Heartsong Studio

Her mouth was dry and her hands were shaking as Jenna headed for the podium. Though she was a master on the subject of art marketing, facing her first large audience, the footlights seemed blinding.

Does this remind you of setting up a flawless white canvas or paper? You might have had a concept of what you wanted to paint, but you were held frozen like a deer in the headlights.

What can you do to overcome this intimidation ?

Jenna had brought note cards to use, so she’d have back up support for her nervousness. Seemed like a flawless plan. But, when she looked down at the top card, she saw she had picked up the wrong set of notes !

Being an open, honest person, Jenna feigned tossing the cards over her shoulder, and told her audience what had happened. Then she went on speaking to them personally from her experience and knowledge of the subject. She adjusted it to suit the audience responses.

Having made the effort to come to this talk, people were already on her side. They loved her for being a fallible human being and her off-the-cuff talk ended up warmer and more human.

How can you charm the glare off a pristine canvas?

Spill paint on it !

Yes. It works. As Jenna fessed up to her mess up, you too can mess up the thing that’s got you stuck.

Choose an acrylic colour like yellow ochre, which is not too dominant.

Mix up a largish amount of very fluid paint.

Toss it randomly on a canvas or paper that lies flat on a table.

You can pick it up and tilt it in all directions to help the wet paint run around. Or, you can use a drinking straw to blow the paint in different directions. If you’re going to spill, might as well really enjoy yourself.

Leave it to dry awhile.

Then take the canvas or paper in your hands and view it from different directions, gazing at this splotch as you might gaze at cloud formations. Keep dreaming into it until you spy something wanting to emerge.

With white gesso or paint, ‘erase’ everything which isn’t a part of your vision. As your image form emerges, it will respond to your warmth and take on a life of its own just as did Jenna’s audience. Your decisions will be guided from here on by your relationship to the image you see. Your image will let you tease it out if you respond with warmth.

Just as Jenna won the hearts of her audience by being candid, so too will you charm the image into existence and make a more interesting painting which you couldn’t possibly have preconceived alone.