I’ll try to make a really long story as short as I can. Some of you may know we were are doing mission service again, this time in Salt Lake CIty at church headquarters where we work with the Mission Department 8-5.
I have a harder time with life when I’m not involved in something creative and evenings don’t work well for me to do this, so I brought the sketchbook I took to Brasil and pencils to work on graphite lettering, to design things and possibly practice brush pen lettering when it’s slow at work. I did do a bit of this and I started on an idea for designing pages for a possible accordion book of names of Christ.
An unexpected offer of a set of water-soluble oils came my way (my medium of choice for painting) from an artist in SLC who hadn't used them for the project she bought them for, so I had an option I hadn't planned on. But I couldn't quite figure out to use them in a way that worked for my schedule, space, lack of other materials/equipment.
A second bit of serendipity came when we were able to get another desk, so now I have the plastic table we bought for art and the desk for study and I can leave everything ready to go and not spend my bits of time just moving things about and prepping. So I got the book "Daily Painting" and a supply order from Dick Blick. I figure there's no way to do daily but possibly weekly.
Just days later when our Sunday School teacher invited us to create a personal token to remind of us of our covenants and how they bind us to Christ - I suddenly realized I could put it all together! and do little, fairly quick paintings of letters representing name of Christ and viola, it all came together and I already have one "done" (might need fixing) and two more over half done and two mostly designed! This one is A for the Great I Am and also Alpha and Omega. Only 6” square and still wet.
I often tend to study/ponder scriptures and quotes through my calligraphy so this works for me in many ways and we'll see how well I can keep up. I might actually start using Instagram and see if I can post a little painting every week. Maybe since I have a bit of head start I can keep it going. Obviously there are plenty of flaws in this first one, but the idea is to do fairly fast and small ones that help you learn techniques and get practice without stress of investing a lot into it, so if its not good you can scrape it off and paint over it or even toss it, so I may or may not work on it more. Maybe some evenings when I want to dabble a few minutes I will see if I can improve it but then again, I might make it worse :) that's part of the learning too.
Update, as part of reporting on our Sunday school challenge the teacher showed photos and left mine up on the big screen for a while during the next part of her lesson. Seeing it greatly enlarged convinced me to to do some clean-up :)
