Thoughts from Monday

So. Since two weeks ago Monday, I have been doing JoKata in the mornings, and that's been good. Kate had me "get back on the horse" - fast painting; I was scared of it. In my mind I said, but I hit my head last time - really hard. It was traumatic. So that was on Wednesday, the 18th, and after some resistance I said I'd do it that day - 1 hour. But I didn't do it Wednesday, but I DID do it the next day, Thursday. I did a fast painting, from a photo of Molly, including tracing, enlarging, transfering, and painting. At one point I looked at my timer, thinking, isn't my time up yet? (Or was that the next time I painted?) I liked the results, and... but... I felt kinda flat, unable to celebrate actually doing it, unable to enjoy what I'd done. Just flat.

Next day when I talked to Shrimpy, she said, You PAINTED? You DID it? How about celebrating that? And I started crying.

I still don't feel like I know what that's all about; and maybe I never will. When I went to Kate's last week, for S Coaching, she had me do a very fast painting, about 15 minutes. Everything I had to work with was a bit crude: paper: the inside of some used wrapping paper; pencil: one common yellow #2 pencil, not very sharp; brushes: a few various ones of quite moderate quality; color: a bottle of writing ink, blue or blue-black; and my reference: a dog-eared photo of a - BLACK - puppy, and it looked like it was actually a worn and dog-eared XEROX of a photo. Little detail, hard to make out. But as I was working, I realized it was probably Kiwi, and I was right.

As crude as that was, there were things I liked a lot about it. With only one color, no water for diluting. Not much subtlety. And yet Kate and I both felt I had captured Kiwi. After that, and some energy work, I felt kind of calm. Sometimes it's hard to tell calm and numb apart. And while I'm scared of the excitement and the trauma, when they're not there I also miss them...

On Kate's assignment I did one more 15-minute painting, last Thursday. (But I actually set the timer for 20 minutes, and also, because Shipply called and I was working on it part of the time we were talking, I figured it was really 25 minutes.) This time I did a direct sketch and painting in my big spiral sketchbook, of Starr. Black, again - this year's Raffle winner. And when I got to her eye, when I was going back into it, edging it with black, I got suddenly excited, for a moment at least, and thought, that's IT!

I am thinking I'd like to give Ruth her set of the photos I took, and consult with her about which one she'd like me to use.

That's it for today...