Mistakes? Who me?

Well, I started my next collage painting. Actually, I started it a couple of weeks ago, but it was just Sharpie on an old college painting at the time. Today was the real work, the kind where I'm sorry I didn't dress more appropriately for the occasion—I have a tendency to want to wipe my hands on my pants, you see. And, well I drop things a lot, on myself. I'm clumsy—it's part of who I am.

I went to the studio with a lot less energy than I had earlier in the day. You can't always get to your creative place when you want. It would have been nice to work out some of that mental energy, but it's fine. In the evening I showed up at the canvas board (yes, canvas board), anyway. Music was going to be necessary, but what to play? I decided to go with Wilco. There are some really great pieces that I like and some that make me cringe because they are noisy and hard to endure, but I think that's what I needed.

I was going to skip showing the original painting because it's just so awful, but there was a time and a place for it, and we all grow. Right? So if you're looking at this, please know that I hate the painting, too. I also get the benefit of watching it change, hopefully for the better. I didn't have my camera to take a picture of what I did today—which was a lot—but hopefully I'll get to it tomorrow before I make more marks.

Again, I'm going at this with a "no mistakes" kind of attitude. That really makes the process just as important, if not more so, than the product. I think this one has some kind of fairy tale theme since I decided to start with Pinocchio. And I have a copy of an old book of children's fairy tales that's a lot like one I had when I was a kid. I've been waiting to use it for something. The collage also has some religious aspects to it because I found one of my old Catholic-school text books. So that's where we're starting—a kind of religious fairy tale, or a fairy tale about religion, or religion as a fairy tale. Or maybe I'm making it all up, it's Pinocchio after all.