I love how this piece turned out. My intention was to play with the three primary colors, yellow, red, and blue. I felt happy and energetic when I started working on it. I began early one morning, before the school or workday began, by applying some yellow acrylic paint. That was all I did at first, and then I left it alone.

Every day or every other day, I pushed myself to go down to the basement and take out another color. I would spend just ten or twenty minutes at a time working on it. I’d go while dinner was simmering on the stove or while waiting for Amir to come home. I added some red and experimented with mixing it with the yellow, creating different marks. I used bubble wrap and a palette knife, allowing my instincts to guide me. Then, I would leave it alone for a while, thinking about it occasionally. I’d go downstairs when I had a chance to look at it without adding anything new.

This was definitely a slow process, with no pressure and no specific goal or destination in mind. What I truly enjoyed was the journey and the patient waiting to see where it would take me. For a couple of days, I knew I wanted to add blue. I envisioned blue as my accent color, technically, my “10 percent” color! I’d go down and gesture my hand up and down, without any paint in my hand, waiting for something to guide me to the perfect spot for that blue. It almost felt like I had a metal detector, waiting to find the ideal place to drop that blue color down. It took me a while actually and thats normal and these days I embrace it. I used to feel that I had to know exactly where my piece was going as soon as I picked up a blank canvas. That’s far from the truth. Understanding this makes the process of creating art less anxiety-filled and more organic, something that just happens naturally. In the end I decided to use my blue Posca pen. I love these pens and they are so fun to use. I added vertical blue lines along the yellow brushstrokes. Some little circles and leaf shaped lines. I also cut a piece of blue tissue paper into a circle and a yellow one and layered them down with some collage glue. I also added some unexpected brown paint at the end I used some old stamps I had created with a circular cut out sponge and one was a little rectangular piece of wood you can see I stamped looks like little rectangular stepping stones. All of these little marks and strokes were unplanned and unexpected, like going to a playground all by yourself and then other people show up and you all start playing together and have the best time! Again, I wish I had taken more pictures of this process, but part of this process is the spontaneity of me randomly going down to the basement and not having the pressure to perform. There’s one more piece I want to create to finish up this series.

20×20 Mixed Media Acrylic Canvas

I have one piece with yellow as my base color, one with blue, and I am considering using red as my next base, but I’m not sure yet. Or maybe green? Showing the journey of yellow and blue mixing together? We shall see!