My Focus for December

Finish a book.  Not the novels I read or my daily devotional reading, I finish those with no trouble.  It’s the many books I buy with techniques to try and exercises to do that go unfinished. 

I start, get sidetracked with something else like another new technique or medium or whatever and the book goes in a pile, or back on the shelf and there it sits until I happen upon it again while looking for something else.

One that I happened on that way recently is “Nine Modern Day Muses and a Body Guard” by Jill Badonsky.  I know I read parts of it, there are highlights.  I didn’t do the exercises.  Rereading I can see that doing them would be valuable, especially since my muse seems to be hiding somewhere. 

The first exercise had me go back and think about what it was that I liked doing as a child.  Make things, draw and color.  I so wanted that big box of crayons, the one with sooooo many wonderful colors!  Now I wonder, why there isn’t more color in my art.  My paintings are peaceful rather than vibrant.  sometimes they are very bright and colorful like this small one title Mardi Gras. (it’s brighter in real life)

More often they’re quiet muted color like this Street In Greece. I like the quiet but what happened to the girl who longed for color?  She is either still there, buried inside me or she left.  I don’t know that I’ll find out doing the exercise in the Nine Muses book but I might.  Who knows, what I may learn about me if I stay focused long enough.