Moving Forward

The latest prompt on Colour Me Positive is: forward, and the art challenge to not be afraid to make a mistake. I went looking through my quotation collection and came up with: "If you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward". 

That decided me on the imagery to use on the pages. I knew I had the image of a crawling man (by William Blake) in my collection and he formed the base of the colour scheme for the background which was done with acrylic paint and a Balzer Design stencil (from The Crafter's Workshop). I also stamped on text from the Life Consists stamp by Hampton Art Stamps.  I added the spiral like shapes to imitate tropical looking vegetation. These rubber stamps are from the Doodled Delight set by Dylusions. I coloured them in with a pink large brush pen (Faber Castell).

You will have seen the dancing figure (to represent the "run" part of the quotation) before. She came originally from an advert in a magazine and I have played with her quite a bit. This time she was cut from a previously gelli plate printed paper. The bird was added on the left to represent the "fly" element.

I added the green sun on the right for no other reason than that I found this circular piece of fabric (left over from a quilt) laying on my work desk and it seemed to fit the spread so well that it had to become part of it.

The quotation was printed onto pinkish transparent paper using the computer.

In hindsight I would have liked to use paper that was more pink and less transparent so I suppose that would be a bit of a mistake as per our art challenge. In reality I seem to have lost my fear of making mistakes over the years. They happen in every piece of art as well as in real life and usually there is a way to fix them. If there isn't, then so be it. You simply have to live with them and try to at least not make the same mistake again. However it's guaranteed you will make new ones!