Daily Art Practice: Meditation + Painting (Part 5)
Can you tell I need to have a variety of styles and approaches to express regularly? 😅
As I’ve been going through this daily practice, I notice how much I need the freedom to express myself in a diverse variety of ways. I am not just one singular medium. I am not one singular approach to art-making. ALL of it — the experimenting, the range, the expansion — all feeds into my MAKING. That’s something I’ve learned a lot in this process. I need to allow myself flexibility of expression. Not stagnant or forced. And it’s OKAY to have so many interests, problem-solving approaches, and pull from so many disciplines.
Daily Art Practice: Meditation + Painting (Part 4)
These batches were painted shortly after the 2025 Inauguration and LA wildfires. It was a rough few weeks for me. I used tape to create boundaries between chaos and clarity/focus. The tape physically kept the chaotic fury in their own contained spaces while I resisted the madness by choosing serenity and peace. My frustrations during this time also met during Chinese / Lunar New Year - the juxtaposition quite challenging for me to hold space for both at the same time. I used traditional Chinese red envelope designs to counter back the overwhelming feelings of not having power to make things better.
Daily Art Practice: Meditation + Painting (Part 3)
Days 40-54 were different attempts and practices of Chinese brush painting style. It’s hecka hard!!! It requires such a strong understanding of values, value grouping, and simplicity in mark-making.
Also I tried a few attempts to simplifying Bryan in these paintings. How do I capture her essence in a few strokes and washes? How do I capture her radiance and big bright eyes when using just one hue or pigment?
Daily Art Practice: Meditation + Painting (Part 2)
Continuing with my daily meditation + painting stacked habit, I noticed I started getting into flow state a bit easier. I also broke thru the fear/insecurity of “this isn’t gonna be good enough, this is gonna suck, nobody cares.”
The truth is: it doesn’t matter WHAT I’m making.
What matters is I’m DOING it.
I’m showing up each morning, dedicated to my focus and craft. And I’m doing it.
I hit a huge stride during my Day 20s with the nature pieces. I find a lot of freedom creating and painting nature scenes. The organic elements and varied forms/shapes/colors allow me to make fluidly.
I played a bit with washes with salt grains.
And tapped back into one of my original creative loves: Sailormoon.
✨SailorBryan makes a magical appearance as well
Daily Art Practice: Meditation + Painting (Part 1)
Since September, I’ve been focused on stacking my habits to weave meditation with daily doodlings. It’s been one of the most fulfilling, meaningful exercises I’ve done for myself.
Who woulda thunk it?
Quieting the mind and painting every day is good for busybee artists?
What?!?
The first one was so silly and self-congratulatory - it still makes me chuckle!
I spent about 15-20mins on each of these. I would meditate, calm the voices in my head, breathe, and see what images came up most prominently for me as it related to my emotional and mental state.
The first few were very clunky as I didn’t have a flow yet. I just stuck with numbers to see where that would take me. And eventually that wasn’t interesting to me anymore, so I changed it up.
I gave myself permission to paint anything that came to mind - to try - to experiment - to simply externalize.
The process of creation at these points really helped my inner child selves step out and feel safe to express themselves. Day 11 was young-teenage Estella, for instance, who created her artwork with her Prismacolor pencils. I still have the same exact color pencils as her!
Day 12: the inner critic voices can be so loud. What matters is there’s a part of me that still said “NO.”
Day 15: from my CPTSD healing, I’ve learned to allow myself to feel thru the pain. It can’t be shut out. Healing requires the courage to feel thru.
The latter few, I started playing more with masking tape and exploring what I could do with flowy paints and creating literal boundaries.