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Painting is food for my soul, and I always forget! There are long periods in my life that I do not paint. I am otherwise creative, but I am not painting.
Today, I decided I needed new aquarelle paper to paint on. I was looking online for a certain brand and certain dimensions and while I was strolling through the different brands and grain thickness I suddenly got this feeling in my stomach, this feeling of expectation and happiness. I didn’t think of what I wanted to paint or what the result would be like, I was just preparing to paint by looking at paper and it gave me such joy!
Time and again I convince myself that I am not a painter because of various reasons, but when I just go with my feelings and admit to myself what the activity is that brings me the most joy, than it has to be painting.
I wrote this text some weeks ago and then I forgot all about it. Today I was scrolling through my documents and discovered what I had written somewhere at the beginning of March. Since then you might have noticed that I regularly posted short videos on our Youtube channel “QuantoCat”. They are all part of the “Familiar Faces” project I started shortly after I bought the paper and the paint.
The idea of the project is that I paint the same face every day. It’s a face that I printed from the internet. It’s the same face, but the end result of my painting is different each time. Sometimes because I use a different brush or a different color, but mostly because my mood is different. Maybe I had a tough day or I was particularly happy and that shows in the way I paint.
The other thing is that when you paint the same thing over and over, in the end you will become really good at it. It’s what I talk and write about in “Find your Brushstroke”.
It’s kind of like finding your voice. When you practice long enough, you get comfortable with whatever channel or medium you’re using and you sound more natural and authentic. Same goes for painting. When you practice long enough, you feel the movements in your wrist coming back and you feel more confident while painting or drawing.
“A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.”
And then recently, my phone broke down. Black screen, no movement. I had to take it back to the store and they said it could take up to 4 weeks to repair it. Luckily we have a spare smartphone, but it’s a really cheap one, that has very few options, and when I realized that the camera was not working, I felt muted somehow. I got used to filming my familiar faces every other day and now I couldn’t anymore. It took them 3 weeks to get my phone working again and now I am all back and ready to show you my attempts at those Familiar Faces again. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
We all need something to make our heart sing. Often it is to be found in creativity.
Head over to our YouTube Channel: QuantoCat Knowledge and give a Like at your favorite Familiar Faces Painting and Subscribe to our channel for other interesting content.
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