Well, I finally figured out something that will slow down time for me: getting sick. Apparently, when you feel lousy and have no energy to do anything, the hours just creep by. Especially at night. When you are the only one awake. Just trying to breathe.
Thankfully, I'm feeling better already and my voice has returned which was almost completely gone for a surprising 5 days. Sounds like it's the perfect time to show you our second collaborative canvas! Finished a couple of weeks ago. Either that or my recent collection of tissues because that's all I've got.
Our first canvas developed so easily that Shannon and I were super excited and encouraged to get working on our next one. But it didn't come together quite as we had planned. Shannon started with a wash of blue and we sat and stared at it a while. We were both a little afraid of just resorting to what had worked last time and wanted each canvas to have its own personality. Finally, I decided to break the spell and just do something which turned out to be a red scalloped corner border.
Shannon's favorite thing is always scraping on paint with a pallet knife so she got started on that, then finished up with a half moon of paint on the bottom corner. It was as if that small act set the entire canvas in motion.
Some painty circles turned into starbursts and we were enraptured. Really, you could hear the squealing blocks away. It seemed to me that the canvas had turned in its own direction and my red border was blocking the way. Shannon wanted to keep it, but I insisted that it be gone.
She did some more scraping to cover the red and we giddily worked the starbursts for a while longer.
I love these colors!!
Stepping back, the canvas was starting to feel near 'done' so we started to bring out some details in black. On a whim Shannon added more movement to the background with black swirls and immediately hated them. I had the brilliant idea to brighten up the star centers with silver spray paint and immediately hated it. The painting we were just so giddy about suddenly felt completely wrong to both of us.
This is where having a partner is such a blessing! It was already late, we'd been working for hours and we were suddenly so disappointed with what we were seeing. Had we been alone, we probably both would have given up and gone to bed discouraged, but having two sets of eyes to see and see more in each other than we do in ourselves kept us going. I had an idea to work in the black; Shannon turned our starbursts into magic.
And ta-dah! More working of the starbursts, a few more details here and there and we the painting we loved was saved. It felt like we'd been on an emotional rollercoaster birthing this thing so we decided to stop for the night. Creating a piece of art like giving birth? It is really not such a bad metaphor. So much joy but so much work! The next day, like our first painting, we took one look and knew it was perfect.
This second canvas reminded us that not every piece was going to be effortless like our first. We were going to have to push through some resistance at times to be rewarded with something we could be proud of in the end. And it was sooo worth it! Little did we know that our newly discovered wisdom would be tested even more on the next canvas. But at this point, we were still deliriously happy with our first two babies. So different but so beautiful! Where would we go next?? The whole world was open to us. What a wonderful feeling!
