Painting Flamingos in Flow

A while back a friend sent me a Ted Talk about 8 things happy people do. I watched it taking notes as it replayed. Most of the 8 actions were things I do, but one action stood out to me, it was to spend more time doing things in the state of flow. I'd not heard of flow but I recognized it. When our painting group gets together we are so focused on the task that time quickly slips from us. That is what I knew as getting in the zone or being present. Now I have a new term for that state. And I know one action that takes me there - painting.

I painted a group of flamingos, called a pat. I wanted to paint an individual flamingo, up close and personal. So I began looking for a picture of a single flamingo to paint. I found a picture from a nature calendar and tried painting these two in my 5x7 art journal.

Yesterday I found Clive 5sArt you tube video of one flamingo so I tried painting one flamingo. I was stoked to paint the flamingo, in the state of flow! Now I want to try it with a marsh background.