The mantra reverberates around my brain, sometimes it’s so much a part of the background noise, that I don’t even hear it. It’s ingrained. It has different clothes, sometimes. Sometimes it tells me I can’t do this, or I can’t do that, or I shouldn’t do this, or that. It’s every version of Not Good Enough that manifests whenever I have done anything that might look like I’m expressing myself.
It’s old, it’s as old as I am, and probably it’s older than than, because it was gifted to me from multiple generations of people who think it’s better to wheesht.
It has different levels on different days, and today it was less noisy than yesterday, but it was there all the same. I had to navigate it to get to the brush today. I got to the brushes and opened a sketchbook, and then went and focused on something else.
And then I picked up my phone and opened Facebook, and I nearly closed it again, because I don’t know what they are doing to the newsfeed, but it just keeps auto-refreshing at speed. I clicked through to my Let’s Face It class group to see if it was the same in groups, and discovered that I was selected as one of three artists highlighted in the Class Spotlight for the Juna Biagioni class last week – here’s the blog about that piece.
There are over one thousand artists in that group, and I had absolutely no ambitions about making it onto these spotlights, but I did, and it landed right in the middle of a fairly negative self-talk day.
I don’t know why I, or anyone else, ever listens to these stories our brains tell ourselves, but I know that we all do, and today is a reminder that whether I paint or not, the voice will always be there, but if I do paint and put my art out there, there will be moments that can end up being tools I can use to combat the relentless inner critic.
Feeling more like it, I got into my A4 sketchbook, and had some fun with my shitty brushes. I did two very different paintings, with the first being the crow, and the second being the abstract face. It’s interesting to me the way I feel abstracting faces is working better as a result of improving my observation with the more realistic portraits in the class.
The crow is very wonky, but there are things that I like. I like the eye, and the way I painted it with a combination of big scratchy brush, and a dotting tool. It’s completely in the wrong place, but I can paint the crow again, it’s just a sketchbook page.
I like the way the scratchy brush gives looseness and texture, and it’s definitely a way of painting I am enjoying.
I got much looser for this lassie, and I really like her. Her nose is a bit out of it, but the expression in her eye is definitely what I was going for. She’s a lot of fun.
Today’s wishlist: Scotland men’s team to win.
Til the morn,
Suzanne
118/200
Thrummie Bizzum 
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