Have you ever felt fear in your life?
If you said no, BOOOO. We would all know that you are lying…..
So what do you do when you have that dark gloomy feeling hover over you or maybe even pass through you??? It is very important to analyze this feeling and get to the source. ‘Fear’ is a very primal instinct and it has helped the human race survive for millions of years.
This fear is the only thing that stops us from putting our arms around a tiger and taking a #selfie with it (insert exaggerated eye-roll here). I KNOW!
But what if there are other emotions/feelings that might disguise itself as fear – like laziness or procrastination. Or even worse, what if the fear is simply baseless and is hurting our progress!
Recently I’ve been working on this BIG 4×3-ish acrylic painting. This is being created for a very special couple that have spent 60 glorious married years with each other and are still going strong. 60 WHOLE YEARS!!!
You know what that means, right? If you’re reading this, then you were most probably NOT EVEN BORN then. Maybe you’re swiping left as you’re reading this…..
In today’s fragile swipe left, swipe right environment where everything needs to be fast and furious – speed walking, speed dating, speed everything – just the mere thought of being together for 60 years can bring all sorts of fears to the surface.
Anyways, after the astonishment had sunk in I got started with a blank canvas and a beautiful quote.
Armed with a quote, bright Americana, Decoart, Craftsmart acrylic colors, and a HUGE canvas I got down on my knees (literally). By the way if you’re into colors you should totally check out this ‘Amazon Redesigned’ post that I have too!
Sometimes it can be scary to stare at a blank canvas (note: This fear appears to be baseless), so I began splashing the canvas with all the colors I had (well almost all).
Layers over layers of color got added to it. It was very messy and far from perfect! Sometimes you simply have to embrace the mess. Because the mess usually transforms into something beautiful with time.
And talking about time, art tests a lot of innate human qualities e.g. patience. For people who are picking up the paintbrush for the first time in their lives to people who practically eat off a paintbrush (not literally) – this is something that everyone encounters. Acrylic paints do dry very quickly but I still had to step away and wait for my layers to dry before I could proceed.
As the layering went on I got out the stencil and the stamp. The party had just begun!
I worked on it for weeks and added layers over layers. I even added layers to the quote…..
….But there was a little problem. Something appeared to be missing. And I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I happened to look at one of Alisa’s beautiful artwork.
Any guesses on what you think might be missing from this picture???
So remember I’d said that I had used almost all colors….. I had used every color except for BLACK. Black is a very dominant color and can easily overshadow other colors. Sometimes it is also difficult to add other colors on top of it.
When I dug deeper I realized that I was probably afraid of using black because:
– I thought that the painting might get ruined
– If the painting got ruined by using black, I might not be able to fix it since black is such a dominant color
These fears did NOT have a solid foundation so I trusted my art gut and took the plunge. And boy oh boy…..
The oomph factor that was missing magically appeared! Black provided the perfect contrast and also helped the other colors pop out. Here’s the final product.
The bottom-line is that if I had listened to those silly voices in my head (note: not all head voices are silly), my work would have been sub-par.
I think I am going to focus on using more black in future projects. Black is indeed beauty!
Now it’s your turn. What are some fears you have which relate to art? Send me an email OR reply in the comments below.
Until next time,
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