People who have been reading my blog for a while must be scratching their heads. She’s turned off comments, she’s not focusing on edtech, and she’s not writing regularly.
That’s all true.
But I am thinking, working, and positioning myself for what’s next. After reading for months about creativity and the brain, I decided I had to venture out, do more than sit in front of my computer all day.
And so I have. I’ve been meeting in an artists’ group with my friend Elizabeth. Don’t you love the sound of that? An artists’ group.
Each Thursday, we gather in Elizabeth’s studio to explore our creative side. One woman is working on miniature oil paintings. Another hauls in a bag of various textures to continue a collage that might help her envision life after retirement. And I, I started to draw.
Using a variety of pens, markers, and papers, I have been working on what it means to sketch. The drawings are rough, but I plug along. I’ve watched myself move from “I can’t do that” to “I’ll try”–and I think of my students.
For a change last week, I decided to switch to a different medium. Elizabeth introduced me to watercolor painting. She explained the difference between wet on dry and wet on wet, and helped me learn how water shapes and moves the paints around on the paper.
Glorious.
As I painted, I kept thinking about my grandmother, a wise woman who left school after eighth-grade. Yet she painted, wrote books, and fished off the Rhode Island coast with my grandfather in the coldest weather. Though she loved her family deeply, she kept a life of her own–a creative life that she shared with her grandchildren. I remember her in the plays we performed in her yard, the books we read on her couch, and the paths we followed in her well-tended garden, searching for treasures she purposely left for us to discover.
These days, I am pushing myself out of my comfort zone working on the Second Journey.
Oh, I’ve also decided to participate in NaNoWriMo, and I’m already behind. I’ve changed the plot line of my novel twice, and now I think I’m starting again–this time a nonfiction piece about letting go. I’ll get there. No stress.
You can never fail or make a mistake in your exploration of creativity.
Henry Beecher said ” every artist dips his brush in his soul, and
Paints his own nature into his pictures.” Have fun and feel free creating a master
Piece from your soul that only you can create. You will find many
Will delight in your works. Esp your grandchildren. Just like you
Had growing up. Your loving creativity will be the best gifts, and
Make for wonder memories.
“The world is but a canvas to the imagination” Henry Thoreau