When I'm stressed I go to the kitchen to eat. Bad habit. Now I'm overweight. All I needed to do was pick up a paint brush or read a book or magazine. I have been an artist all my life and after ALL this time I finally found out that I need art to calm me down. Relax me. Bring me peace.
On Mondays I go to a watercolor class. From 9:30 am to 2:00 pm I don't care if I eat or not. I even forget to take a drink of water. That's ironic. After my class I'm so relaxed that the drivers cutting me off seem to fly by like cute birds not wild, crazy, very late for everything, motorist. If you don't paint, go to a craft store and get a child's box of watercolors and pick out one wide brush. It needs to be at least 1 inch. Buy some cheep watercolor paper and take them home. After a stressful day get out your supplies and a paper cup with water in it. You don't need anything formal. The kitchen table is a great place to paint. Put on some music that is not too up beat. (You will paint with the beat of the music and this is to relax you not make you wild.) Dip your brush in water and run it over the paper. Wet the brush again and slather it in a blue or green. Get the paint really wet! Then rub the brush on the paper. Stop! Watch the paint run and skip into the water.
Wet the brush again and load it with another color. Go next to where the first color stopped running and put your brush down and watch another flow of color. You can do this until you get bored or the music runs out. No formal training for this. It is pure joy. Do not try to make the painting into "something". Who cares what it "is". This is an exercise to relax, don't get yourself up tight trying to make something out of the paint, water an paper. That's another exercise!
Have fun and let me know if it worked.
Aleta
No comments:
Post a Comment