OMG! I Can’t Believe I Did This!
OH MY GOSH!!!
You’re not going to believe this!!!
After years, and I’m talking YEARS, of painting my doodle flowers the same exact (smooth!) way to EASILY calm my mind, I switched things up!
And I can’t even believe it!!
Usually, when I sit down to paint, I ALWAYS paint my doodle flower because it is something I don’t have to think much about.
Because I’m thinking all day long, 24/7, I use mindless, doodle painting as meditation for my mind.
So no major thinking is NOT allowed!! Ever!!
I only want to think about which colors I feel drawn to and colors that FEEL GOOD to me and that’s it. NOTHING ELSE!!
You know, like mediation, when I lay down in my bed and turn on those soothing mediation sounds and close my eyes, I FEEL GOOD just laying there and doing and thinking about nothing!! Well…for the most part…my mind is still thinking about everything and anything, but it still FEELS SO GOOD to sit and not have to think about DOING anything for 10 to 20 minutes….right? That’s what mindless-painting does for me!
And then I just paint over and over and over the white paper or canvas, slowly and slowly, while my mind goes from choas to finally… C A L M.
Ahhhhh!!! The best FEELING in the world!!
Painting the petals over and over with a color that FEELS GOOD to me in that moment is my ultimate mind calmer and when I’m done I just love the smoothness of it and how it makes me feel…C A L M.
Like I just came out of the spa or a nice, long restorative yoga session.
But the other day, when I was painting, like I always do, I was having some trouble with the paint color I had painted in the middle of the flower.
It was looking really muddy…like a light brown.
When my paint gets like that, I love to take my paper towel over it to get rid of most of the paint so I can start over.
I do this because the paint is too wet and there’s too much paint in that spot so I need to lessen the paint and get the area a bit more dry so I can start over again.
That’s the beauty of painting…you mess up…you can dab a paper towel over it and then start over again! LOVE!
On this day, after I was done getting rid of the excess paint, I thought, “Maybe I’ll dap some paint on the paper towel and then dab it on the spot instead of just painting over it again like I always do.”
And, OH MY GOSH!!!!
I LOVED IT!!!!
I LOVED IT SO MUCH that I started doing the petals, too!
And when I finished, I had tons of colorful paper towels surrounding me and an entire flower filled with fun and colorful paper towel daps all over it and I was SMILING SO BIG!!!!!.
I thought, “That was SO FUN!!!” and…“I’m SO doing that again!!! YESSSS!!!”
It reminded me of splatter paint in way, with lots and lots of texture added in.
Is that even the right word? Texture?
I don’t even know!! Ha!
Because, yeah, like always, I’m not a professional artist and I don’t know ANY professional artist terms…I just paint, mindlessly, to calm my mind.
OH YEAH!! LOL!
But, I mean, just look at all those paper towels.
I HAD SO MUCH FUN!!
It was like BEing a kid again.
I still had my soothing and smooth and calming paint FUN.
But this time, I also had my IGNITE-MY-INNER-JO- paper-towel-dabbing-FUN, too!
I always use paper towels to dab the excess water off my watercolor paint that I add to my hand lettering. It’s always fun to play with my hand lettering in that way and I’ve been doing it for years.
It’s a JOY IGNITER for sure!!
But, I’ve never thought to try it on my flowers.
That is…until now. Woohoo!!!
Honestly, though…this doesn’t surprise me one bit.
Because that’s the beauty of mindless-creativity.
Once the mind calms in this fun, kid-like way, all kinds of ideas (especially CREATIVE ideas!) start to come through.
It’s been SO long since I’ve painted consistently. So it did actually surprise me that this new technique came to me so soon.
But, I’ve been doodle painting for years now, and I know, that once the mind starts to calm through creativity and then little breaks and even BIG breaks occur…
Meaning it’s been FOREVER since the mind has created…it picks up where it left of easier than when it first started for the first time in decades…meaning, the mind is 44-years-old and it hasn’t CREATED anything, especially in this kid-like way since it was 12. That definitely isn’t easy.
BUT, once it starts, days, weeks, months, years or decades, it does get there…and most of the time, faster than you’d think!
So yeah, I just had to share, because this is HUGE, HUGE, news for me!
I never, ever, thought I’d change up my flower doodle painting because the way I’ve always done it SO soothing for my mind!
Because my mind LOVES to feel calm in this way.
But, really, when I think of dabbing paper towels in paint and dabbing it all over a painting, it really doesn’t seem calming.
But what I came to realize, is that, I AM, still doing my calm painting, I’m just doing it in the same way that I do my hand lettering.
When I first sit down to hand letter a word, I start to feel calm by slowly tracing over and over and over the word with my sharpie.
Ahhhhhh….I can FEEL that calming FEELing right now while I think about doing it as I typed that out…SO calming!
And then once I’m done, I add watercolor paint to the word and then I dab it with paper towels.
