Flowing into the New Year (Online art lesson #78)

Best Wishes for a New Year filled with Positive Creativity!

Have a Joyous New Year!      Detail of silk scarf painting by Lillian Kennedy

Learning to “go with the flow” is one of the essentials of the creative life. Going with the flow doesn’t mean being passive, it means accepting what IS (not what you expected or what you think “should” be).  Learning to maneuver in shifting currents will keep you from capsizing and you’ll have a much better time navigating the river of life.

Vermont barn in snow, Lillian Kennedy photo

Travel often involves changes of current, and this evening we find ourselves in a hotel in Burlington, VT instead of in our home in Boulder, CO as scheduled.  Going with the flow has made this change both pleasant and rewarding.

This New Year’s greeting to you was intended to be a video, but some “issues” with the program occurred at the last minute.

Plan B was a post on New Year’s resolutions. That plan ran aground too.  I’m onto plan C, which is to show you a drawing that Nyla Witmore emailed today.  The assignment is to follow her example… be inspired by something in your environment and to do a drawing of it.  Paddle on over to something interesting and do a sketch.  You will start a good habit  for the rest of your year. Today is the day.  Just for ten minutes, if that is all you have.  I’m talking to YOU!

Nyla Witmore, pen and watercolor sketchbook drawing, Australian gumtree

In Nyla’s words, Sketched from photos today after a walk. In Australia the eucalyptus trees, are so fascinating.  I actually could see sienna and reds and cerulean and gray and lavender in the trunks. These “gum” trees have such complicated and wayward branches. Sometimes I do the same tree twice….first one in ink only… the other in color because sometimes I overdo the color and try to say too much and then wish I had saved the ink alone sketch.

Congress, as I press publish,  is still working out how to go with the flow. Members are paddling the same raft in different directions, and the current has them a few hours from the cliff.

Wear your life vest when you hit the rapids, and have a blessed year!