Wow, I am beat! I admire all the artists who seemingly effortlessly, create multiple works of art a day. It is only the second day of the five-day art challenge  and I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet. (For those of you with dirty minds, (You know who you are.) the saying is referring to a “horse.”) It is exhausting work! If you are scratching your head wondering what I am talking about, read this post from yesterday.

Every day, I am learning something new. For example, I love mixed media work, as opposed to simply painting. Don’t get me wrong, most of the artists that I truly admire are painters and they do incredible work. For my weird personality, however, I find that it confines me. Although I don’t claim that this is the “accepted” definition of mixed media, I see it as a marriage of a variety of artistic expressions; for instance, paints (it can be a combination of acrylics, watercolor or others that work together), stencils, crayons, stamps, inks, markers, chalk, pens, collage, pencil and more.

Today, I realized that I love working with inks, spray and otherwise. I also learned that I don’t care much for “soft” bodied acrylic paints, even though I have a s**t load of them. I’ll use them sometimes, but for the most part, I’m sticking with the “heavy”  bodied acrylics.

I finally understand that over the last 1 ½ years, I have learned a great deal more than I thought. I am thankful that I’ve taken courses from artists with varying styles, because, as a result. I have a huge arsenal of techniques from which to choose. However, my groupings of paintings tend to look rather schizophrenic, but they are the result of what wants to come out at the time of creation, so I am just going with it. This challenge is proving to help me to winnow out those techniques that do not work for me, while at the same time, to embrace those that will ultimately become a part of my own unique style.

Most importantly, the pace is allowing me to let go of the need to both be “perfect” (whatever that means) and paint for others. I have a tendency to worry about whether others will like my work, instead of focusing on whether I like it. I’ve found that the pieces that I like most, are those when I simply zoned out and created from my heart. Sure, not everyone will appreciate the outcome, but then, that’s art, it is open to interpretation. This is a lesson that I will practice every day.

And now, I will stop yapping and get to the point of this post. These are my three pieces for Day 2 of the challenge: