I was painting in my dream last night!

I’ve had only one creative dream since Indigo Dreams months ago. So this was huge for me.
Two nights ago, I had this dream I was in the store my in-laws owned. (They did own a store decades ago before I met them but not now.)
There was a revolving rack of greeting cards in the store. The rack was a mess and I started organizing it. Some of the cards were bent, faded and some of them even had dates on them from years gone by. They needed to be removed. I had an idea that this rack could be mine. I could make cards and they could sell them at the store. I was pretty excited about the idea and when I woke up, I realized I was happier in the dream than I had been about anything in my art in a couple of months.

Last night, I was painting in my dreams. I’ve been painting a little in my waking hours, but in my dream, I was elated. That feeling stayed with me.

I had been trying out some photoshop watercolor brushes for a while. They really are amazing and I love the idea of painting digitally. Working in-house for so long, I can’t tell you the number of days and weeks in total spent cleaning up edges from purchased and licensed art. And then, to also have to re-create parts of motifs because they were either painted flatly or flatten in photoshop...so time consuming. And while the brushes were doing a pretty good job, I was not really able to “feel” the painting. It was stiff and not flowing.
Like sometimes, typing in a journal is fine. But there are times when I just need to write it out with a pen and paper.

I felt that my dreams where saying I needed to paint with watercolors, brushes and paper. The way I felt in my dream was a connection that I need to feel in my art.

I have some old, inexpensive watercolors and thought maybe it was time to buy a better set. I recently purchased a watercolor round brush to try out. I did a little price searching online and that’s when I realized my lovely brush is actually from an animal.
With a little more searching, I found that watercolor set I’d been looking at, as well as many of the papers use animal products. :-(
I’m not a strict vegetarian but I just don’t want to paint with anything from an animal. I found that Windsor Newton makes synthetic brushes. There are a couple of companies that produce non-animal watercolors. I also found a non-animal watercolor paper. So that’s the way I’m going when I do purchase new items. If I am going to paint with my whole heart and soul, it needs to be with products I believe in.

Two companies I found with non-animal watercolors. I haven’t tried them yet.

http://www.colorsofnature.com/

http://holbeinamerica.com/#Watercolors