Welcome to Art Making Beyond Woo! My name is Jason and I'll be sharing my better moments of art making from the last couple weeks. And not to better moments. And today we're going to take a trip to the surf store. Sometimes some inspiration like grab us. And the other way it makes for a nice walk with the baby. So this time I scored a couple batches of some decent acrylic paints that are definitely usable. Couple books, curious reading. Most days it's really just me and Gemma. So you know I have to do... I have to get creative in other ways also. Finding things for us to do. Working in multiples. You know exploring this approach at scale. So seeing how it fits in these different constraints. Well, it's not just the uncertainty. I have to work with these similar self-talk voices. The voices that don't understand. Don't understand why I'm just laying blocks of color. The part of me that doesn't understand why or what that's supposed to mean. All of those things get in my way all the time also. And I don't need to know right now. And just work with laying some things down. I'll remember just those fundamental things of like, okay, what does this piece have or not? Solid line work in it yet or you know, weathered and deconstructing objects. Clear shapes somewhere somehow. So then it's this playful back and forth playing the game that way. Even in just for a little bit. But then I rotate through kind of as quick as I can within an hour, let's say, like 15 minutes each. And lay some things down, make some marks or shapes. And then set it to the side and then just go straight to the next one. That's not always easy for me to do because as the paintings get further along, you know, I also like to take in what's arriving. And I don't know that it's always a good thing. That's just a bad habit of mine that I haven't worked out just yet. Yeah, I like adoring the work that's happening, but I realize like it's just in that moment. But I think what happens is, yeah, you can fall in love way too early. I can for sure. Yeah, because the pieces, they lose when they, when you don't have all these layers of marks and history and chronology, it just doesn't feel the same. It seems way more rewarding when I can follow a painting through to its end and not my end. It's not just some random mark or color. It eventually does accumulate and build into something that then will shift into a voice that's meaning something to me. But sometimes that won't happen until a lot later in the process. Much closer to the end of the work, but sure, there's definitely times that it'll really speak to me earlier on. And it's got to be pretty strong for me to slow down right around there. Probably happens more with collage. That's why I try to save the collage to later in the process. Yeah, because I've really found it all about taking my time. It's the one thing in life where I can take my time to do it however I want to do it, which then begins this whole unpacking of, well, how do you want to do it? But that's the front part that we should be embracing. Really taking some time to answer some of those deeper questions. The cool thing. That's another thing to be embraced. That's what makes the magic. And then when you wrap that into your process too, it makes it a little easier because then you have these constant reminders of why you're doing what you're doing and how you're doing it. Including rums of play with that too because running experiments should be playful. How else am I going to know what is possible if I don't let myself try different things that I haven't tried before? That's been really helpful for me. So I hope everybody can see what I'm attempting to demonstrate here, which is there's deep rewards on the other side of not knowing what it's going to be. Especially when you can find a way to bake it into your process. And then it just becomes like the self-fulfilling thing every time because you start off again the same. Like, unsure, uncertain, don't know what I'm doing. And then if I notice if I just stick to the plan, it always, like every time I think it won't, it always does. Like even these YouTube videos are a testament for me of the same thing. Like, you know, it's so easy. The self-doubt is such a thing that's baked into our culture also, you know. Just to see that can be enough to make the progress that you're looking for. Then next time it might not feel so scary. I'm really glad I wasn't certain because I certainly would have not done that. That's what still surprises me every week. So thank you very much everybody for liking and subscribing. I really do appreciate it. This has been really exciting. And I'll be arriving as often as I can to share more of my ins and outs of art making beyond Wu. You can visit the website and find more information about these kinds of things and see more about the work that I do. Thank you for joining me in art making beyond Wu. My name is Jason. Cheers.