My son is six and is confident in his knowledge of art. He told me that I shouldn’t paint so much from pictures and instead, use my imagination like he does. So today I decided to take his advice and paint some birch trees. Most of my foresty painting are at sunset with lots of reds and peachy colors, in the style of my first watercolor teacher, Mary Reo. I decided to do something completely different and much looser for tonight. I used my memories of early morning light shining through the trees behind one of the cabins we stayed in at family camp in Oscoda. My bed was right by the window so I had a great view, although a blurry one as I wasn’t wearing my glasses. I am happy with how this turned out. It’s not photorealistic but it definitely has the right feel of my memories of that morning view. I’m really enjoying painting from my memories of various scenes. The last one I did I had taken a photograph, and I could compare what I remembered with the reality. I liked my painted memory better. In this case I only have the memory as I didn’t take a photo at the time.

Can you think of an image from your memory and use the feelings associated with it to inspire your creativity today?