Letting Go During the Creative Process

My sister and I got into a discussion/argument with her boyfriend about this. We were watching the Joy of Painting on television because it's mindless entertainment and kind of relaxing. Her boyfriend commented that Bob Ross' paintings were not real art and we both said that we envied his paintings. Not necessarily because of the quality but because of the abandon with which he creates them. We had both tried his techniques and had both come out with the same results - nothing that looked anything like what he had painted. And we both agreed that the reason for this was that we took too much care and too much effort to try to make our painting look like his painting that we ended up over-thinking and over-doing. I also write and November is National Novel Writer's Month. The point of this game is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. November is for writing, December is for editing, the website says. Write without thinking about what you are writing. Give your internal censor a heavy duty tranquilizer and go to work. I could not do it. I couldn't write 5000 words with my heart instead of my brain, let alone 50,000. The moral of the story here is that I have a very hard time letting go in the creative process. I think too much, analyze too much and end up with soup so salty no one can stand to eat it.

I used to be very worried about perfection. I would do things over and over because I wasn't satisfied with my work. I didn't find my paintings good enough or perfect enough. Over the years I have learned to be less of a perfectionist and I have become better at just playing around. I like to experiment and play with the colours. I sometimes paint with my fingers or use other technics.

i like painting big. and there's really no rigidity when paiinting big. you really cant plan too much. it just happens. and fits together. i do love experimenting with textures adn shading. love it.

i am a paper artist and a writer and i so know what you mean. it is easy to let your creative muse work and i find it sort of funny because sometimes you have a whole other idea and your muse just takes you a whole different direction sometimes.