Blank Canvas

A blank canvas...What the heck do I do with that?

I like to think of myself as kind of an artist. I'm not a professional or even a practicing amateur, and I haven't had much experience beyond my high school/early college years. But I've always had a love for art and creating things. I still have a picture that I painted when I was like 10 when I was bored and decided to create something of my own at our kitchen table. It's a giant yellow duck that fills the whole page, surrounded by bright blue sky and green grass. It looks like a ginormous scary duck. But I was so proud of it, because it came from my head and I didn't copy it from anything. It was mine.

In high school, I had some awesome art classes including drawing and painting, and sculpture. My art teacher, Mr. Stickel (who took his life a few years ago, which was SO sad to hear) was a good mentor and he always made me feel good about my artwork. Whether it was the scratch art lady wrapped in cloth, ink penned indian face, sketched backdrops, chalk drawings, my cardboard layered fruit bowl or clay wizard....he gave me positive feedback and encouraged me to use my skills. I won first place in a nature artwork contest of my white colored pencil goats on black paper, and enjoyed going to different art shows that my work was entered in. During my freshman winter semester at BYU, I took a drawing & painting class, and loved it. I still have all the projects I did...in a bag down in our basement, along with highschool work. I don't know what I'll ever do with my artwork, but it's not something I want to throw away! Without all the tools and instructions and projects that are due for class, I don't create art anymore. But I miss it.

A couple days ago, my friend and I got together to paint. Just for fun. First we put the girls down for naps, and I finished a Thanksgiving wall hanging that I had started at relief society super saturday. My friend brought 2 blank canvases and her acrylic paints and brushes. She started on hers, and then told me to take the other canvas and go for it. I had no idea what to do with a blank canvas and paints! My thing is, I've always created something by looking at something else. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a very imaginative person. So I don't know how that works...to be an artist who's creativity runs low, but that's how it seems.

So luckily, she and I had gone to the Gateway a few months ago and looked at some art in one of the stores. There was a painting that we both liked, that consisted of a colored background and long stems with balls on the end that kind of looked like dandelion flowers. So that's what we decided to create, and I used colors on mine that would match in Cambria's room. Once I got started, it was fun! I liked painting! It's not so much the finished product, but the process that's the best part. Mixing the paints, experiencing with shades and colors and shapes.



It turned into a very simplistic picture, but it makes me happy to look at. And it's mine... something that I can tell Cambria I painted just for her. She won't mind that it's simple and imperfect. So after a very long preamble, that's what I made out of my blank canvas.