Intuitive Painting Progress and Sketching My World Day 3

Finally, finally I feel like I've had a breakthrough in my intuitive painting adventure.  Up until now I've only come up with pieces of paintings I felt were starting to work but not one entire painting came together until today.  I was doing my usual mark making, turning the canvas a lot and stepping back to see what might surface when I saw a really great bird bending over to get a drink right there in the marks on my canvas.  I tried not to show too much excitement...didn't want to scare him away!

I started coaxing him out onto the canvas as I painted some blue sky around his pudgy little body.  I just have to show you what it looked like at first, which is crazy funny to me.  My husband was confused as to why I was so excited to find a big yellow sausage in the imagery of my painting.

I took a break after a bit and sketched some bird gestures.  (It seemed the only logical thing to do.)  Here they are...I'll count them as today's Sketching My World sketches.

By the way, that's what I've decided to call my project for the month of March.   I will post sketches each day of the things I see and experience and call it Sketching My World.  Birds abound in our woods, so I really need to hone my ability to sketch them. 

As I went back to the canvas I re-sketched the bird a bit and added concentric circles where his beak dips into the water.  Eventually here's what emerged on the canvas.  I still have work to do but I love the direction it's going!

Sometimes when I watch songbirds drinking from our birdbath I am struck by how vulnerable they are in that position...their gaze turned downward, absorbed in the task at hand.  I always worry that the cat will sneak up and nab one of them.  (Thankfully I have never actually seen this happen but it certainly could.)

The idea of the bird being so vulnerable yet so free brought some words to mind so I scratched them into the paint:

He watches over me...

and meets every need.

"Because he loves me," says the LORD, 

"I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name."

Psalm 91"14

And then it occurred to me; I am that little bird... free because I am loved and cared for... free because someone much bigger and stronger than I watches over me when I am vulnerable.  So my first intuitive painting really turned out to be a self portrait.  How about that? 

Linking Up Today with:

Creative Every Day

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