Mindfulness and Play

The Most Alive Moment

by Rumi

from The Soul of Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

The most living moment comes when

those who love each other meet each

Other’s eyes and in what flows

between them then.  To see your face

In a crowd of others, or alone on a

frightening street, I weep for that.

Our tears improve the earth.  The

time you scolded me, your gratitude,

your laughing, always your qualities

increase the soul.  Seeing you is a

wine that does not muddle or numb.

We sit inside the cypress shadow

where amazement and clear thought

twine their slow growth into us.

Rumi talks about the most alive moment being when we meet ourselves and there is no separation, no union, just one alone at the silent core.

I have been there – painting milkweed at Dayspring, sitting in the hot meadow, the sun beating down on me, evaporating the paint almost before it touches the page, leaving a lasting impression of a fleeting moment.  I see the picture months later and hear the insistent buzz of the bee, wish again I could capture the essence of the butterfly on her wing, wonder if this tight mauve popcorn ball of buds really transforms itself into white strands of silt which will waft through the wind to begin again.  The stages are as magical as a butterfly’s.

Playing with the Spirograph, I marvel at the engineering behind it, how someone determined the radii and curves the various holes and gears would make.  I marvel at the beauty and grace of the repetitive curves and loops, no angles, making shapes that truly fill me with glee.  

Joy unbounded because of patterns and swirls?   

Yes.

Yes.

YES. 

Emphatically YES.  

It brings me joy to produce patterns that meet one another harmoniously and then glance off each other to mesh with another.  The rainbow colors blending seamlessly together.  I do not understand the compulsion nor the pleasure, but it feels healthy and whole and complete.  I can spend hours at play, pursuing patterns, learning how they work, asking “I wonder what would happen if…?”

Perhaps I am finally allowing myself a happy childhood.  Are Legos and Erector Sets next?  I could go into Dylan’s closet and pull out the Playmobil and Legos and build towns and cities and make up stories like Laura and Dylan used to do.  I could let my mind wader with joy over the mountains and valleys of my imagination.  Is there a joy greater than this?

Spirograph on steroids

A few weeks ago I saw Nancy Blum's artwork at Reynolds Gallery here in Richmond.  I am crazy about her work - it's huge scale pictures of gorgeously graphic flowers with patterns abounding!  It struck a chord in me, and I would have bought several if I'd had the necessary $45K each!  They're wonderful.  I was tickled to notice that she uses Spirograph images behind the work, just barely, tantalizingly noticeable.  I asked her about it and she confirmed that that is what she does.  It's her first step.

I have always loved Spirographs!  As a kid, it was one of my favorite toys.  I would sit for hours playing with it.  So I decided to get myself one!  I'd seen a set at Barnes and Noble one day but hadn't bought it then.  I went back and got it the day after the show.  Sadly, disappointingly, it just wasn't any good.  Darn!  There were too few gears, no pins, no pens, nada, nothin'!  I took it back.  I looked online to see what was up.  Apparently I'm not the only fan!  On eBay and Amazon.com I found lots of comments about various versions of Spirograph and found that only the original Spirograph is super-cool.  Eventually Kenner had to use magnets rather than pins to hold the wheels in place - so toddlers don't swallow the pins, I guess - and other modifications that took away from the super-cool factor.  I looked through what was available.  Sticker shock kicked in immediately.  $75 was a cheap one!  Yikes!  I didn't do anything for a couple of days then I decided it was worth it to me, so I held my breath and ordered one.  I figured it was about the cost of a really  nice dinner on the town with Chris, and I'd enjoy this for a lot longer!

And boy, have I!  I've already spent 10-12 hours playing!  There's an instruction booklet that comes with it to show different patterns a person can make.  As an adult I can appreciate the complexity of the mathematics involved in it.  I do not remember understanding anything about it as a kid.  I'm pretty sure I didn't look at the booklet - I think I just dove in and played.  What I'm learning is that there are ways to line up the wheels inside the larger wheels to make the patterns vary.  There are so many possibilities!  I decided to take a very nerdy approach to it and am going through everything systematically to figure out which wheels do what.  

