My botanical watercolor of a tulip is all done! I’m very pleased with both how it turned out and also for getting it done. I have so many unfinished drawings in my sketchbooks that part of what I’m doing with my dailies* is to work on some of them and get them finished before starting new drawings on empty pages. I’m hoping that will clear some of the clutter and distraction in my head.

What I found interesting about working on this tulip from a creativity point of view is how long I resisted and procrastinated working on it - 2 years. I was very good at coming up with excuses to avoid it. Many of my reasons had to do with color matching and blending colors. There was a lot of internal whining.

The funny thing was once I started, it was surprisingly simple and straightforward. Once I mixed a color and put it down, I could leave it or change it by adding another layer of color. It was that easy. And if I really messed up by spilling water across the page or big blobs of color got on the picture somehow, I could chose to continue or I could turn the page and draw it again and start over or not. The choices weren’t difficult but my mind before starting did a great job in over-complicating things.

Procrastination is all about fear but if somehow you can take a first step or action, then you have something to react to and make a decision on. It’s no longer the unknown. Progress is made.

What are you procrastinating on? How can you take a step forward with it? What will you do?

(* I am currently taking the online class, The Creative’s Workshop, and they encourage the participants to show up daily with something they’ve been working on. Rough and incomplete is fine. Just show up. I posted in the class for 4 days running with progress on this tulip.)