always best at manipulation.

Warning: this title may be misleading. This is really a post about me and art.

I discovered something in my high school art class. I was much better at photography than I was at drawing. I was better at painting, too.

Ten years later, rubber stamping came into my life and suddenly I felt creative again, like I did when I was in high school. I started to think about why I had neglected to try anything artistic (besides quilting) in all that time. I slowly came to see that I am a great manipulator. Let me explain what I mean by that:

I can take stamps, ink and paper and arrange them in a new way to make something crafty. I can take pixels and digital brushes and mix them up in a new way to make something pretty. And likewise, I work better at arranging other people’s pretty colors into new palettes. Take this one for example:

This little palette went all the way to #7 last month with the love that everyone gave it. It was a quick little arrangement of another user’s colors. I named it “Not Another Rainbow” because I figured it wouldn’t go very far… it was just another rainbow. Imagine my surprise when it reached the top ten!

Since then, I’ve taken to saving other fabulous colors I find in my favorites so I can play with them later. And I think that the palettes I make from combining other lovers’ colors are some of my best work! Here’s the first palette I made from colors I had recently added to my favorites:

Then this was made for an “Autumn” challenge in a group from colors I had saved:

And here’s another one I just made this afternoon:

Yup. There’s something about it—I don’t come up with this stuff all on my own, but I’ve certainly learned how to play with it!

The thing I have to remind myself of is that this is considered creativity, too…