Here are a couple of designs I did following the instructions in the booklet.  I went inside the wheel and outside the wheel and used several different gears on the left hand one.  The right hand one is using the elongated bar, believe it or not!, and turning it 45 degrees each time with each different color. 

fig 1.

fig 2.

fig 4

fig 3

 After going through all the ones in the booklet, I started my own studies to see if i could discern the math and logic behind the system.  The notations connote which wheel and gear I used and how I lined each up on the other.  I had a really good time changing colors and sizes and holes, etc., to see what effect it would have.  I still haven't finished going through all the different sized gears.  I'm about 1/2 way through.  

fig 5

fig 6

Figure 6 shows what happens when I pinned the smallest gear down and used larger gears to go around it.  Fig 7 is more of those.  They remind me of geodesic domes or Celtic knots somehow.  I have so much fun saying "I wonder what will happen if I..." then trying it out! 

fig 7

Sometimes I berate myself a tad bit and think I should be painting or doing something serious, but I am having so much fun and am so absorbed in what I'm doing that I can only figure it is leading somewhere interesting.  I want to incorporate these into my paintings and drawings.  This morning I dreamt very clearly of a drawing of a figure with a spirographed image over top of it.  I plan to work on doing it tomorrow in figure drawing session.  I'm very excited to see if I can capture what I saw in my dream.  It was very clear there.

Now I want to figure out how to make the designs larger.  I think I'm limited by how large the plastic wheels are.  I wonder if there are other things I can use for wheels to make these designs.  I can't think of anything, but I figure a trip to the hardware store is in order to see what they might have there.  You never know!

It's delightful giving myself permission to play like I have been lately.  It makes me feel so happy.  I feel like the luckiest woman on earth.  I get to do what a love for a living.  I get to teach people who are excited about learning to do what I love to do.  And I get to play all day, asking, "I wonder what would happen if I..." then find out!  What a life!!

Make a Visual Journal to your Soul

For the last several months, since Beyond Barbie ended, I've been unclear about what my next step should/could be (as I've written about here several times already).  I haven't felt like creating large paintings, or, for that matter, any paintings at all.  It was a bit scary to go from a time period of such extreme creativity to this dearth of ideas.  Out of this time of "not knowing", I felt led to create a journal/sketchbook which I have been using almost daily.  I go into the studio where I have pulled out almost all of the art supplies I own (yes, what a mess!) and let the muse take me.  My mantra is "I wonder what would happen if..." then I allow myself to find out.  Sometimes I write inspirational quotes in calligraphy.  Sometimes I play with paint.  Sometimes I doodle with patterns.  Sometimes I paint flowers.  Every day it's something different, but it's always interesting to me, and, almost magically, it is lifting the fog I'd found myself in.  I'm finding it to be an incredible tool for self exploration.

Because it's been so powerful for me, I feel led to offer it to others.  The format I've come up with is a bit unorthodox - first we'll meet over a weekend, Oct 6th and 7th, to create the journals themselves - yes!  We will prepare the paper, make the cover, and bind the books ourselves!  Then we'll meet Monday evenings for six weeks to fill the journals.  The class will be skill-based in that you'll learn to make a book, and you may learn some skills in exploring different media, but it'll also be about personal exploration and opening to your creativity. This course will take you wherever you choose to go!

Three of the handmade journals I've created as part of this process.

Below I've pasted the blurb from my website so you can get the whole story.  Please contact me if you are interested, have questions, or would like to sign up.  I sense the class will fill quickly, so follow your urge, and sign up soon!

Happy creating!

Susan

Make a Visual Journal to Your Soul

Because our analytical brains (words and thoughts) sometimes get in the way of accessing insights, it can be helpful to take a visual approach to journaling to allow our more intuitive selves to emerge and teach us. 

In this class, we’ll spend a weekend creating a unique, personal 64-page bound journal, then we’ll spend the next six Monday evenings filling them with musings, experiments, drawings, paintings, collages, brainstorms, and whatever else we decide would be fun/enticing/creative/helpful/juicy and/or delicious to explore.  No art experience is needed whatsoever.  This is about play, experimentation, and exploration, a journey to your soul…

To sign up: Contact Susan Singer at SusanSingerArt@msn.com or 804-267-3455 to sign up or with questions. 

To see my own visual explorations in a previous post, you can go to http://susansingerart.blogspot.com/2012/07/more-meanderings-through-my-sketchbook.html

Dates:   Saturday, October 6, 10 AM – 4 PM

               Sunday, October 7, 1 PM – 5 PM

               Monday evenings, October 8 – November 12, 6:30 – 9:00 PM

Location: Susan Singer’s studio off Huguenot Rd. near Stony Point.

Cost: $250 plus materials fee of $25

Enrollment limited to six, so please sign up early to reserve your spot.  (As for 8/24, there are already four people signed up.)

