Embracing the Ugly and Having Loads of Fun!

I am currently taking Flora Bowley's e-course Bloom True. She generally conducts this course in person and has adapted it to an online version. I had never heard of Flora Bowley until some Facebook friends of mine mentioned her. I googled her name and fell in love with all the colors and energy in her paintings. Flora calls her style of painting "Intuitive". She has no specific plan ahead of time. She just starts painting. I, personally am attracted to this "no plan" approach. I usually get stuck not knowing what to paint. With this method my goal has been to fill the canvas with marks and not make mud.



I will say though, these canvases are kinda ugly. These are just the first layers and in the end they will turn into something. To be honest though, I don't mind the ugly. I had fun making them. I just experimented and played with all kinds of mark making. I even started one with my kids!


I'm only two weeks into the course and I have three weeks left to go. We shall see how these transform! If these paintings have got you wondering "what?". Google Flora Bowley and look at her paintings. You will be amazed. She will also be offering this e-course again this summer.


This is the canvas I worked on with my kids. They chose to work with greens and blues. I put drops of paint on the canvas and they moved it around with foam brushes. We also used foam daubers, bubble wrap and cardboard for stamping and faux finish tools for etching into the wet paint. For the drips we used Liquitex Inks. Yes, we used Mommy's good paints for this; my inks and Liquitex Basics. They immediately got a bath after and so did their clothes. As fun as this was, I wish it was summer. We would've painted outside and I could've hosed my kids off.