Beginner's Mind and Art Therapy
“Shoshin is a concept from Zen Buddhism meaning beginner’s mind. It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advance level, just as a beginner would” - Wikipedia
I recently took part in an instagram art challenge to create 20 floral artworks in 20 days. It was put together by Victoria Johnson and Jennifer Orkin Lewis (both very talents artists and designers) and included experimental and interesting daily prompts like “Paint two or more anemones in oddball colors’ and “Tissue paper collage a flower with watery glue, cut out individual petals and let them overlap so you can see layers of transparency and opacity’. At the time of this challenge, I was trying out a lot of things on Procreate and so decided to try and use the app for all of the daily prompts.
20 images of florals in different ways, using digital app Procreate
I am still very much a beginner at using the digital painting tool, so it was really fun experimenting and trying ways to interpret the daily prompts in a digital way. Some were really challenging like the collage type prompt, but that also ended up being one of my most favourite illustrations.
Digital collage flower, textured and minimal
The watery butterfly was the most difficult to do digitally and I’m not sure if I liked the result. But I did learn more about using the oil paint and turpentine brushes and discovering the charcoal and 6B pencil tools was very exciting as these are mediums I love. The anemones prompt from Day 5 spawned three abstracts in the same tea and coffee colors. I used oil paints, charcoal, ink and pencil to create layers and layers of texture. It was a very satisfying experience!
Neutral brown hues: tea and coffee coloured art, digital paintings
It was a lot of fun experimenting and using Procreate for this floral challenge. It’s been a great tool to keep being creative, which is like therapy really, a respite from the grind of everyday life. And although I am not very good at posting daily on instagram, it was really cool and inspiring to see all of the original artwork created daily by so many other talented artists and designers who joined the challenge. I think we all had a bit of what Shunryu Suzuki describes in “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” as non-gaining mind, when there is no gaining idea and you just do something, not because it’s the means to an end, but because of the joy it creates. Even if your watery butterfly didn’t turn out so well, it was still a lot of fun.