Playing my way through the pain

This December I'll be Artist in Residence on a cruise sponsored by Semester at Sea through UVa.  We'll be traveling to the Bahamas, Jamaica, Colombia, Panama (going through the Panama Canal), Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Mexico and California.  It will be 25 days long.  It feels like one of the thrills of my life!  I love to travel but felt like perhaps my travel days were mostly over.  This awakened my Wanderlust again for sure!

I'll be teaching classes around the concept of a Visual Journal.  I'll teach Zendoodles (patterns) to decorate the journal with, Composing Photographs Successfully, Blind Contour Drawing, Modified Blind Contour Drawing, Drawing Basic Shapes, One Point Perspective, along with the basic concept of Visual Journaling.  Since I've never kept a Visual Journal, I thought it would be a good idea for me to keep one between now and then!

Generally when I use a sketchbook, I am very careful to create beautiful drawings which I'm comfortable showing others.  I put myself under pressure to make them "good" and don't give myself any room to play or experiment.  I bought a gorgeous leather-bound journal when I was in Venice.  I'm proud of myself for actually using it, but, again, I've only used it to make beautiful art (or as pretty as I can make it!)  I decided I need a change of pace.

While shopping for supplies for the classes for the cruise, I glanced through some of the lesson plans Dick Blick offers on their website.  One of the ones I happened upon is for making a sketch book using raw canvas and acrylic paints.  It looked simple enough so I decided to modify it and make one just like the one I got from Venice except with a canvas, not leather, cover.  And I'd get to decorate it however I wanted. 

I thought about doing the color field art like Dick Blick suggested, but that didn't interest me so much. Instead I gravitated to doing patterns all over it.  That took a couple of days but provided me with so much pleasure and concentrated joy.  I did do a color field painting on the inside but then decided I didn't like it at all - too busy and uninteresting so I painted over what I'd done with purple paint on one side and red on the other.  I put quotes which are important to me there so I can read them when I need inspiration or courage or whatever.

Then I went to the local art store, Main Art, where they have a terrific selection of papers and allowed myself to get whatever spoke to me.  $50 later, I had about 8 different kinds of paper.  The primary one, and what they used in the Venice sketchbook, is RFK Rives, but I also included some MiTientes pastel paper in different colors, some mulberry paper, other Asian papers with cool patterns, tracing paper, glassine, parchment, watercolor paper, Denril (used with markers, I think), and who knows what else?!  I spent the rest of that day tearing the paper to the right size to fit into the book (10"x14" - one page is 10"x7").  Then I grouped those into 4 sheets each which folded over to make 16 pages (2 sides of 8 pages each).  I asked Chris to show me how to use the drill press then used it to drill holes not only in the cover but also in each of the 8 packets of pages (I have approximately 128 sides of paper to use in the finished journal - some packets have more than 8 pages because some of the papers are very thin.)  Then I went to Michaels where I found some thread/string that seemed strong enough to use to bind it then figured out how the other one is bound and sewed up my journal.  I hope it'll hold!  If it doesn't, I can always re-do it.

Pleased with myself, I was ready to sit on my laurels for a while - months - years - who knows? - and admire my pretty work, but I recognized the trap I was setting for myself - this is a journal to USE! not one to just look at and smile cuz it's so pretty.

I boldly did a gesture drawing of the roses Chris gave me for our wedding anniversary last week - mostly wilted, but still pretty - then painted it with watercolor.  Then, boldly, I wrote all over the page.  I wrote a promise to myself that I will use this journal for PLAY and EXPERIMENTATION.  Anything else is a cop out and will be a betrayal of what it is for.   I'm going to make notes on each picture about what I'm doing and why,and I'm going to use all sorts of different materials. 

The second one I did was a total experiment - on parchment, I wrote with  Micron pens I'd found at Michael's on sale -  orange and green - and drew impatiens from a planter on my deck.  This morning I painted them with watercolors.  I found out that parchment isn't all that fond of liquid, but the colors show up brilliantly, and the watercolor dries faster than I expected it would given that it just sits on the surface for a while and puddles.  It's very different than watercolor paper.

Here's what my studio looks like now.  It's a mess with everything sprawled around me, but I love it!  Color pencils, acrylics, pastel pencils, brushes of every description, a book to look at, my journal, drawing tools, flowers, micron pens, a plethora of toys!

