You know that feeling… when you get back to something you love doing and suddenly it feels like all is well once again and the planets have finally aligned??
I had not touched my paintbrushes much in the last few months, not because I didn’t want to but because I came across really interesting YouTube videos of gorgeous mixed media art that made me yearn to have a go at something new. Like most artists I think, when it comes to art supplies, it doesn’t take me much to get distracted by something shiny and new… like… new colour pencils! Or look at that wonderful handmade paper… did you see how vibrant that blue is?? A trip to the art store is ALWAYS a dangerous experience 😉
A ‘trial’ I did in pencil and water-soluble wax crayons, based on a YouTube tutorial by Sour Taffy
Anyway, I was trying to say was that I got distracted by a new media for which it is best to have A LOT of supplies to really have fun with it… it could be anything from paint, paper, crayons, pencils, stamps, fabric, inks, pastels… the sky is the limit! Although you can certainly create something fantastic with not much, the more tools you have the better. I did have a few of those already but I suddenly found myself always searching for new stamps, ink pads, interesting paper, tutorials and so on. While this was fascinating research, it was also very time-consuming! But I know the time wasn’t wasted because thanks to this exploration, I tried my hand at some new cool things I hadn’t done before such as painting with water-soluble wax crayons (let me tell you: these are a lot of fun!), drawing and shading with colour pencils, making beads out of paper and lots more. See! Paper beads are completely unrelated to mixed media so even while researching a new media, I got distracted by another lol.
My new favourite brand of colour pencils, Prismacolor – great colours and awesome to blend together!
The point is… this was a lot of fun but after going back to my easel with paints and experiencing so much joy out of creating a new canvas, I can tell you… I feel better and somewhat relieved! Maybe while I was trying out new things, I put too much pressure on myself to master those new skills or I had too much expectation of what I should achieve? I certainly learnt a lot and I am now doing new things such as drawing and preparing sketches for future artworks (which I never really did before) and I know this makes me grow a lot as an artist.
On the other hand, I feel like I am ”at home” when I paint, probably because I have been doing it for sooo many years and I feel comfortable with the media? I know what to expect from it and how to make it work to my advantage… Well, that doesn’t mean I don’t get any surprises every now and then 😉
Since I got a lot of inspiration from MANY amazing artworks during my recent trip to Bali (I’ll write more about that later!), I am not saying I am giving up on learning new techniques (still have to master digital painting on an iPad!) as that would mean dying as an artist but I will definitely be back at my easel more often now and I look forward to bringing you new exciting paintings 🙂
Mimi.
 A corner of my studio, completely messy and organised at the same time… you know what I mean, right?!
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