When students come to an encaustic workshop with a pre-planned project and high expectations that they will be taking home a fabulous and finished work of art, they often don’t give themselves permission to play and embrace the process of art-making.
Commit to the process, detach from the outcome!!
To help students commit to the process and detach from the outcome, I begin my workshops having students recite the Art-day vow.
My Art-day vow
Put your hand on your heart and repeat after me…
I vow to welcome this day with open arms.
I promise to let go of preconceived notions
of what my day will look like
and what my art will look like.
Today I will listen to my inner creative voice
and with gratitude will accept all outcomes.
Today I promise to myself
and to my new friends,
to bring my best self and
allow it to PLAY all day.
Now high five a neighbour and let’s begin!
Feel free to download this poster to use this in your own art practice and with your students. Attribution is appreciated.
- Give yourself permission to play - February 8, 2019
- Yes, you can use Chalk Paint in place of Encaustic Gesso - August 3, 2018
- Mixed Media Collage as a Foundation for Encaustic Painting - March 25, 2018
This is a wonderful topic! I couldn’t agree more that making art should be about play. Thank you for this blog and for sharing your vow with us.
Thank you. This post really resonates with me. I’ve been that person with preconceived plans in a class. It’s so much harder to let go and do this than I ever realized. In some ways it’s harder with encaustic b/c while you have the freedom to ay down layers, it also takes a certain amount of faith or courage to do so. And for me it’s also a bit of reversal of process or a need to slow down: “maybe you should have added that image transfer later, after you added more layers…”