I also decided to copy a picture by Frank Lobdell.  It's from a book Chris gave me for Christmas.  Lobdell does figurative work and abstracts with patterns so Chris thought it might give me some ideas as to how to combine the two or move between the two or whatever.  I don't like his work a whole lot, but it was helpful to copy the picture.  I find that to be a good exercise because I learn how other artists work - it makes me use different materials in different ways.  For this one I used acrylics, pastel pencils, color pencils, charcoal pencil, and even a conte' crayon.  After I finished copying his, I decided to play with the concepts on my own.  That's the piece on the right.  I don't consider it finished, but I had fun working with it and look forward to getting back to it tomorrow.  That's the best feeling - looking forward to getting back into the studio the next day.  I've missed that lately.

I'm intentionally not cropping these pictures and making them all pretty, because that's precisely NOT the point!  It is incredibly difficult for me to let myself be messy and to do something which doesn't look precisely perfect - or as perfect as I can let it be.  I think that's one reason I've been in a slump lately - I haven't been allowing myself to experiment or to make mistakes.   I've been creating beautiful work, but the parameters I've been giving myself - to accurately represent what's in front of me - have been stultifying.

I'm also taking Figure Drawing at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond.  You might think I'd be good at that already, but frankly, I'm not.  I can copy 2-D things that are in front of me.  Drawing from life is not yet in my skill set.  I'm rectifying that.  Thomas Van Auken is the teacher I'm working with.  Thankfully he's very good.  He has us doing gesture drawings out the wazoo.  I've already used up most of a pad of newsprint in 2 weeks.  That's fine.  I'm also going to the Friday evening sketching sessions which anyone can come to so I can get extra practice.  I am determined to learn to represent the figure in a way I adore from life.

It's been a very difficult few weeks, feeling somewhat depressed and frustrated and in a lull, but I feel like following these gentle leadings and letting myself PLAY will be the key to moving through the muck and stuck and into something fun and interesting and compelling again.   

Hopefully this sense of adventure will keep me from looking like the self portrait I did last week and will keep me feel enlivened and curious and joyful.  That is, after all, the reason I quit my well-paying job to do my art full time - because the joy I felt doing it overrode any objections I could possible experience - if I'm not letting myself feel that joy, I should move on to something else.

It's painful for me when my creativity and drive are subdued and I can't access them.  I have learned to just let myself ride it out, but that doesn't mean I like it!  I'm hoping that treating myself gently and letting myself play will be the key to transforming the pain into joy.

A Place of Not Knowing

It's been a very long time since I last wrote a blog post.  Thank you to those of you who've written to ask me what's up.

I've been busy - but not really.  I've been traveling, but that's not really a good excuse.  I've been teaching, but I've always found time to write this blog no matter what else has been going on.  The truth is that I've been in a low spot.  A fallow part of my journey.  And it's difficult to be with and difficult to share.

After the excitement and rush of Not Barbie and Beyond Barbie then the show in Williamsburg then our recent reincarnation of Beyond Barbie, I think I have finally crashed.  I've taken a couple of weeks off the last few months - at the beach and at my high school reunion, thinking those would be times to regenerate, but there is more to regenerate than those two weeks could accomplish.

I am in a state of not knowing.

It's very uncomfortable for a person who prefers to have huge goals she's working towards with an almost manic energy.

Right now I can conger up no goals which matter to me.

I know that women's body image issues still matter to me.  I hate what is happening in our government as it is taking steps towards becoming more repressive to women.  I'm noticing.  And I'm having trouble reacting or even responding.

A couple of months back, I created a powerful response to the Vaginal Probe Ultrasound bill passed here in Virginia.  It was accepted into a show here in town.  Then sent back home with little explanation without being displayed.  What has happened to me is that because I'm not single-minded in my vision of where I'm supposed to be going, that rejection is affecting my self-perception.  When I'm feeling clear and strong, other people can say or do whatever they need do, and it doesn't affect me very much, but right now I feel less empowered and I'm letting this get to me.

A tree by Van Gogh, brimming with effervescent swarms of life and energy

Chris asked me last night where I see myself in 10 years.  I no longer know.  He asked what I want to be doing these days (good question and one I've been mulling over a lot lately too).  I had had a bit of wine (highly unusual for me) so my brain was slipping around enough to find access to a response which felt very true - I want to be fully self-expressed, but I don't need my paintings to be an expression of MY self - rather, I want them to be an expression of my experience of God.  I want to be able to translate my understanding and experience of God onto canvas in such a way that the viewer can have access to that information visually.  I feel that connection in Van Gogh's excellent paintings.  Standing in front of some of his canvases, I can feel an instantaneous connection to the Source of energy and love and divine power.  It blows me away. 

