you have to break a lot of eggs to make an omelet

Day 10-20 #The100DayProject

Success… or at least the feeling of it.

After my last post, things in the studio got rough. I was showing up, painting from my gut—trusting intuition—and HONESTLY… it just wasn’t landing. Lots of broken eggs. Not a single omelet in sight.

Now, I come with a deeply ingrained sense of perseverance… which can be either a gift or a personality flaw, depending on the day. (Ha!) So instead of forcing it on paper and canvas, I pivoted. I picked up my iPad.

Digital sketching has become my safe place. No wasted materials, no guilt—just time. And if something turns out truly awful? Delete. Gone. No evidence. A clean slate and my dignity intact.

I also made a quiet shift: no more photo references. Instead, I started taking mental snapshots of whatever caught my eye—a blooming spring tree, a bird mid-hop, a sky melting into sunset. I’d pause and really look. What colors were sitting together? What shapes stood out? Was it a fleeting detail I loved, or the whole scene working in harmony?

At first, it felt like trying to download too much onto a very slow internal hard drive. But… you know where this is going… with practice, something started to click.

And THEN—rather than jumping straight into paintings—I began working those memories out as sketches on my iPad. Slowly, painting from my gut started to feel… possible. Even exciting. Like real, honest growth.

So here’s the recap of the last ten days: I kept cracking those eggs, kept tossing them in the skillet… and finally—finally—I started making omelets.

Below are a few of the sketches that survived the delete button and might just make their way onto canvas.

The Glimmer of Spring

I began with my sketch, but somewhere along the way the brush took the lead, and I followed. What emerged is happily different from what I first imagined, and that’s part of what made the process feel so alive—so honest, so full of discovery.

I’ve always loved the live oaks of South Louisiana. There’s something timeless about them—their sweeping limbs, their quiet strength. And whether it’s tradition or simply that azaleas thrive in their shade, you so often find those bright blooms gathered beneath their branches. It’s a scene that’s been painted countless times. It’s something I love deeply, and I wanted to experience it in my own way, through my own hands.

This moment in early spring feels especially magical. The landscape hasn’t yet burst into that vivid green—everything is softer, more subdued. Muted tones settle in, creating a calm backdrop, and then the azaleas arrive—sudden, vibrant, almost electric against that quiet palette. The strength of the tree and the bright beautiful flowers were the draw.

I chose to paint the scene from beneath the oak itself. There’s a feeling you get standing under one of these trees—looking up at its twisting, reaching branches—that’s hard to put into words. It feels like a secret space, a kind of shelter, where the world fades away and you’re held for a moment in something larger and more graceful than yourself.

This piece, Glimmers of Spring, grew from that feeling. Painted from memory and guided by instinct, it lives somewhere between what I saw and what I felt. The canvas is 36 x 36 inches—a window into a place in my mind.

GLIMMER OF SPRING 36X36 CANVAS

THANKS FOR FOLLOWING ALONG…KEEP LOOKING FOR GIMMERS OF JOY