What are you working on?

[john]

No.

What’s there to be scared of? I think the very best part of painting is the jumping in and ruining a perfectly good pristine canvas. Especially after all that friggin time inside my mind...thinking, thinking, thinking, planning, pondering, designing, imagining, researching, editing. My head reaches explosion and so when I finally dump it all out...it’s a good and satisfying “release.”

(Notice it’s all in my head. Nothing in my heart. She’s dead inside, I hear.)

Then the “painting work” begins and it drags on and on, day after day, all the way to the bitter end (no matter what!) until I go on to the next one, like a robot. It‘s like I’m just floating along in a sea of utter painting boredom, which more importantly, keeps the boredom of real life away.

Obviously, I have my own peculiar set of fears...

That's interesting as I'm the opposite. Once I start it becomes enjoyable and I lose myself in it. It's just that first dive that gets me. It doesn't help that I'm a seasonal painter and I go most of the year without painting, so starting up again is perhaps more difficult than more serious artists like yourself that keep working.

John, I can relate to the jumping into the cold pool feeling. You're not alone. Have you ever read Art & Fear? It's a super short read it can be helpful for some. It has helped me before and I read it every now and again. You can get stuck in your head and get frozen in fear and not start, but once you get started, the fear will leave, I promise you. Just get to work and it will all work out.

Yeah Arty I have that book. I'm afraid to read it. Good idea. I should thumb through it again. Thanks.

 

[Nufocus]

And speaking of our favorite breed, I’m posting here a detail from another piece I did not too long ago. I’ll post the whole thing sometime soon if I don’t forget...

 

[Artyczar]

Xmas card...

 

[Iain]

I can particularly see your hand in the parcels, Arty. I guess you will be decorating a joshua tree or a cactus rather than a spruce

And for Elizabeth, we must show some respect! Don’t we?...

You must doth your cap and bow. In deed. ha!

Last year we saw the musical Hamilton. I know. Alongside sci-fi, Country, football, I hate, I said, i hate musicals (I often lapse into Yosemite Sam), and I have seen more of them in the last couple of years than the previous four decades. How we suffer for our children. Anyhow, I am divulging this because the only bit I enjoyed was King George III, which lasted all of ten minutes out of two hours. I necked a couple of gins at the bar, but I was afraid if I drank too much I would be doing multiple toilet runs...there is so little leg room between the rows that one has to stand so another can pass, and we were bang in the centre. You can imagine whole rows doing the Mexican Wave.

 

[Iain]

This is an older thingy being reworked . Trauma teams have a phrase: As the stress levels rise the IQ drops.

 

[snoball]

That's plum purtyful Iain!

 

[Iain]

Well, thank you most kindly, my lady.

Love the colloquial.

 

[Artyczar]

I love it too!

 

[Artyczar]

Started the Bat, Cat, Cake, Snake painting:

 

[snoball]

Weird but wonderful.

 

[Artyczar]

I guess I try. Well, I don't "try" to be weird. Maybe I do try to be wonderful though. Or rather, hope.

 

[Iain]

I think trying to be weird would comes off as affected, and you are anything but affected. Could weird be a synonym for original? Love the Bat, Cat, Cake, Snake painting. The title is a mouthful, ho ho, but tasty.

 

[snoball]

Weird was not meant as an insult. Weird is just our Arty. If you look at the word "weird" in the dictionary, there is a picture of Arty. Without weird, Arty would not be Arty and wouldn't have art. I love Arty's "weird".

 

[Iain]

I wasn't suggesting you meant anything derogatory by the word, but if that is how it appears, I do apologise - without reservation. I guess the word has been in my mind since the "weird" thread, and I was just giving voice to the reclamation of it. However, I can be reckless, using words like an exercise. I am bad. I deserve to be punished. Please! ⚘

 

[Artyczar]

No punishing on the forum. I'm just happy I can spell weird. Seeing it over and over is great education for me.

 

[Iain]

The word itself is weird. Saying that, most words looked at long enough look weird, do they not.

My daughter used to sing along to this when she was five or six.

"Daddy, what's sado-masochism?"

 

[Artyczar]

Today's slow progress...

 

[Iain]

This is great! It really has come alive with the addition of colour! Amazing.

I wish I could free my mind to draw free-hand.

 

[john]

Mmmm. A scaredy cake. Frighteningly tasty. I like cake but....do I really want a slice of this?

This is a quandary cake.

Delicious.

 

[Artyczar]

Thanks guys.