And while I’m dabbing the watercolor paint over my word, my inner JOY starts to get ignited.
I start smiling and I start feeling UPlifted and happy!
And then when I pull the picture I took of it into Photoshop, my JOY gets ignited even more because I absolutely LOVE bringing the word and the color to life in the editing process.
It’s SO FUN for me! I love it SO much!!
And now my flower paintings (more to come!) are doing the same exact thing!!!
I mean, they ALWAYS brought me JOY, too! Playing with color is such a JOY igniter!! But now they’re igniting more JOY in me!!
SO AWESOME!!
When I paint, I start off by slowly painting all over the white paper or canvas.
Then I paint my flower doodle outline, and then I start to slowly paint over and over the petals, and then my mind begins to FEEL oh, so CALM.
My stressful thoughts start melting away, and all I can think about is how much fun I’m having, playing with color in this way, and what FUN color would FEEL GOOD to add next.
Then, before I finish it with my dots, I dab my paper towel with some paint on it all over the flower (and now even the background, too…you’ll see it my next flower doodle painting post!) and my JOY is on fire!!!
The more I dab, the more JOY I start to feel!! It’s SO awesome!! And FUN!!!
And then once it’s done, I look at, and I’m SMILING BIG while thinking to myself, “OMG!! I CAN’T BELIEVE I CREATED THAT AND I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!!”
All because I sat down to calm my mind through mindless CREATIVITY!!
All because I sat down and painted something I doodle all the time in my notebook when I’m waiting on hold on the phone.
All because I sat down and painted something I always used to doodle in my high school notebooks when I was bored in class.
All because I listened to my inner guide, my inner gut, my inner intuition, when I was extremely stressed out as a new mom 12 years ago, that told me to do something CREATIVE….something hands-on…even though, at that time, I never, EVER, thought of myself as CREATIVE, but I decided to do it anyway!!
What always amazes me (and saddens me) the most, is how I spent SO many years of my life thinking those thoughts…that I was NOT creative, from probably the time I was 12 until I was 32 (the year I had my first born) and how that thought…that ONE thought was SO incredibly WRONG!!
I AM CREATIVE!!
WE’RE ALL CREATIVE!!
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US WAS BORN CREATIVE!!
Be it a professional artist, musician, an actor, a singer, a teacher, a lawyer, a doctor, a construction worker, a restaurant owner…the list goes on and on…and especially during a pandemic (I mean…did you SEE all the CREATIVITY that BLOOMED during the pandemic?! We all had to figure out new ways to do things and that’s called CREATIVITY!!)
AND IT’S THE CREATIVITY THAT LIVES INSIDE OF ALL OF US THAT HAS THE POWER TO CALM OUR STRESS…IGNITE OUR JOY…AND HELPS US TO LIVE OUR LIVES CONNECTED TO WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE LOVE!!!
BUT BECAUSE LIFE HAS RESPONSIBILITIES THAT ARE SO NEEDED…OUR CREATIVE SELVES GET BURIED DEEP, DEEP, INSIDE OF US.
FOR THE MOST PART, OUR INNER CREATIVITY NEVER GETS TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY AGAIN…BECAUSE IT’S BURIED SO DEEP THAT WE CAN NEVER THINK WE’RE CREATIVE AND THAT ONLY CERTAIN PEOPLE ARE…AND THAT SADDENS ME THE MOST.
Because that was ME for SO many years!
It’s just that as we grow older (and this starts young!), we have way too many left-brain thoughts coming in.
Left-brain thoughts NEED to come in, we have tests to pass, homework to figure out, cross the street without being hit by a car, degrees to achieve, careers to help pay the bills and so on and so on.
The days of just sitting down to color, to finger paint, to paint every single color on a blank white piece of paper (hello, right brain!) just to see how it looks gets thrown on the back burner and never gets touched much again.
But let me tell ya…it’s those creative, kid-like activities, that keep our inner CREATIVE self alive and it keeps our left and right brain balanced.
But society doesn’t know this and society just keeps our left-brain in control. It’s just how society is set up!
So it’s our job to do everything we can to keep our CREATIVITY alive and our kids CREATIVITY alive, too!!
If I never had those LOUD intuitive thoughts to do something more creatively, hands-on, when my mind was SO very stressed from figuring out how to take care of my newborn baby, I would have never, EVER, connected with the powerful benefits that playing with color, like a kid, brings!!
More calm!
More JOY!
More CREATIVE ideas!!!
Because it’s those simple KID-LIKE creative activities; coloring, finger painting, painting every single color all over the white paper…that activates the right brain…the side that gets buried in the dust while the left-brain does all the work, 24/7, to keep us safe, get us through school and pay the bills so we can have a warm or cool house (whichever season we’re in) to live in (and, yes..like I always say…SO NEEDED!!!).
But our right brain is SO needed, too!!
Because when the right brain gets more time to come out and play…we start to FEEL more calm and balanced and the left-brain, stressed out thoughts, don’t feel as intense and loud anymore.