Mark Rothko's painting

In front of Rothko's paintings, I feel sublime peace - something which confuses me because I am aware his life was fraught with distress and addiction, etc.  It feels to me, though, that he must have experienced sublime peace at some level, in order to be able to create the paintings he did.

So I want to be able to access that Source and to put it on canvas.  And I am afraid to.  I'm afraid to be so vulnerable.  I'm afraid to try to do something so important to me because I might fail.  Or others might thing it looks like shit.  Or I might think it looks like shit.  Or it might not work. 

When I paint the images of female nudes, I work from photographs I've taken.  The photographs speak to me with some of the essence I'm referencing or else I wouldn't chose them.  As I'm painting the images, I think about the woman and about what I know of her life and her story.  I try to focus on love and compassion and her divine essence.  Of course, mundane life also intrudes, but my intention is there.  I think that comes through in some of my canvases.

Right now that isn't feeling like an adequate way to explore the essence of divine Source. 

I want to take out raw canvas and pour paint around.  I want to throw paint.  I want to dance all over canvas on the floor.  I want to take off my clothes and roll around on the canvas and wrap myself in it.  I want to become ecstatic and let that jump into and onto the canvas.  I want to be a pure, ecstatic channel for divine joy.  Like Rumi or Hafiz.

Instead I'm writing about it when I have time to actually do it.  Because I'm terrified of what I might find out.  I have high expectations of how I want it to look, and it might not even begin to start to think about thinking about getting there.

It's hard for me to allow myself permission to learn, to have Beginner's Mind, to explore, to screw up, to play.  My inner demons (and some outer very vocal ones in my physical world too) tell me I need to be earning money.  I have to create beauty.  What's inside of me which is craving expression will be too ugly for the world to accept.  If I actually let out my real self, it'll be too much/too intense for others.  No one will be able to take me if I let them really see who I am.  This post is too much.  Too much information.  Who really wants to see the inside of someone else's head?  It's not a pretty place.

OR...

It could be that this post is a true comfort for others who've had similar experiences but have never heard it named so thought they were all alone.  I know I would feel that way if I were to stumble upon someone else's existential Angst to which I could relate. 

I know there is divinity and pure unadulterated love at my core.  I trust that unequivocally.  I trust that each person has the same at his/her core.  So why the fear of accessing it and expressing it?

People have been martyred for trying to express this divinity, this love, this passion, this understanding that at our core we are all good. 

In a moment I am going to get up out of this chair and head out into the studio where I will clear off a bit of space so I can have room to explore and play and experiment.  I will ask God to be present and to let me be a channel for Divine goodness and joy.  And I plan to have fun too.  I will let go of my fear, or feel it and go for it anyway.

I'll end this blog with a quote a friend sent me today.  It resonates strongly for me with what I'm going through now:

The woman who needs to create works of art is born with a kind of psychic tension in her which drives her unmercifully to find a way to balance, to make herself whole. Every human being has this need... -May Sarton

If you have experienced any of what I've written about today, I'd love it if you would share your experiences too.  What have you done from this place of Not Knowing and discomfort?

Trying to break through old patterns using patterns

Geez!  I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted anything - a flurry of posts then nothing!  I've been busy in the studio despite that.

Last Friday we took my youngest to college for his Freshman year.  Since then each day i've been checking my email frequently, hoping for a missive from him, telling about the good times he's having.  I've received a total of 20 lines, 2 of which regarded money.  Yes, well.  I guess I'd better get used to it!

In the meantime, I've been walking with my friend Lynn, a 65-year-old woman who runs marathons and is planning an ascent of Mount Kilamanjaro for February 2011.  I am so blessed to have her in my life.  She's helping me get in shape, but she also inspires me like crazy because of how she lives her life.  I love spending time with her!

The way I got to know her was through her modeling for me.  She saw my 12 Naked Men show in Petersburg and told me she'd like to model for me.  Unfortunately I couldn't read her email address accurately so couldn't get in touch with her that time around, but luckily she found me again at Crossroads when I was showing The Dancer at 89.  She was adamant that she wanted to model for me so we set up a time right then and there.

