Sparking joy without Marie Kondo

White-browed tit-warbler, native to the Tian Shan Mountains
watercolour and crayon
©2020 Charlene Brown

Having trouble with your 2020 resolution to de-clutter with Marie Kondo?   There are other ways to spark joy—the thought that 2020 is almost over sparks quite a bit of joy...

Or, according to Nicholas Wilton’s video, playing with colour sparks joy.  He says that colour “is pure emotion, and a stand-in for you and your feelings.”  Instead of choosing the ‘right’ colour to perfect your art, he says that if you always choose colours that say YES, you will always produce your best, most exciting work.

I’ve been doing that for a while, usually adding as much purple as possible to my paintings. But that's not what happened here.  White-browed tit-warblers look pretty much the way I’ve painted this one!  Don't you think that just knowing they exist sparks joy?

I remember just a year ago, thinking the relatively straightforward yellow-browed warbler was pretty terrific! 

Charlene on Instagram

 

Synchronicity between our art and our lives

‘Urban’ background for a page in a graphic novel
Computer-altered watercolour and crayon
©2020 Charlene Brown

In the podcast I mentioned last week ‘Why trying to be good is killing your art,’ Nicholas Wilton suggests you list great painting experiences and techniques you have really enjoyed learning. 

Here is my short list:

1.      Helipainting in the Bugaboos with Canadian artists Robert Genn and LizWiltzen,  beginning a painting by placing ten basic shapes, which summarize the whole thing, leading to an abstract but recognizable landscape, possibly with telescoped perspective and rearranged components

2.      Abstract collage workshop with American artist Louise Cadillac  in the Greek Islands

And he says you should also think about the painting projects you are now working on about which you are most enthusiastic.

3.      writing and illustrating books

Because of what Nicholas Wilton calls the synchronicity between your art and your life, keeping these factors in mind will energize your work in the direction of whatever you truly want. It certainly works for him. So I'll give it a try - with an abstract graphic novel.

Painting is more fun than ever now

St. Lucia 1 and 2
Mixed media
©2020 Charlene Brown

American artist Nicholas Wilton, in a podcast ‘Why trying to be good is killing your art,’ suggests you stop worrying about getting a painting ‘right’ – he believes ‘your best art will always come from finding your own way.’

Painting is more fun if you focus on the process of getting where you want to go, rather than the actual outcome.

Given the importance of looking back to get where we want to go, what time, place, and method in your past reminds you of how much you love making art?

My answer is 1986 St. Lucia: the first of my favourite painting trips (actually a surprise Christmas gift).  A technique I had a lot of fun with there was scraping paint out to create designs on cocoa pods, so I included some scraping in these paintings.

 

Another mountain background for a graphic novel—or not

On the Trail to Lake Helen

Watercolour and crayon

©2020 Charlene Brown

If I use this for a background in any of the illustrations in my next graphic novel, I’m definitely going to have to move the action out of town.  I can’t put anything resembling a town in this pass on the north side of the Icefields Parkway just opposite the Crowfoot Glacier.

I’m going to be working on abstract paintings for the next little while, so I might just rethink this whole graphic novel illustration  plan. I tried googling ‘abstract comics’ and discovered they do exist. 

 

Paintings from the early days of this blog

Under cover of darkness, Lake Issyk-kul, graphic novel back/front cover illustration
Computer-altered watercolour
©2010 Charlene Brown

Arrival at Lake Issyk-kul, background illustration for Chapter 5 of graphic novel
Original watercolour, unaltered
©2010 Charlene Brown 

These paintings are from a graphic novel I wrote about ten years ago. You’ll see next week why I’m posting them now.

 

  

Except for a herd of Bighorns, we had the pass to ourselves…

Near the top of Piper Pass
Watercolour and crayon
©2020 Charlene Brown

I think I might use this and other non-abstracted paintings I posted earlier this month as backgrounds for drawings in a graphic novel I’ve started writing.  I used the paintings of mountains in Kyrgystan that I posted last week in the first graphic novel I wrote.

But there’s a problem.  Although a (fictional) Canadian mountain pass is involved in this new graphic novel, most of the action takes place in town.  It just wouldn’t be right to fit a town in beside Boom Lake or in the Ptarmigan Cirque or up Piper Pass, so I guess I’ll have to move some of the action out of town.

 

 

Five Years Ago

Switchback 26
Watercolour and crayon sketch
©2015 Charlene Brown

Our return to Tokyo via Lake Chuzenji at the top of the spectacular Kegon waterfall (three metres short of Niagara, 20 switchbacks up and 28 switchbacks down) was quite fantastic. This sketch shows the incredible number of switchbacks visible through the interwoven evergreen and brilliant red foliage on our descent through the precipitous mountain forest.

I participated recently in a podcast by American artist Nicholas Wilton, ‘Why trying to be ‘good’ is killing your art,’ and will be writing about it next month.   A point he made about ‘tracing an intuitive path, winding, and out of bounds if it seems appropriate’ to get around ‘blockades’ in your painting process, reminded me of the above blog post almost exactly five years ago. 

How different from today’s restricted adventures, when we seldom venture more than a kilometre from home!

 

Here’s a place I’ll never be…

Lake Louise from Mount Fairview
Watercolour and oil pastel
©2020 Charlene Brown 

This painting is based on pictures taken from the same almost inaccessible (in my opinion) mountaintop as the photos I used for my September 9 and October 7 blog post paintings.

In this view, the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise can be seen on the right at the north end of the lake.  In the upper right, the Icefields Parkway snakes off to the northwest.