They’re still there, but just not running the show as much anymore! SCORE!!!
We can’t only live in left-brain….we have to live in right brain, too.
We NEED to give BOTH sides the love and attention that they deserve…every single day!!
If we don’t have BOTH getting the much needed love and attention it deserves, that’s when the STRESS of life feels GINORMOUS and NEVER ENDING and that’s when we STOP creating and never, ever, thinking we could CREATE anything!
We live unbalanced!
And that’s EXACTLY what I learned and saw in myself once I picked up my crayons, colored pencils and paint brushes again.
Not only did I start to SEE and connect and become super aware of all the stressful thoughts I was repeating in my head all day, everyday, but I also started to SEE and CONNECT and become SUPER AWARE of those thoughts calming and I started to say to myself that YES...I AM CREATIVE!!
I ALWAYS HAVE BEEN!! AND I ALWAYS WILL BE!!
Because I was born CREATIVE!
WE ALL ARE!
Every single one of us have colored, finger painted and painted every single color they could on a blank, white sheet of paper.
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US!!!
If you’re saying no way, I invite you to go into a pre-school…or observe a family with young children and you will SEE every single 2, 3 and 4-year-old happily painting at the Art table or coloring at the table in a restaurant while waiting for their food to arrive.
And not only that, you’ll see every single 2, 3 and 4-year-old happily showing their friends and their teachers and their parents what they CREATED!!!
You and I were that 2, 3 and 4-year-old once. But guess what!? That CREATIVE little 2, 3 and 4-year old we once were has NEVER, EVER left us, either.
Our inner creative selves are inside us, just waiting for us to tap in and connect with him or her again.
And once you do, you will be AMAZED by how you FEEL and what comes through YOU!!
I AM…EVERY SINGLE TIME I CREATE!!
I’m never trying to figure out what I’m going to create when I sit down.
I’m never, ever, thinking about the outcome.
The only thing I think about is that I’m going to paint something that doesn’t have me thinking much and what colors FEEL GOOD to use that day (and that may be the same colors for days, weeks or months or years…it doesn’t matter! What matters is how YOU FEEL!!).
Because I paint to calm my mind. Painting IS mediation for my mind.
This is my time to meditate my mind…to NOT think about life for a little bit…to just BE…like a kid again! Just playing with color.
And, yes…do I FEEL CALM when I’m done.
But every single time…when I’m finished and I look at what I created…I’m BLOWN with AWAY with what came through.
It’s different every single time!
It’s still the same subject…a doodle flower, but it never looks like the other one’s I’ve done.
That’s the beauty of tapping into your mindless, creative inner self.
You never know what’s going to come through…once the mind switches over from left brain…the chaos side…to the right brain…the calm side!.
As you can see with my NEW doodle flower painting up above!!
Paper towel dabbing came through for me!!
And, OH GOSH!! I LOVE IT SO MUCH!! :)
So…
Until next time,
Be on the look out for my next Doodle Flower Painting post…it will have video so you can see the entire process from start to finish.
YAY!!
But if you’d like to start dabbing your paintings like I do…just take a small section of paper towel…dab it a little into the paint color of your FEEL GOOD choice.
Then slowly dab it on your painting. You can dab it on one spot or all over.
I love to go all over. And I also add different colors all over and on top of each other.
Like, for this painting, I dabbed purple on top of the pink petals and then I dabbed in some white. If I felt like I was loosing too much of the pink color, I’d dab in more pink.
There’s no rules. Just fun!!
And honestly, the more dabbing you do, the more fun you’ll have!
At least, that’s how it was for me anyway. :)
OH!! And your hands will be FILLED with color, too! SO FUN!! :)
And now…my last…
Until next time… for this time..ha! :)
I AM SOUL GRATEFUL that I AM CREATIVE and I AM SOUL GRATEFUL that YOU ARE TOO!!!! (CAN WE SAY IT LOUDER IN THE BACK!!! YASSSS PLEASE!!)
I AM SOUL GRATEFUL THAT I AM CREATIVE AND I AM SOUL GRATEFUL THAT YOU ARE TOO!!!
WOOOO TO THE HOOOOO!!!!
I don’t know about you, but what I know for sure and with all my heart and soul, the world NEEDS more connection with their inner, mindless, creative selves!!
YAAASSSSSSSSSS, GIRL!! YASSSSSS!!!
IT IS TIME!!!! :):)
Why do I doodle paint? Because it easily calms my mind and soothes my soul so I can connect more to what my heart and soul truly wants and needs no matter how busy and stressful my life may be (something that's hard to do when my mind is running five miles ahead or behind the present moment).
Tools used: liquitex basics acrylic paints | canson mixed media sketchbook | michaels $5 pack of paintbrush set
Creativity CALMs my mind, ignites my JOY and slows me down so I can SAVOR everything I LOVE in my life.
Who I am is what I love...SAVOR it!
