Visual Journey

I Love Mess - Piece 1

I really like how Kitchen Sink came out. The messy splotches, the texture, the shimmer, and chaos all create a spectacular sensory experience. But getting to thin point was kind of annoying.

Prep

My preparation for this piece was essentially to tape down a sheet of Meedan Watercolor Paper to a silicone mat to give it a nice crisp edge. And then I left it until I was ready to start.

This prep turned out to be useless.

Progress

The paper curled real bad, worse than non-watercolor paper. I ended up freeing the paper from any tape and decided to not care about a crisp, clean edge.

I struggled through this piece because I kept messing up what I liked and then making it a big, muddy mess. The paper just wouldn’t stay flat so all my ink would pool. Very annoying. But I did eventually get it to where I wanted, after many layers and lots of water and some sprays of alcohol for the alcohol spray technique (ref. Acrylic Ink Alcoholic Reactions & India Ink Alcoholic Reactions).

I did eventually stop messing with it and let it dry to what it is now. I lack a lot of patience when it comes to waiting for stuff to dry. It’s one of the reasons I tend to work with faster drying or already dry media.

Lessons

I threw everything I could at this piece to try and make it look good. Ultimately, I think it worked out, but I never know when to stop. I frequently make things worse. I need to try and figure out how to stop before ruining my pieces. Similar to what I talked about in Minimal Maximalism.

Karma-Chameleon - Piece 2

So this is an interesting piece. This is where I really let myself free. If Kitchen Sink caused me trouble by triggering my perfectionism, You Come And Go brought me out of it.

In case you can’t see it, there is a chameleon hidden in the picture above. But it didn’t start out as a chameleon. It actually started out looking like a shoe box and a bunch of lines and dots. Then I accidentally drew the face of the chameleon and I filled the rest in, drawing the swirl and defining the body. This is one of the more loose pieces I’ve drawn, considering how precise my doodles are and how idealistic and precise my realism is, this piece is quite different from my regular. And this is where things get deep.

Mental Health

I’ve suffered from poor mental health for most of my life. Anxiety/OCD and depression mixed with ADHD and poor coping mechanisms have caused me a lot of strife. I’ve often wondered if I’m just stuck in this anxious/depressive loop that I can’t seep to escape. I often feel like my life is just me tumbling through it, like I’m caught in a riptide, and anxiety/OCD is how I cope with that. So what do I do, when I can’t seem to make myself break these really terrible thought patterns?

Relearning Happiness

Art is one of the places that my perfectionism can really hinder my growth. But if I want to become a better artist, I have to break through it. You Come And Go is my attempt to do that, to just let myself create without expectations.

As I worked through it and discovered the chameleon, I realized that a big part of my problem is I won’t let myself be happy because I’m always anticipating the worst, and I’m worried I don’t know how to be happy anymore.

The tempura paint sticks have really helped me break out of perfectionism because you literally can’t be perfect with them. It makes sense that I’ve used them the most through this process. They are technically a children’s art supply, but I think that’s part of why they make me feel so free.

And as I explore what I can make with these paint sticks, I wonder if I can relearn how to be happy through this inspiring feeling of childlike wonder that comes experimenting with art freely. I hope to capture more of these experiences and allow myself to regrow those happy neurons I seem to have lost.