Sunday In The Studio

Pick up your paintbrush, dip it into white and black, and let's see where soul takes us as we intuit the movement of the brush over surface to connect soul to studio this in this Sunday, or any day!, practice! Join me and let's create.

Transcript

Hi everybody. How about Sunday afternoons in the studio? It's where you can usually find me on a Sunday afternoon and today I turned on the camera thinking what the heck this is where I am so why not invite you in. It's a little messy. Alright it's a lot messy. I'm a little messy but that's what it's about. These creative meditations are gonna come to you via video now thanks to Insight Timer adding this feature and this practice is going to be wet. What I mean by that, Once we get into it, You want to have a surface to paint on. I suggest something tremendously affordable. I'm using newsprint. You can have cardboard, Butcher paper, Or you can go big-time. Get some watercolor paper or canvas. Your brush of choice because we're going to be moving paint around and then a white and a black. We're gonna go neutral. Okay once I turn my camera around you'll see what I'm using and I'll talk about it a bit but let's start here now face forward with a creative meditation before we do the practice to ground ourselves to join in the studio space to listen to the dog panting and see what we can do when we stand firmly pull ourselves in and prepare to express. So with me if you will please close your eyes stand before your surface and feel the space around you. It's not about seeing it, It's about sensing it. Both feet firmly planted, Knees over ankles, Hips over knees, Hearts and head aligned. You've come here. You've decided yes, This, Now. The expression we're going to process isn't one of intellect. It's one of heart. It's one of intuition and it's one of soul. All of my creative meditations are about starts. They're about the place where our internal world joins the external through our hand, Our brush, Pencil, Charcoal. It's the liminal space where they meet and it's the starting point of joining our soul to the outward expression. So as you feel those feet firmly on the floor and you sense the air, The cellular vibration of your hands, You're ready to join in. Pause if you have to but gather your materials. Surface, Brush, Black and white. I'll turn my camera and we'll begin. What you can see on the screen are my materials. Black, It's a blend I've created. White, Straight from the pot and some water as well as two small brushes. I want more line work than blobs so I'm choosing smaller brushes. Covering my hands because the inevitability of my putting my hands in my paint is true and real. So I start with protecting my hands and let's begin. My surface is, I think it's 24 by 36 newsprint. Extremely inexpensive in a pad. I like to buy it this way because it allows me a lot of freedom to just keep going and I've given a gesso wash to the surface. Gesso being the painter's primer and this just gives me a toothy sensation to the surface underneath that I can begin on. Now this is a gestural practice. We're making marks, Telling a story or translating the energy of the soul to the surface and sometimes it can help a lot, That translation, To use your non-dominant hand. I'm left-handed so I today I'm going to choose to demonstrate with my right hand. I encourage you to do the same but also, Especially if you've got this pad of paper and as I do or heaps of cardboard to paint across, Do it both ways. These are going to be very quick, Gestural, Instinctive marks. You can choose to let them resonate repeatedly over the entire surface or work quickly over multiple pages. The point is, The focus is, To keep going until you feel you've reached a stopping point. I'm going to end when I'm instinctively done but if you want to choose to go on further, Create more, Can I state the obvious and say keep going? Let's begin. If you have a long brush, As is the case for me here, It can be really nice because you loosen the control of your intellectual brain in transcribing the mark and it becomes more gestural, More shoulder and whole arm oriented. Beginning with the black is that rich contrast coming into play. It can be very informative and very compelling to the reader of your story or the viewer, If you will, Of your painting. As I exhaust this space before me and my hand begins to slow in expression, A quick intellectual analysis without discernment or judgment makes me say, Let's try white. I've got it in my dominant hand, Hoping that some of this black has dried or partially dried but then that's my anticipation stepping up to bat, My experiential knowledge joining the creation saying, Ooh you know those broken lines that can happen when it's partially dry, Let's see if that will go down. And because those are evidential of happenstance, Chances are pretty high that it's not gonna happen. In my pre-thought, Planned way. We'll go with it. Dipped to black instead of white. Go with it. And we'll say some water. Follow your instinct. That's what we'll call it at this point, Instinct. There's no preciousness, There's no performance anxiety, Just delight in the movement, The expression, The place of one brush upon a surface, The blending. Join me in the wind down. Perhaps turn your brush. Use the tip of this long handle to add some information. A few lines of depth. Play with the lie of those brushstrokes. And if delight still rings, If awe still makes you smile, Then keep going. By all means, Keep going. This creative meditation in monochromatic black and whites and gray is meant to help you not see necessarily but feel in a new way, In a free way, In a breaking out of constraints way. This isn't your best creation. It is a practice to keep you primed for that best creation. Keep going. Keep creating. And come back. We work with dry, We work with wet, We work with color, And we keep going. Awaken creative today.