Hello Sunshines,
Who doesn’t like feeling good, a sign of playfulness. Dancing silly is an act of playfulness. Getting lost in a painting is a playful mind in wonders. We also tease people we love as a smile and good laugh makes everything better.
Life is much easier with a cheerful attitude. You can walk the street in your thoughts looking at your feet or you can see little faces everywhere, admire the beauty of flowers, wonder about their perfect complexity, etc.
I entered painting through playfulness. First as a child, then explored oil painting young age, but my journey really started really around 2011 where I first started water color pencil drawing. There was a feeling of mischief and internal joy standing on my bed, drawing on the wall, and canvases started after moving houses where this wasn’t an option.
The most important elements for me are experimenting with tools and textures, get surprised by the results and pursue the exploration. Look around you and see what 10 tools you could leverage to paint. You’d be surprised by the possibilities as each tool has multiple ways of being used. See if you can make 5 different marks with each collected tools. As an example, a shower sponge, a hairbrush, a toothpick, a container, an incense stick, a piece of cardboard, textile, a toothbrush, explore other options. be curious, lighthearted by the result and willing to explore more. I also enjoy watching ink flow, doing its own thing within the pouring medium. Add more color, see what happens, maybe scrap some off to see what happens, move it.
One of the people I enjoy listening to for lightness on all topics is Sadhguru, an Indian yoga guru:
« Being playful always has been understood as irresponsibility ; the most responsible way to life is that you are playful with life ; It is an absolutely irresponsibility to carry a long face and walk on this planet with misery »
I love this so much. It isn’t always easy hence this is a good reminder to not be stuck into our own head too much, and be grateful, joyfully and playful for the better of all.
If you have 12mins, do watch his talk about Playfulness & Passion - It starts as below:
“When you are serious the world doesn’t exist for you, you and your nonsense. When you are serious it is just about you and your nonsense, the world and others lives do not exist for you ; Only when playful you can pay attention to everything. You can truly respond to everything in the world only if you’re playful, otherwise you cannot.
Science is telling you the whole world is just a dance of energy, it looks like the force that created this existence is always playful. Always in this culture has creation being describes as god’s play. The forces of creation are constantly at play, if they stop playing you are finished.
All the basic forces within the body itself they must be playing with full vigor, only then everything is nice; if they stop playing or refuse to play you are done. So playfulness not only in your attitude, this is the attitude of the creator, this is the attitude of the creation.
If you are in tuned with life, the creation, and the creator, being playful is very natural. […] “