She's At It Again, Volume 2

Joy of Brushstrokes 

Purple & Pink Background

About a year ago, I got art declutter inspiration from my art figure instructor. For a recap, I had hundreds of portrait artworks taking up so much space! Her suggestion (and I love it) was to create a book of those images and then toss the paintings. I did it and then tossed a 3 foot pile of paintings-- that was about a year ago. Lately the clutter has been driving me crazy again--time to go through the process one more time!

The purpose of the book, volume 2, is the same as volume 1--to find joy in brushstrokes as I review my past works. This was a challenge for me as there were some paintings I was less than happy with. I really had to tell myself to look for the positive, to find the good IN EACH PAINTING. What I noticed about these particular works was that I had an interest in patterned backgrounds and those were often the best parts of the paintings! I really liked an orange and blue background and a deep purple with pink background...I think I need to continue along the fun background path...

Once again keeping track of paintings is extremely helpful with notes. That way I could look at my description and thumbnail sketch and compare it to the actual painting. I placed the paintings in order and went through to cull them out. Once I had my stack of paintings that I felt I could let go of, I documented them with my iphone--taking photos of the full painting and zooming in on the parts I liked whether it be background, brushstroke or eye detail. Then I got the images uploaded to my computer and then to Shutterfly. Yep its a process and takes a bit of time, but the end result is worth it.

Beautiful shirt pattern/strokes here!

Once I was in Shutterfly, I chose to make a book, an 8.5 x 11. Then I added in my images to the book pages. I chose to use about two images per painting, one of the full painting, one for the close up. And, I chose about 4 images per page in the book. I went to advanced editing so that I could control the image size and put borders on the edges of the paintings. Once I had all of the images placed in the book, I went back through and typed in an assessment of each painting, identifying in writing the joy. Lastly, I added my title on the cover, "The Joy of Brushstrokes vol 2". I did a final preview and then placed my book order! My advice--you can start your book anytime--but wait for a sale to place the order--a 40 -50% off really makes a big difference in book price. This book was about 25 pages and included 40 paintings. I am hoping it arrives next week!

Now that I have the book ordered, the next time the trash comes I can toss my 40 paintings. Bye bye 2 foot stack of paintings, hello 1/4 inch book! Storage savings abound!

Steps to Let Go:

1. Review paintings
2. Stack the keepers and the not keepers
3. Photograph the not keepers (full images and close ups)
4. Organize photos on your computer
5. Create a photobook (I used Shutterfly)
6. Toss or paint over the not keeper paintings