It's As Easy As This

  I've been thinking quite a bit about my process. It's pretty much always the same. I see a new media, or technique. I try it for myself, step by step the way everyone else does. I get comfortable with it and start making a few tweaks here and there. I may skip a step, or do some out of order. It usually works for me, like I have some sort of artist's intuition to tell me what will work and what won't. Sometimes I don't have the proper materials to do what I want to do, so I McGuyver a new material or technique. People will ask "how did you think of that?" Well, I'm not really sure. They often just come to me. Sometimes at odd times (which is why I carry a notebook, for ideas and painting titles). Every once in a while an idea hits me that that burns through my soul and I just have to try it. As soon as I get my hands on materials. I was once sitting in an Italian restaurant (I'd name them, but they painted over the mural I painted. I am that petty), drawing on a bar napkin with a pen when I looked over at the ashtray on the bar and thought "I bet the ash would make an awesome middle tone gray". I won that bet.

   So, anyway, after I get comfortable with a medium or technique, I start spicing things up. Maybe out of boredom. Maybe out of curiosity. I start 'breaking the rules'. Like, "Don't use black paint. It mixes horribly with other paints", or "Don't use the same color in more than one corner of a painting":

  I can use the same color in EVERY corner of a painting. Part of it is the old adage "learn the rules so you can break them" or "If you don't know the rules you aren't constricted by them". I'm not sure that's my case, at least not completely. I get an idea, or start on a new painting, and something just tells me what to do next. Or, if I don't know what to do, it tells me how to get an idea of what to do. It might tell me to use the color that fits in the least, or maybe to use
 a layer of white strokes. I hear "it needs more black" a lot.
   Most of this is stream of consciousness. I'm not sure it turned out at all like I planned it. My thesis was " I have no idea how to explain my process. There's a voice in my head that tells me what to do." A voice that has no actual voice. It's kinda like it just pops into my head. Thanks for putting up with all this. If you have questions or ideas for future posts, please let me know. Here's a new painting for putting up with me:

AKO ANG HARI
    DOUG