I am now officially one full week behind in my BIG painting class over at the Dirty Footprints Studio.  I am not too worried about it, I have plans to make it happen it is just life threw too many things at me over the weekend.  All good, fun things mind you so I can complain.  But I thought I would post a couple of my paintings from last week. 

Our assignment was to do a contour painting, for this you sit in front of a mirror and try to paint yourself. This was fairly easy although I don't think the finished product actually looks like me I do like the painting.

The second assignment was to do a blind contour painting.  To do this you still look at yourself in the mirror but you do not look at the paper.  Of course what you end up with is rather comical and looks a little like a Picasso.  It was still a great exercise to do although it is really hard not to look at the paper.  Here is my end result.


It's quite comical isn't is???

This is my week two project for Connie Hozvicka's "BIG" painting class over at the Dirty Footprints Studio and what led up to it and creating it really was an amazing experience.  I started meditating about three months ago.  I mostly use guided meditation because I find it very hard to shut my mind down so guided meditations are great because they involve my mind but in a directed way.  I have to say mediation has changed my life and I would recommend it to anyone.

So this week I decided to try a new meditation practice called "sohum".  Basically as you inhale you say so and as you exhale you say hum.  Very simple...amazing results.  The very first time I tried this form of mediation I had a vision, maybe not really a vision but I simply don't know what else to call it.  I saw plain as day a frame with a single large eye in the bottom of it.  This was actually at the very beginning of my mediation and when I least expected to have any such experience, but I think that is always the way, we never experience it when we expect to.  Anyway, once I finished meditating and had time to reflect on the image I saw I realized it was a sign to me that I need to be open to and follow my intuition.  I am quite intuitive but at the same time very analytical (not sure exactly how that happened but anyway...) so I can talk myself out of a lot.  But lately I have been actively trying to grow my intuition and not question or stifle it.  So I decided the memory I wanted to paint was this because I never, ever want to forget that vision or its message.

So the painting below is what came out of it.  It is ugly and messy and it flowed out of me like nothing I have ever painted before.  There wasn't a moment of hesitation and the second it was done I knew it.  I think this will be a great reminder for the weeks, months and maybe even years to come to trust myself.  It was a very powerful moment for me.

As I mentioned before on my blog I am taking Connie Hozvicka's BIG course over at the Dirty Footprints Studio.  I have been planning to take the course for about three months, waiting anxiously for registration to open.  I was even one of the first four who registered when she had an early registration offer.

I just had a feeling that this course was going to change my life.  So now the course has opened and on Sunday I did my first couple of FEARLESS painting exercises and that was fine but after that I was struggling, I didn't want to watch the videos, didn't want to do the exercises.  I was still painting and drawing other things but I was fighting painting BIG.  Finally yesterday when I was really honest with myself I realized that I had set really high expectations for this course.  Maybe they were so high that even Connie couldn't get me to where I had dreamed I wanted to be not because she isn't amazing, because she is, but maybe the expectations were simply beyond reason.  How could anything live up to them.  So subconciously I think I decided that if I just didn't do the work then the course couldn't let me down, it was my choice not to do it.

Even though I had figured out this was exactly what was going on in my head actually doing something about it was very difficult, it took me until 7:30 last night to finally pull out the paint and brushes and actually do one of the assigned exercises.  I think it was the perfect exercise for where my head was at, it was flowy and soft and when I finally showed up my painting met me where I was.  So for now I think I have pushed past this hurdle, I am sure more will surface as I go through the FEARLESS painting process but for now I feel ready to tackle it head on.

Below is my FEARLESS, BIG flow painting.