Learning to hold our own lives with a gentle compassion is a key element in all emotional healing and spiritual awakening. This two part series explores the suffering of being at war with ourselves and the pathway to freeing our hearts.
The Healing Power of Self-Compassion: Part 1
The Healing Power of Self-Compassion: Part 2
Trusting Your Heart
Today your painting looks one way, and tomorrow it changes...
I can't tell you how many of my paintings have what seem to be several complete paintings underneath their final layers. During the years where my dining room also played the role of art studio, my family would joke, question and sometimes lament the dramatic turns my paintings would take in their process of coming to life.
And to be completely honest, so did I on more than one occasion. The practice of non-attachment is real in an intuitive, spirit-led approach to creative expression.
Sometimes the practice is to trust when you are feeling an inner nudge to let something go that you have fallen in love with, and sometimes our intuition leads us beyond our initially uncomfortable layers towards something that I can only attempt to understand as a more healed expression of the layers beneath.
Either way, our work is to neither attach ourselves to the parts we love, nor the parts that create discomfort, but to let our intuition to lead the way towards our next temporary destination.
What is your image asking for next?
Painting Review
* Strengthen and open the lines the face, opening each sense mindfully as you do this process, using a synthetic liner brush and 1, usually darker, paint colour. Use the same process if you are painting a different image, to bring back some of the lines that may have been softened during the dry-brush process, bringing awareness to the 'waking up' of your image.
* Continue strengthening and bringing back lines throughout your painting, giving new definition and life to your image.
* Add images of symbols and helpers using the techniques used until now, beginning with using a small round brushes to draw in the outline.
* Fill in using the dry brush technique, and remembering to leave a glow
* If desired, for larger additions, you may also want to use 3 tones to add dimension to the new images. This is not always necessary since sometimes the additions may be simpler in contrast to the main imagery in your painting.