Oh Joy

It's been a funny sort of a week. Having decided to slim down the number of things that I am working on I found I was lacking direction with all of them.

Obvioussolution, add another project into the mix.

I heard about Louise Fletcher's free week-long painting course 'Find your Joy' which was starting last Sunday so I thought I'd give it a try.I was impressed with the quality of the material, the aims (to become less self conscious of what you think others may think of your work and be open to exploring what you enjoy in your art) and the structure of the course.

It is aimed at painters but I thought a change of emphasis for a week couldn't hurt. I did the preliminary extra exercise, and the colour mixing exercise,and the main painting exercises one and two. I was part way through exercise three when it struck me that I was starting each of these tasks trying to think in paint but part way through each, to keep me motivated to finish it, I was starting to try and work out how to turn it into a book, or how to turn the task so that it could be done in print.

So I've decided I'll keep the notes in case I want to come back to it in the future but at the moment I'm bowing out at exercise three.It wasn't the course and I've learned some valuable colour mixing stuff that's definitely a transferable skill. As a freebie I was very impressed with it and would recommend it to painters.

But I think I found out my Joy isn't in paint. It is in print and books.