Monday, April 7, 2014

Completed Flora Bowley's Bloom True e-course. Great experience, even with only left hand!

OK, so I managed to get through Flora Bowley's intuitive painting course with only my left hand.  I'm so glad I got over my pity party and pushed through.  I really enjoyed the experience and found that if you really let go, amazing things can happen on the canvas with little effort.   It was definitely more about the process than the end result for me.  It was very therapeutic!

Each day (except Sunday) we were given a little bit of information over a 5 week period.  There were lots of videos of Flora painting, which I found to be very interesting to watch.  There were also general instructions about how to get into the painting "space" as well as how to "let go."  The goal was not to finish a painting until the end, but really even then, she instructed that the final painting may not reveal itself.  It was about learning different ways of applying paint to canvas-- colors, patterns, using stamps, varying marks, etc.  Each session with your painting creates a new layer until at last, you have some interesting shapes and combinations.  Then you add imagery, go bold and add whatever comes to mind, then finally simplify the composition by reducing your color pallet and covering things you don't like or highlighting and enhancing things that you do like.  Sounds complicated, but it's really not so.  Anyone can do this.

I found that I would get stuck when I wasn't in a great frame of mind… but when I was grounded, maybe just back from a walk or meditation,  things simply FLOWED.  So for me it was all about the FLOWING.

30"x30" Swan Reflections

18"x24" Untitled

As you cans see with these two, I got very into the paint drips-- using Golden fluids (which are very expensive!!) and spraying water to allow them to drip. 

I highly recommend this e-course to anyone who likes to paint. I wanted to paint loosely, and now I can!!