My gift is my song (plus, new lion art!)

“My gift is my song and this one’s for you” (Elton John) 

I’ve had a number of conversations recently with people about how we discover our gifts.

By gifts I don’t mean only career talents, though of course those are included. Some of us are also great listeners and wisdom sharers. Others, fantastic cooks. Some of us are great at simply lifting people’s spirits with infectious energy and a positive attitude.

Have you thought lately about your own gifts? We all have them, and I love, love, LOVE the discovery process. When I was first exploring the fact that I wanted to paint again, I reached out to my closest friends and family and asked them to help me think about what I was good at.

The responses were illuminating and touching. The best part about the exercise was that my crew really did see me, sometimes better than I was willing to see myself.

I want to challenge you today to reach out to someone you trust and just ask: what am I good at? What do you love about me? What would you thank me for?

The answer may surprise you // make your day brighter // help you feel totally loved on your path.

My gift is my song. 

And what’s better than that?

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

In my last blog I shared the progress of my owl painting and the fact that I wasn’t sure if the painting was finished or not.

Here’s where we left things:

Turns out the painting was *almost* finished, but I still had some work to do on the owls. I brightened them up a little bit and added some additional gold highlights (I seriously love gold these days).

Here’s the final painting:

♥

I also started my next painting of a lion cub wearing a fancy crown and I’m really excited with how this one is turning out.

Here’s the initial sketch:

I continue to navigate how I want my animals // backgrounds to look and keep landing in this slightly magical land where lion cubs have crowns and giraffes wear hats and the colors aren’t grounded in reality. I love how freeing it is to color outside of the lines. Yay!

I added a first layer of paint and then spent a few days debating if the sky was way too dark.

Hint: it was!

There are always points during the painting process when I’m afraid to mess up what I’ve already done and so I resist taking creative risks. I was full of resistance at this stage, knowing the sky wasn’t working but uncertain about how to move forward.

This is of course the moment when creative risk is most needed (hear that, resistance?), and I’ve found this to be true in life generally as well. The resistance always comes before something wonderful begins. 

I brightened up the sky a LOT and felt so much happier about the direction of the painting. Much, much happier:

And with the sky figured out, it was time to begin working on the cub herself! Here’s an in-progress shot of her coming to life:

I still have more work to do on her face, and then of course the background hills // grasses. I’ll have the final painting to share with you next time and perhaps some progress on animal #8 in the series (still TBD). Thank you to all who have given me great animal suggestions — I’m still hopeful I can finish my goal of 10 paintings before the baby comes!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I recently discovered a quote by Yogi Bhajan that stayed with me:

You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are. 

And I love how recognizing our own gifts fits so beautifully into the journey of embracing our own powerful selves.

Here’s to our gifts, yours and mine.

Here’s to our collective power.

And here’s to the freedom to color outside the lines. 

With love,