The limitless sky

We’ve had some unusu­al skies this November: a total lunar eclipse (a.k.a., “Blood Moon”), wild­fire smoke, heavy fogs, out-of-nowhere snow show­ers, but my favorites have been the stun­ning sunsets.

Autumn and win­ter bring to Clark County the most vivid sunups and downs of the year, thanks to chang­ing weath­er pat­terns that quell the pro­fuse scat­ter­ing of light waves that occurs in spring and summer. 

Cold weath­er bestows upon us many gifts, includ­ing the clas­si­cal­ly beau­ti­ful pair­ing of leaf­less tree branch­es back­lit by the mer­cu­r­ial Kentucky sky (which, at any giv­en moment, can run the gamut from gloomy to glorious).

Stuck inside recent­ly on a very gray day, I felt col­or-starved and cold, so thought I’d do a lit­tle “playnt­ing,” my made-up word for what goes on in my art room. Playing with paints — at any age — can be reju­ve­nat­ing and fun, as I have preached many times in ear­li­er posts.

In an effort to encour­age your own cre­ativ­i­ty now that the weath­er is nudg­ing us indoors, I thought today I’d share not only a “fin­ished” piece, but also a “before” ver­sion to illus­trate how much fun the process of cre­at­ing can be when approached with play­ful­ness and instinct.

As stat­ed ear­li­er, my mood some­times mir­rors the weath­er, which on this par­tic­u­lar day was dark and cold. Vibrant warm col­ors seemed a promis­ing anti­dote, which meant acrylic paint — not water­col­ors — in very lib­er­al dos­es. Slathering vivid shades of yel­lows, reds, and pinks onto heavy paper felt good that drea­ry after­noon, as did scrib­bling with a nail on the still-wet paint­ing sur­face because... well, frankly, why not?

Already my mood was improving.

Acrylic paint dries fast, and because black ink seemed nec­es­sary next, I quick­ly sketched in trees, hous­es, and roads — ordi­nary land­scape fea­tures ren­dered in ordi­nary ways. With that impulse sat­is­fied, I paused to assess the mess and drew the con­clu­sion that the roads were overkill and the hous­es were under­whelm­ing. (See the “Before” pic­ture below.) Painting over them seemed a log­i­cal rem­e­dy, but alas, it didn’t help.

So the real fun start­ed once I real­ized I had reached the point at which I had noth­ing to lose. Out came the scis­sors, and with­in sec­onds I cut away the roads, which left my paint­ing in lit­er­al pieces — an improve­ment, for sure. The three sur­viv­ing shards didn’t quite line up, but thanks to the mir­a­cle that is Mod Podge (the go-to glue of the crafty), I suc­cess­ful­ly reunit­ed them and turned my atten­tion back to the whole.

Those black-lined hous­es still weren’t work­ing for me, so I traced their out­lines on a clean piece of paper and paint­ed new hous­es with water­col­ors. After lay­ing them over the old ones, they looked too bright, so I dulled them down with a fine-point black pen. Even then, they seemed out of bal­ance with the big tree I’d inked into the upper right­hand cor­ner. Wondering if more black might some­how cor­rect this, I made anoth­er set of out­lines from a scrap of dark poster board. After fool­ing around with the posi­tion­ing, I final­ly set­tled on slid­ing the dark cutout behind and to the right of the col­or­ful hous­es. I liked the result.

It was late after­noon by then, and the sun was no doubt set­ting, but I couldn’t see it because the day was still gloomy. My mood, how­ev­er, was any­thing but.

Creative engage­ment trans­forms both the art and the artist. It is nev­er a waste of time, and in fact, presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge our­selves, solve prob­lems, take risks, and exper­i­ment in safe, low-stakes sce­nar­ios that are increas­ing­ly rare in our busy and seri­ous grown-up lives.

We have absolute­ly noth­ing to lose when we take time out to play and cre­ate, so I hope you will try it dur­ing these com­ing win­ter months. You don’t need fan­cy sup­plies or expen­sive equip­ment to make art, just a desire to make some­thing and a will­ing­ness to fol­low your instincts. Beyond that, the sky real­ly is the limit.

Happy playnt­ing!