30 Day Art Challenge: More Art Coming At Cha

OK, what day am I on posting-wise?

Day 20 (I think?):

A small piece on watercolour paper, attempting a little more Julification.

Day 21:


My beautiful son had a helluva week last week. To top it all off, he now has a sinus infection. Life, you know? It just kicks your ass sometimes, especially when you're only 9.

Day 22:



Day 23:



Some more of that old tattered copy of 1984 bites the dust, but with honour.

"Winston and Julia clung together, fascinated. The music went on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once repeating itself, almost as though the bird were deliberately showing off its virtuosity. Sometimes it stopped for a few seconds, spread out and resettled its wings, then swelled its speckled breast and again burst into song. Winston watched it with a sort of vague reverence. For whom, for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness?"

What makes you sing? Or write, or do art, or pour out your music into nothingness, whatever that music may be?

Day 24&25...the Dream Box:



I loved painting this. A cheap wooden "cigar box", richly textured on the outside and more of the "dream" figures on the inside. I think I foresee more Dream Boxes in my future. And I think the above is still a WIP, it needs some touches here and there.

And that's it for now. My 30 days are drawing to an end. I have really discovered that I don't need the impetus of a "challenge" to make me create. I have actually found it more constricting than inspiring in ways. Some days I want to paint 3 or 4 different works quickly, and sometimes I want to work on 1 piece for many days, and I really like to ponder an artwork for a few days before I call it "finished". The one thing that has definitely grown for me though, in these 25 days of sharing, has been my confidence. Putting all my artworks, whether I think they are any good or not, out there for the world to see has been somehow liberating. It is what it is. I am what I am. I am a learner...fallible, contradictory, inspired and inspiring and dull as dishwater all in the same breath. I am full of acceptance and angst, genius and the mundane in measure as variable as this chilly, fitful Spring outside.

And I am more OK with all of this than ever.