Letting Go

Good-bye Little Adventurer - Now in my Etsy Store : )

I like to paint from time to time in between making prints because to me it's such a different and almost opposite process.  When I make a print, I'm always thinkingthinkingthinking.  I need to be careful of the registration and the ink has to be the right consistancy,  not applied to thick or too thin and consider how the different colours will look when they overlap etc etc.  When I start to paint, I carry all this thinking with me, but slowly I try to get let it go.  I want to paint like a kindergartner with no worries about realism, only joy in the colours and the feeling of the paint.  It's not as easy as it sounds.  I love painters who appear to be able to let go of their thinking brains like Mindy Lacefield, Michelle Brown and Flora Bowley.  It takes a lot of effort to break the rules and get that effortless look!  My left brain is already dying to get on with the next print, planning happily away.  It's not that there isn't a ton of creativity in printmaking, I just find that acrylic paint is so forgiving.  I can play without that fearful voice saying, "don't do that, you'll wreck it!"  It's good to exercise the right brain and hopefully carry some of that rule breaking into my printmaking.