Planning for play

It sounds like an oxymoron but I'm planning some time for play. I'm scheduling in some time next week, and hopefully every month to play with different mediums, different scales and different styles in my work. 

I have realised that it is surprisingly easy to become nestled into a niche, make it comfortable... and stay there! Which is fine and I like my work and hopefully others do too, but I think it is important to keep checking there aren't things that I might like to be creating even more. 

In October 2019 I challenged myself to do an abstract piece a day for the whole month. It challenged me and some I really loved and some I wasn't a fan of at all. 

Preceding this I'd done two two pieces which was part of the trigger for doing the month long project. 

I have these two in the studio. The first is this one - 

it is A3 in size and it site on the packaging desk, propped up against my whiteboard with my to-do list on and any other reminders - the key thing here is that it is in my eye line and I look at it a lot during each day. There are lots of details that I really like and find my eye drawn to - 

  

The second, similar piece is next to a little bureau I have in the studio. Again, it is in my eyeline and so I look at it a lot when I'm sitting there. This one is slightly smaller and on a canvas.

This has the addition of gold ink which catches the light at different angles - which you can see in this image

The gold is something that I have played about with in some botanical illustration pieces since and below is a new abstract piece that I loved creating and that is currently in the inspiration station.