Blank Canvas Syndrome

     She stared blankly at the pages hoping an idea would stir within her.  She just wanted to let go, feel the movement of paint and the nubbin of colored pencils on paper at the command of her wrists.  She believed as she always did, that once more she could overcome this illness that plagues many a creative soul.  She quickly wondered how many battles she would need to fight to win the war on this debilitating sickness?  But as quickly as she asked herself, her response flooded her mind.  She would fight battle after battle to get her creativity into tangible artwork every time. 




I am an self-proclaimed advocate for Blank Canvas Syndrome (BCS).  I was once like you may be, not wanting to admit that a blank canvas is a scary thing.  So crisp, so clean, so untouched.  For me personally, I have found that BCS is overcome, once we begin to embrace that crispness and in turn embrace that we WILL make it better with our own ideas.  The blank canvas is better because of us, the creative souls who put it out there!  Those who ruin the crispness!  No not all are masterpieces, not all are worthy of the light of day.  I often tell myself that with each blank page, each blank canvas I ruin, I am moving one step closer to something awesome!

Now that I have that off my chest, here are some journal pages I wanted to share with you! 

Background colors; orange and pink.  I cut out words from magazines, mixed them up and put short phrases together that somewhat made sense!

1726, this was the ticket stub from getting my car worked on a few days ago.  Background colors; pink, white and a little yellow and green.

I believe in me.  I do, I really really do!  Don't you believe in you too?

Blue and Green pages.  Abstract.  This is also a journal for leftover paint and then I try to create different designs from the paint patches.

All pages were created with these materials;  acrylic paints, colored pencils, sharpies, scrap paper, and cut out magazine pages.

overcoming artistic fears on this artist holiday,

hannah