Today during our zoom I decided to paint using some mulberry paper I ordered. This paper was far thinner than I imagined so I grabbed a sheet of watercolor paper to put behind it. I played around with a loose landscape and while it turned out ok, I’m going to need a lot more practice with this paper before I find what works best. I started a colored pencil drawing on a new sheet, but the zoom finished and I put it aside for later. It turned out that the paper I grabbed for underneath the landscape had a sketch of some day lilies I started years ago. Since I had it out, I figured it was high time to finish it.

I gave a bunch of art work I had hanging in my house to my brother-in-law for his coin shop. He just opened recently and has bare walls. He was happy to take some of my art to display and perhaps even sell. This left my walls a bit bare so I thought I’d frame some of my recent work. A few days ago I shared the bee and daisy watercolor, and as I was putting it in the matte I realized I hadn’t signed it. So I grabbed a pen and promptly signed my name- on the upside down painting. Oops. So I trimmed that painting up to cut off my mistake and put it in a 8×8 frame with a 6×6 matte. It still looks cute, just a bit smaller. And it covers the old clock outlet on my living room wall.

Tonight I had to sit down and start typing up my outline for the screenplay contest I entered. The deadline is Sunday, and my Wednesday and Thursday were so busy, I just spent my time imagining. But I really needed to start getting my thoughts organized on paper. I have the outline finished and wrote some dialogue for some of the scenes. This particular contest gives you an image for the inspiration and you need to describe it in your script. It’s a five pager, so I’m confident I can finish in time.

My working title is ‘Carved into our Hearts’ and my log line is, “Widowed Emma embarks on a road trip with her teenage children to retrace the beginnings of her love story. As they journey through the places of her past, they discover that while time changes much, the love they shared is forever etched into the world they created together.”

I share my success as well as my challenges because I hear from so many people who think that artist just creat great things all the time. I like to show that good artist make lots of mistakes and you shouldn’t let fear of failure keep you from your creativity journey.

In what way can you use a recent challenge or failure to inspire you in your creative practice?