Moccasin Flower, watercolor, 3 1/2 x 2 1/2, ©2011 Helen Klebesadel

Welcome to day ten in the 33 Paintings in 33 Days Project of Alaskan artist  Nikki Kinne and Wisconsin artist Helen Klebesadel.

This little artist trading card of a favorite Wisconsin wild flower was my painting for the day.   I am working on a series of larger paintings of wild and endangered orchids for an exhibition I have planned with artist Yueh-mei Cheng next year.  I was thinking about the next painting I will be working on for that series and the next thing I knew this image had emerged.

Day 10 - Flower, watercolor 6x4, ©2011 Nikki Kinne

This rose with a thorn was a small texture experiment in which Nikki saw the hint of a flower. Nikki says, ” I decided to follow the shape into what it would become.  I then remembered the gold and silver I bought 6 or more years ago and decided I could put it on the painting because I could!”

Its so important for artists to realize that we can be open to trying new things and just relax into the process and see where it takes us.  To often we get so serious about our work that we limit ourselves to working on the ‘important’ work, losing our opportunities to learn new things from uninhibited creative play and exploration.

Thank you for accompanying us on our journey of creative play.

I am now making my daily works for this project available for sale online in my Meylah shop here: http://meylah.com/HelenKle​besadel  I will post them each day after they are posted in the blog.