Next stop on my journey to Jordan was to move inside and upstairs and get my daughter’s rooms homogenized for rental photographs. Yesterday the pre-move surveyor arrived at 8am so we could go through all of my belongings and make determinations; what is going over by air, what is going by sea and what will remain in the US in storage. Thankfully, I started practicing minimalism two years ago and have already donated or disbursed of the things that no longer hold value to me or bring me joy. I cannot say the same thing for my older daughter – she loves the thought of my brand of minimalism but she is a collector like her dad – so she will have some belongings to contend with. But, minimalism doesn’t mean you get rid of everything or that you live with so little that you are depriving yourself, it is unique to each person’s practice.
What I’m doing: I feel good about what I accomplished yesterday, met with the moving rep, cleaned up my daughter’s rooms, mailed some records from my husband’s collection, bought pet food, wrote up a lil bio for the 25 year service award ceremony, met my older daughter for dinner and went to my final painting class at LibertyTown. This blog post is dedicated to oil painting and my final piece completed there as a student. I started taking classes in February 2017 after not having painted ever in my life. I feel that my first year of minimalism in 2016 (I watched The Minimalists documentary on New Years Eve 2015) allowed me to free my mind of mental clutter and my home of physical clutter which empowered me to pursue creativity; both personally and professionally.
Not only did I learn to paint from my teacher, I learned that having a process to follow is a great contributor to success and I have so enjoyed learning this process. We project a photograph to a canvas, sketch it in, apply a base and then start underpainting to block in the right values. From there you add your layers, colors and values of mixed oil paint until it looks like the image above – you sign in, varnish it and Voila it’s done!
I intend to continue painting while I am in Amman, I have an easel (It is a Bob Ross one!!) and some of my own oil paints, brushes and palette – I have the process down but will start flying on my own without my safety net of my teacher and fellow students. I’m looking forward to new subjects, new students and teachers and expanding my creativity so I can feel like a success when I finish another painting.
What I’m listening to: Radiohead Hail to the Thief which turned 15 this year. Radiohead are in my top 5 favorite bands and the song Where I End and You Begin is up in my top songs of all time, I don’t know if it was written as a love song but it invokes that feeling in me.
Now its time for me to do my homework so I’ll be prepared to meet with my finances guy later and then with my friends for a happy hour. I will celebrate my painting being finished, that I’m moving along in my process to join my husband in Jordan, and that I will get to see my daughters, my sisters, my nieces and nephews tomorrow morning as they wake up in my disheveled house. bye for now.
DiForYou 