Embracing imperfection

I've been struggling with getting back into the studio.  I've just ended 18 months of low grade infection which was repeatedly misdiagnosed but is now gone, gone, gone.  And I'm just not bouncing right back.  In addition to the physical challenges, there's about 16 months worth of accumulated chores & clutter that need my attention.  And my habits have fallen into utter disarray.  So, bless you, Lisa Call,  for today's blog post about embracing imperfection and leveraging a small, doable task into a path for a larger goal.  See her blog post here.   Because a big part of my problem is feeling like I can't do enough today so I don't do anything.  Baby steps are clearly called for here and I apparently really needed some outside voice to tell me that.

The second great thing today was a FB post about a Turkish artist, Garip Ay.  I am particularly inspired by his piece pictured below.  Not because I do portraits, but because I like the combination of the marbling color and flow with the realistic style painted image.  It just really speaks to me so now my brain is churning with small steps I can take to move toward experimenting with this idea using my style of marbling and my bird photo based sketches.

See more at garipay.blogspot.com

This is a particularly promising path for me as the marbling can be done in small bursts, very quickly.  This means I can do a bunch of marbling in less than an hour (assuming the marbling tray and inks are already set up) and still have time to do some other work experimenting with the bird photos.  And not need more than 2 hours a day to make significant progress.

However, recognizing my low energy right now, and my challenges, I am not going to set myself up to fail.  I'm shooting for once a week making new stuff in the studio and the rest of my studio time can be finishing up the amazingly depressing backlog.  So, we'll see how it goes.