DAY ONE

Welcome, lovely humans, to The Painted Presence Project, where I plan to paint in silence for ten minutes a day for thirty days on the same 11 x 15 inch piece of watercolour paper. While this studio diary will only include images, there are full length videos available on Patreon! 

I gotta say. This felt like a really good start.

I got up, made my tea, lit a candle, and took a few breaths, and then I grabbed a big brush and dunked it straight into dirty paint water, and yes, I did that on purpose. I didn’t want a careful beginning. I wanted to argue with the voice in my head that wanted this to be super precious and temple-tidy and perfect, and dirty water on a paint brush felt like the exact way to do that.

Then, I sploshed around with some watercolours in greens and browns and burnt orange.

MAKING MUD ON PURPOSE, EFFY?

Yes. Because I am always afraid to make mud, and sometimes that stops me from being brave with colour, so I MADE MUD, and lo, it was glorious.

I added some Liquitex acrylic inks in green and violet and some generic alcohol ink in gold and made use of my spray bottle to move all that around because DRIPPAGE.

At some point, I grabbed my glass dip pen and used it to make some marks in the ink that was already there.

Happy Sigh

Ten minutes. And you know what? It felt good. Like I’d made my own little world in those ten minutes. A place where nothing was pressing on me. No emails, no noise, no demands, no alerts. I thought I’d feel rushed because of the time limit and my awareness that the timer was set and would go off in ten minutes, but I didn’t feel rushed at all. I felt…

…I dunno. Like I was at home in my skin. Just me and tea (Dirty Chai with milk and honey), a stick of nag champa incense, a candle flickering, and silence.

Home.

If you’re doing this with me, I hope you find that too. Your own pocket of quiet where you belong only to yourself for a tiny little bit.

Tomorrow we do it again.

xo Effy

P.S. Looking for the project PDF? Here it is. 

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