Bling Lady was the first piece I did of her from that session.  I have several other pieces I'd like to do from then, but haven't gotten around to them yet. 

A couple of months after I first photographed her, she told me her sister and neice were going to be in town and she'd like to bring them over to see the painting.  I told her that would be fine and if they wanted to model while they were here, that would be great too (just kidding!).  Lynn took me seriously and told them that's what they were going to do. 

We had a great time in the studio that day!  Her sister and neice were wonderful models.  The three of them were so at ease with themselves and each other.  I got some fabulous shots and have painted a picture of them already.  I'm not at liberty to show it because, though they're comfortable with my painting their faces with their body, they prefer me not to show them on the internet.  Totally fine.

One of the props we used that day was a fake fur coat Chris had just gotten me for my birthday.  I turned 50 and his gift to me was to take me shopping for a winter coat because mine was getting worn out after 8 years of constant use.  I was looking for another practical piece to replace it, but then Isaw these crazy floor length fur coats.  I tried on a white one with a huge hood just for kicks.  I actually LOVED it!  I felt like a fairy princess snow queen.  Not the look I usually aim for, but I loved it!  I tried on more and more of the coats and told Chris that I was actually going to get one of them!  In the end I bought two - a short one I wear almost daily and a floor length one that looks like a racoon coat from the 50's or whenever it was the guys wore those in college.  I love it!  I haven't actually worn it out of the house yet because I don't quite have the gall to show up with it on anywhere - I don't really go anywhere that calls for a fur coat - but I'm working on it!  Maybe by this winter I'll have come up with someplace - maybe I'll wear it at my opening in October despite the heat in the building with 100's of people crowding around.  Or not.

At any rate, I brought it out to show to Lynn and her sister and neice.  They loved them and started clowning around in them.  Of course I snapped pictures while they were playing.  They're very fun!

That's the back story.

A couple of weeks ago when Lynn and I were walking, she was telling me what she thought of the paintings I'd done during Tom's workshop.  She LOVED the Jenny Saville one.  She said that's how she feels!  Like that paint, those colors, that energy!  She wanted to know why I didn't paint her that way.  She said she liked the piece I did of her, but it was so calm and restrained - why didn't I do this with her?

Well!  I'd been wanting to try such unrestrained painting ever since the workshop, but I'd built up in my mind that my models might be bothered by it (is that true, models???) - that they might find such outrageous energy shameful or ugly or excessive - can you tell what my judgments are?  Yet that was exactly what I wanted to do. 

And here Lynn was giving me permission and asking me to do it with her painting!  That evening I went out to the studio and started playing with Adobe and modifying some of the photos I have of Lynn.  The one on the left is the one I played with the most.  She loved it!  I don't know that I'll paint it like this, but it could give me a good start for getting wilder with the colors and the energy.

The thing that is difficult for me is to recognize that crazy colors and wildly energetic looking doesn't mean random, wild strokes with equal intensity to the mark making.  Those strokes have to be every bit as careful as the way I normally work.  So really, the painting isn't different except in the colors I would use.  At some level I'm looking to be more expressive with the strokes too.  It's the process I'm in, I guess.

As an intermediate step, I decided to work on a piece of Lynn in the fur coat.  I really love her expression and her pose and figured I could have some fun with it.

The first picture was the beginning.  I decided to put a very bold color down for the background colors and to play with the colors in the coat.  I regret the colors in the coat.  I don't like how greenish the yellow is.  Lynn's coloring is pinker than that, so I find it jarring, but I'm not done yet!

I decided to paint her body completely realistically and make it as beautifully rendered as I could manage then play with the coat and background, sort of like Gustav Klimt did his women.  As you can see in this image, the face and hands are painted very realistically (except for his color choice perhaps - she's a bit too blue and pale to look completely realistic), then the rest of it is full of incredible patterns.  The piece is a portrait, but clearly it's more about the patterns.  I haven't decided if I want to go that far or not.  I love drawing patterns.  It's how I doodle.  I would love to figure out how to combine both things - patterns and portraits - but so far I haven't been able to see how to do it.  I could take that chance in this painting, but, frankly, I've gotten attached to the outcome and want to make it pretty.  I'm afraid to screw it up.

Writing that makes me know it's the only choice I really have.  I have to let myself play.  Otherwise why should I even bother doing art?  If I don't take a chance, I should just close up shop and go home.

Yikes!  Here are some of the patterns I've done before.  OK.  I'm ready!  They're gonna be in the painting!  Wish me luck!