Reframing the situation and Bruce Lee

Halloween was just over a week ago, and it just happened that on that day I woke up and decided to stop thinking of myself as an"unemployed blogger/artist," and to start thinking of myself as a "self-employed artist/blogger."  It seems like semantics, but sometimes simply reframing the situation can make a huge difference.  That afternoon I started this art blog, doing several posts with my earlier work.  That night, I made some fliers up and passed them out to parents at the downtown trick or treat event.  I didn't get any work out of that, but a bunch of people checked out this blog.  That's a start. 

The next night, I spent a couple hours on the computer looking through different kinds of art, trying to remind myself what kind of stuff really got me stoked.  I kept coming back to graffiti, street art, and in particular, stencils.  Maybe it's because I did a lot of Xerox art as a zine publisher over the years, but I've always liked simple, high contrast pictures.  But I also like stuff with lots of color.  All the images I checked out online whirled around my head as I went to sleep that night.  One question kept resonating in my head, "What would I really want to put up on my wall?"

I woke up the next morning with another thought in my head.  That thought?  "I need to step it up."  I got back on the computer and looked for something, some image, that I could put my own spin on.  I picked one of my childhood heroes, Bruce Lee.  That day I made the picture above, with the caption, "Be like water my friend."  I set it across the room when I was done.  "Now THAT is something I'd want to put on my wall," I thought to myself.  And with that, my artwork, the Sharpie marker "scribble style" that I'd been doing for ten years, took a completely different direction.  It felt good.

Now, a week later, I have three drawings to do for other people.  In my case, reframing my thinking changed everything.  Flow... be like water, my friend.