Sometimes the art tells me what it wants to be.

 My daughter commented the other day that I have been painting more than usual this month. It is interesting that the more I write -  as in blog - the more I also create with paint. Somehow the two are related for me. I'm not sure how or why but writing definitely creates this juicy well of creativity in me that seems to overflow outward. I don't always know what I'm going to paint though, actually when it comes to painting on canvas I almost never know what I'm going to paint. I just kind of follow my intuition and I start putting colour down. I might start with the idea of I want to put a pentacle in this one, or I want to have a face in this one. That's how this one started. I decided this one was going to be a face.

A bunch of my canvas' actually end up going over the top of old paintings. I scored a number of pre-loved canvas' from an art school once so some of them go over the top of those and some are also over the top of my own paintings that I just don't like. So this one began over the top of a previous pour painting I attempted and hated. I just gessoed right over the top and then got out my neocolor II water-soluble crayons and put the base of a face down. At this point, I was thinking some flowing hair, big beautiful blue or green eyes, maybe a flower crown, something cute.

Then I painted the background black to start putting in layers to the background but I must have been off with the muses cause I painted around the whole face, not leaving space for a neck and I thought uh-oh, can't have floating head syndrome, ain't no one like floating head syndrome, how am I going to fix this? I mean sure, it's acrylic and I could probably gesso in a neck and add the neocolor II on top but as I went about my business while the black background was drying it kept catching my attention and as much as I've been told not to have a floating head, this painting was screaming to be a floating head. I also like to just roll with my mistakes. I'm very much of the Bob Ross philosophy of allowing the happy little accidents. Yet still, the voices in my head were saying, you can't do a floating head, that's not okay, you have to give it a neck, you have to embody this face. I thought you know what, that is Future Samm's problem, I'm actually liking the floating head right now and art doesn't have any rules really, not at the end of the day. Art can be whatever you want it to be and if I want a floating head, I can have a floating head.

So I ignored my Inner Critics and let me tell you, there was a whole chorus of them. Instead, I just started doodling on the black with my white posca pen when I got right into the swirls and dots. I kind of fell into a meditative state doing it and didn't even want to stop when I'd filled the whole canvas. At this point though I was thinking I'd have some butterfly's flying in and around her hair and kind of exploding out of the top of her head. That was the plan. Hah! The best-laid plans and all that... I outlined the features of the face and then put some neocolor II's over the top of the swirlies knowing it was all just layers, intending to brayer over the top of that and maybe put on some stamps or stencils. I even had the thought I could give her a neck with this layer as though she has a high neck jumper on or something. Pfft.

No, she said. I will be a disembodied head thank you very much. I will also not have hair, I want a very tall cranium and I want a lot of features that are just a little bit off, a little bit alien. I want to be a beautiful, psychic, disembodied, humanly alien head. She very definitely did not want pupils though she allowed me to put a shadow of a neck in. So I brayered the background after all. I put on some blue and red neocolor II's in the head as well as my usual skin tone and then used my Ceramcoat Old Parchment to blend it all in. Added some highlights and some shadows along the way, re-added the posca pen outlines and recreated the flowers attached to her head. I kept meaning to put on eyebrows but she successfully kept distracting me from doing that and I realise only RIGHT NOW as I am typing about this finished painting that I literally forgot to put them on LOL! She clearly did not want them. I finished her off by adding black neocolour II around the outsides of everything. 

She is weird and humanly alien and disembodied but I actually really love her. She intrigues me, she has this all-knowing energy like she can see right through me. She hasn't told me her name yet, maybe it will come with time. I find her intriguing and interesting and I really love her flaws, those parts that make her asymmetrical and just a little left-of-centre.

So this is obviously not even close to anything I could have imagined at the beginning but I love letting my painting guide me, following the flow of my intuition, allow the mistakes to remain and seeing what comes of it. After all, I could always just paint over it again one day if I wanted to right? At the same time, I like to keep my mistakes or my first attempts, they are great to look back on and see how far the skill has grown over the years but this one? I think this one is a strange and beautiful keeper of secrets and knower of all. I would totally encourage everyone to allow the mistakes to flow and just follow what the art is asking of you. You never know what you might create.