Have you ever tried watercolor? You should!

Do you ever feel like you are desperate to do something creative but don't have the time/effort/money/correct supplies/energy? I felt like that for several years (the ones I refer to as my dark years) and I vowed this year to change that. I've started picking a project--anything creative--and getting together with friends of like-minded creativity to just sit down and do it. No pressure, no worries about the results, just focusing on the creative process and enjoying it. We bring supplies that we have so there is no real cost investment. This evening's creative attendants were Lindsay, a fellow graphic designer in a rather dull job at the moment, and Tammy, a fashion major secretly trying to run her kid's Waldorf school and I'm a graphic designer trying to find my creative talents away from the computer.

This weekend, we decided to do watercolor. For some reason, I've always been scared to death of it! In all the years at art school, I never took a class. I've seen such beautiful examples of it that I am totally intimidated. But, since the aforementioned promise to myself, I was willing to try. So we sat up to the table, opened the wine, shared a page between us and just let it go:

Here we are at the start. We all brought some props just in case we needed some inspiration.

1 bottle of wine later...

2 bottles of wine and the finished results. Isn't it remarkable how different our styles are?? Those are my "doodles" on the left there.

I am completely and totally in love with it and will be going to the art store post-haste to get some tubes of that liquid joy. I ditched that sly-talking "what's proper watercolor technique" voice in my head and just started doodling. And I drank wine and talked with good friends. I'll add here that the only time I got in trouble in school was for talking during art, so this part is a natural for me. We did some career counseling, Tammy didn't accidentally make a uterus, and we discussed our personal affections for punctuation (Lindsay with the elipses, me with my parenthesis--see I'm doing it right now!-- and I can't remember what Tammy's was). Good times, good times...

So, creative friends, what are you doing to stretch that creative rubber band in your life? Have you tried something new lately? Did you let your expectations go and just enjoy the act of creating?