I’ve been making pages of these little images for years. They are just for me. Just for the fun of putting down watercolor in little blocks. To breathe, as it were, and expand a bit on the wonder of color, line, texture, etc. They are ramblings, stream-of-conscious painting, exhalations. When life gets really busy, like these holidays, they are the perfect thing to keep me going. When your brain and time can’t slow down enough for large scale work, it’s lovely to make little puffs of paint on paper. Mini prayers, so to speak. Here’s just one of them.
I do like it on its own. But I like them even more altogether on the page. They all work together somehow to enhance the others. They may seem messy and unrelated (just like the jumble of thoughts in my prayers), but they end up being lovely as a whole. And I LOVE LOVE my Edwards stamp that my sister and brother-in-law brought back from China for me several years ago.
You should try these…don’t think about them being anything, not even thoughts or prayers…just make several boxes on your page and go to it with watercolor, pens, crayons, whatever floats your boat. I recommend watercolor so that you don’t have to be so precise about anything. If you want to make something recognizable in each box, fine! But if not, just let the paint oozle and wazzle around. Scrape into it, add more on top of it, splatter and splash til your heart’s content. Let ’em dry, go back into them, if you want. If not, just enjoy how they turned out…tiny little puffs of paint.
I’ve created a section in my Flickr of just these pages, so if you want to see more of them check here.
This is truly inspiring! Thanks for sharing this morning.
Wow! This is just what I was looking for! Sometimes I want to just paint and put colors but on big pages I’m always overwhelmed by the size, and my trys are disapointing. Your pages are beautiful and very inspiring, I’m going to use your idea without moderation! The graphic structure is a great idea.
Looks good for stress! I will try it, I’ve been trying to get watercolours to oozle and wazzle for ages, so maybe this is just thing to practice with?
This is such an uplifting idea. Just playing with the materials – I need to do more of that. The stamp is great!
I need to do this! Maybe it would help me loosen up with my painting so it doesn’t look the same as if I’d used crayons! Thanks for this tip; they look lovely!
What a lovely suggestion – I love the idea of these squares and colors as mini vacations, prayers, respites, etc. They serve that purpose for the artist, and I can tell you that they are serving that purpose for me as a viewer, too.
Lovely! I so want to loosen up like this. Great work, wonderful colours
I’ll have to try this. I have a really hard time “just playing”. Maybe this would help although my mind is already saying “great backgrounds for little pictures to be glued on” so we’ll see.
Some exercises are like this, just messy scribbles of color but they all have a place in the creative mind. If it keeps your juices flowing, then so bet it. We all do what we must to stay creative and fresh. Looks like it’s working for you.
love these!
i found you via the everyday matters group and i’m in awe of your freedom with both the color and the medium itself. delightful – i will have to try this. i just started drawing again and my sketches are fairly tight and controlled so far.
Oh, I’m so glad you’ve started drawing again!! Don’t worry about tightness or looseness, just enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!! Thanks for visiting and commenting!