Nurturing the Seed

You may remember a post of mine from last Fall where I talked about wanting to nurture a creative seed within me that felt like it was being neglected, perhaps avoided. Well- I’ve been more mindful of that seed over these past few months and have been sketching more regularly, as well as playing with visual journals and altered books. These past few weeks I sat in on two classes at the Flint Institute of Art. One class was on mixed media techniques the other was focused on colored pencil techniques for botanical drawing. The classes were about as different as different can be, one a creative free for- all, the other a quiet and exacting meditation.

One thing I played with in the mixed media class was water color backgrounds. I just played with color on the page. Then I muted it with a wash of white gesso. Then I studied the background to see what it might suggest, and I decided on a self portrait – a big step- since I generally don’t like photos of myself. A happy symptom of age… a growing comfort and acceptance of self.