Permission to Paint What you Love

'Seek and You Shall Find'       8x8         pastel       ©Karen Margulis
available  $125

After the camera stopped I slipped into the zone. I found myself getting lost in the tangle of flowers and grasses that I was creating. I wove the grasses with thin strokes of hard pastels. I added flowers and softened others. I was transported into the scene that I had visited many many times. I was at home and I was having fun! That is what happens when you paint with passion and intimate familiarity.

Yesterday's demo painting

I painted Queen Anne's Lace for yesterday's Facebook Live broadcast. If you have watched it you know that I didn't do the finishing marks on the video. I needed to allow myself to get to the place where I could let go. How do we get to this point of intuitive passionate painting?

 Paint a lot and paint your passion.

Last week I blogged about painting miles of canvas. We all know the importance of painting a lot. Daily painting truly made a huge impact on my progress. But things really took a leap forward when I started painting what I LOVE.

I am passionate about wildflowers. I LOVE painting them. I give myself permission to paint them over and over again. It is what allows me to be intimate with them and paint them with passion.  For today's painting, I simply took the demo underpainitng from yesterday's video and tried to interpret it in a different way. Just another day in the studio!

the underpainting done with Art Graf Carbon Disc

TRY THIS: This week why not paint the thing you are most passionate about. Paint several variations on the same reference. Let go!

Note: There is certainly a place for painting subjects that you don't love for the sake of learning certain things. I don't do that often enough. Push outside of your comfort zone of course. But be sure to make time to paint what you are passionate about.