A PAINTER'S WHIM

Artists are known for carrying out their sudden impulses (in art, that is!)
That particular evening I was tired of wielding big brushes on big canvases. 

My thoughts went back on how I started out as a teen, painting tiny flowers and doodles with colored India ink. We are talking postcard size paintings. 

The first beginnings

This smaller 12 x 18 inch  pastel was something like that. When I started painting this on a Monday night for an audience, the speaker came by to look what I was doing and said with surprise, "Oh, that's different!..." 
"Yeah, I responded, "I just wanted to do something "little" today", while my eyes were going back and forth from my paper to my example photo of a sparrow. I had never painted a sparrow, so I didn't want it end up looking like a goose, LOL.


Turned out it was not "little" thing for  a business woman in the audience.
 She had a sharp eye for what looked good, and had an outspoken taste in the clothes she was wearing. She had red hair and  was usually bold in her speaking.
 I was telling her one time that I had to adjust the pleats in the clothes of a person in another painting. She responded with, "Yes, I thought so, those pleats before looked kind of strange."

 Made more of a connection between eye and sparrow

The only thing I still need to do is 

to change the direction of some of the leaves.

This same woman was in the audience this night and was going through a hard time in her personal life. One day she woke up with the idea of sparrows who are so little, but yet so fearless!  She knew she had to be that fearless sparrow to make it through her crisis.

Needless to say that she was amazed when she saw that I was painting something that pertained to her situation:) I was surprised as well that she was the one coming to me!

 I was so happy that I followed my sudden whim!

Do you tend to follow your whim?
Often or only occasionally?