Getting started

It's been a week since my first post.  Every day I've been making art and every day chickening out of posting an image of some piece of it here.  The first day I actually had a hard time making anything at all because as I was working I kept asking myself whether it would be good enough to make public and that really froze me up.  Since then I've had a couple of pretty decent days but still found excuses so I didn't have to put anything up.  Today all that ends.

I forgot to mention this in my first post (which felt like it was running long), but I've actually challenged myself to post just one snapshot of what I'm working on four days each week for a month. 

One of the rituals I have near the beginning of each work day (just before each session of actual making) is to spend a half hour drawing "imaginary animals".  It's a practice based on Carla Sonheim's charming book Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals.  Basically you either find or create random abstract shapes, then look for animals within those blobs...sort of like a Rorschach test.  At first I was photographing and zooming in in the knots in our hardwood floors and stains on concrete pavement.  Lately I've been closing my eyes and doodling on a piece of paper for a couple of minutes, then opening my eyes and trying to find animals in the resulting shapes.  Here are two from today:

The thing I like about this icebreaker exercise is that it helps me to loosen up a bit, since it's hard (though definitely not impossible for someone as self-critical as me!) to be judge-y about the goodness or badness of made up cartoon animals noticed within squiggles.  Also, I find the expressiveness of animals soothing, even though animals have absolutely nothing to do with the kind of art I make or want to make.