  My enthusiasm returned!  Below is where you will see the finished piece.  She appears to be a more mature woman with a peaceful/serene look on her face.  It's funny because most of the time I worked on her I was anything but peaceful and serene.  The whole situation reminds me of the title of a book I just read, "Trust the Process".   I am just scratching the surface of the lessons I am learning from creating her.  The prominent lesson that comes to my mind is to NEVER QUIT ~ there is always a way.  My mind is overflowing with thoughts of what I take away from this creating experience.  I know I could easily fill at least 4-5 pages in my journal.

Creating art touches my soul in ways nothing else does.