A creative funk

For the last week I have been in a creative funk. Things just weren't going my way with the self-portrait, I damaged the porcelain Christmas decorations that I was hand-painting so wasn't able to get them for donation for Starship Hospital. I didn't like my initial background for the dragonfly painting as I did that one glaze too many and then couldn't go back so ended up starting from scratch again. I also couldn't hang my paintings at Cafe Apollo on Monday as I pulled a shoulder muscle at the gym on Saturday and as it hurts to lift, I couldn't deal with lifting big paintings up to hang and carrying them.

So I've basically felt frustrated and uninspired and in a creative funk. So today while my lovely daughter was sleeping, I decided that I had to pick up a paintbrush. I didn't know what to paint and I didn't want to even think about that so I squirted out 2 blues, 2 cool reds, one white and one gold and just put paint on the canvas. And this is what I came out with.

A bit strange, not really me and I will probably paint over it at some point and re-use the canvas, but it worked in terms of getting me out of this funk I was in by just picking up a paintbrush and pushing paint around. After I had done that, I tidied up my studio, prepared 2 canvases for some mixed media work I've had in the back of my mind and drew out the dragonfly on the prepared background that I re-did.

So I feel a lot better now and am actually inspired to get back out there and start on this dragonfly tonight once the munchkins are in bed. My shoulder has improved although is still not quite right and I am really missing the gym (and no an alien has not taken over my body for those readers that know me in real life) and using my husbands TENS machine on it each night which is helping. He uses the machine on his knee (wakeboarding = hobby) + (building = occupation) = three lots of knee surgery . So each night we sit in bed both with electrodes stuck on us while we read.

Also if you noticed the photo of an avocado at the top, I took that about an hour a go and played around a little with Photoshop Elements. I love avocado and it just gave me a ying and yang type feel when I was cutting it up for dinner so I decided to stop preparing tea and quickly take photos in the late afternoon sun. I actually quite like it and may even paint it at some stage.

So that's me, I'm back and will hopefully post progress on stuff very very soon.....