Very recently I started working with a program in this book called The Artist’s Way. Without going into too much detail, the book is kind of a process of discovery/recovery for the creative side of yourself. It’s been recommended to me many times, and I bought it probably two years ago, maybe even three, and then let it sit when I got to the part that said something about “This is the part where you stop just reading and start doing the work.” Apparently, I’ve reached the point where I’m ready to do the work.

One of the exercises in the 12-week program of the book is something called an Artist Date where you basically take your artist self out on a date for some “quality time.” You can’t bring anyone else along. It’s just you and your artist for a little creative togetherness.

I’d been trying to think of what I’d do all week. I was going to do something relatively simple like a little drawing or whatever, and then yesterday, when I was adding some quotes and photos to my kitchen door it came to me. It was time to really do the door right.

This door is the one that leads out of my kitchen onto the back hall. It’s just white. It’s been badly painted. See?

This makes it the perfect place to stick things, which I started doing a couple three years ago when I did a goal-setting exercise with some friends. The resulting poster from that exercise went on the door. After that I started putting quotes on the door on little scraps of paper. Vis:

Another goal poster arrived and sat around forever, until I finally put that up the other day and went, “Nah. No. This isn’t right. This door could be awesome. It could be a fantastic representation of what I want out of my life, and the last thing I see going out to work every day. If it’s going to send me a message every day, let’s really make it bangup awesome.”

So how does that happen? Paint. It was time to paint the door, make it visibly back up all the great messages and thoughts that were going to be tacked and taped to it.

I took my artist to the hardware store this afternoon, wandered around looking at expensive paints for a while, mostly seeing stuff that was more than I needed and pricey. I went to the desk to ask for help, and there I spied the magic. One rack of little cans with a sign: “All sample colors $3.98.” It was just a few ounces, but I could get several colors, and I didn’t need much of any given one. Bingo.

Paint chips. This was so way better than trying to pick out paint for a room. I didn’t give a rip if they matched anything – the room, the floor, the fridge, the cabinets, that cute little set of drapes I’d (not even considered) gotten recently. I just wanted color! It was a free-for-all!

I went for bright stuff. Colors that felt positive and energetic. Pool Party (blue). Greeenway (self-explanatory). Cosmic Berry (purple). Buttercup Squash (yellow). Red Gumball (guess).

Five brushes, five colors, forty bucks. A little pricey for me, but I’d gotten a bonus playing the gig last night, so I spent it on…me!

Now comes the good part! All pictures are clickable to enlarge.

Early stage. Just a little green and blue.

Gettin’ crazy with the whole palette. A bunch of shapes are showing up, plus some full panels of color.

Things are really gettin’ interesting now. It was right about this time that my brother stopped over to help work on getting the oil pan off the Chevelle engine. He took one look at it and said, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Painting!”

“Being creative?”

“Yup.”

The following hour was spent getting really dirty and pouring a lot of coolant and some oil on the floor getting the oil pan off, but we got it done, and he split. Back to the kitchen, and I knew I had to wrap things up. This was fun, but one of the things I have to put in to practice is trying not to become obsessed with perfection. I needed to have fun with this, and then just call it good enough and be done with it. I was meeting some friends later in the evening, so I gave myself one hour to finish it. By about 7:30 I had to be done, done, done, no excuses. An activity is no longer fun or positive if it begins eating up the rest of your life. At 7:30 I finished washing purple paint off my hand (see print in blue panel), and stepped back to check things out:

Fun stuff, huh? I was pretty pleased. It’s art. It may not be Monet, but it’s art. It was fun. I had an incredibly good time just making stuff up and doing whatever I wanted, letting the drips run, and being okay with all the little goofs and happenstances that came up along the way. I think my favorite parts are the green bubbly-lookin’ circles (I don’t know why, they just are.), and the dotty little spots on the left frame – those are actually tons of my fingerprints after I dipped my fingers in the paint. That was one of the last bits I did, and kind of felt like a “light bulb” moment. I’ve been doing nothing like this for so long it’s hard for me to think about visual improvisation, so it was nice to feel things waking up a bit.

All in all, I had a pretty excellent day playing around with paint, and now I’ve got something really positive to see me out of the house ever morning. If my experience with the goal-setting posters has been a good indicator, this ought to bring about some positive effects sooner or later. I’m looking forward to it.