paint party friday -- just do it

I've been meaning to join in with Paint Party Friday for weeks now. As each Friday rolls around I prepare to post and then... it doesn't happen. Either I get carried away by the weather, or decide that I really should be painting instead of writing about painting or I feel as if I shouldn't be posting about more in-process paintings or something. It seems that there are a lot of somethings in my life. So, here I am. Doing a Paint Party Friday post. As is. Because if I decide to try to finish a couple paintings before posting, I'll never get around to this post.

As I mentioned in a post the other week, I started working on my circles painting again. This is how it currently looks:

More layers. And there will be even more to come. I wish I could just finish it, but with each layer it feels more unfinished. I let it sit for a long time before these last layers, pretending it was finished. But I was never satisfied that it was finished. You think it means I need to let it go?

I have some backgrounds waiting for something (again with the something), but I'm not sure where to go with them. I like playing with acrylics, but maybe I'm just lacking confidence. In part because I'm not sure where I want to go with my abstract paintings when I'm working on them. I like going with the flow, but perhaps I need to plan things a little more. Like this little piece:

I can hardly count this as a painting, can I? But my point is that I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do before I did it. I knew I wanted to create a piece that resembled a chalk board. Black paint (mixed with a bit of blue and white) with oil pastel words. When I know what I want my art to turn into, it goes a lot faster.

Well, not always. My watercolor paintings take forever. This little cyclamen painting is still waiting to be finished:

The plant I used as a model looks nothing like this anymore. I've gone back and forth on this one. Liking it and not liking it. Trying to force work on it when I wasn't in the mood didn't really help with that. But, if I compare this painting to the first cyclamen I painted back when I was first trying out watercolors and masking fluid...

I can see that I've improved.

Maybe it's all about being in the mood. I'm learning to listen to that. I go where my creativity lies. Where the inspiration points me. Lately I've been loving sketching.

This little fish is my newest sketch. My intention was to fill up the page with fish, kind of like my butterfly sketches and my maple seeds, but this one fish took me over an hour to finish (I was watching Mad Men some of the time, probably too visual a show to sketch during). I loved working on the sketch. I'm still a bit joyfully baffled and excited by this recent foray into sketching. For so long I've held the opinion that I can't draw. Discovering that I can is a marvel. I wonder how else I've been limiting myself because of faulty beliefs. And you. What do you believe you can't do. Maybe you really can.

And don't forget to stop by the Paint Party Friday blog for this week's artist interview and to visit with lots of paint partiers!