My "Creative Ego" took a bit of a hit a couple of weeks ago. I was at a calligraphy workshop with some incredibly creative people, and the more I looked at what they were doing, the more feeble my attempts looked. I really let it get to me, and have had a hard time trying to be creative for quite a while.It's not that I don't know that you never can compare yourself with anyone else -- you'll either be depressed or terribly prideful!
So I finally decided to pull myself together and tackle a couple of projects. The one on the left is colored pencil -- I was out walking and saw the beautiful colors on this leaf and had to try to draw it. (I took the picture the next day, and my "model" was a bit dried out by then).
The other project is a hand-painted stool for Don's work room (Man Cave). He stole a couple of my kitchen stools, so I decided to make him his own so I could have seating in the kitchen again.
I have two potential lessons here. One is to never take another workshop, but I really don't want to do that. So the obvious one is to stop comparing and just PLAY! I have a calligraphied quote in my workroom that says: "Play is the taproot from which original art springs" by Stephen Nachmanovitch. So from now on, I plan to play!
