To paint is to love again

Today some views from my Hahnemühle Watercolor Sketchbook. To me it’s an Art Journal, but with watercolor papers that I like to fill with doodles in watercolor. One of my favorite activities.

To paint is to love again. It?s only when we look with eyes of love that we see as the painter sees. His is a love, moreover, which is free of possessiveness. What the painter sees he is duty-bound to share. Usually he makes us see and feel what ordinarily we ignore or are immune to. His manner of approaching the world tells us, in effect, that nothing is vile or hideous, nothing is stale, flat and unpalatable unless it be our own power of vision. To see is not merely to look. One must look-see. See into and around.
[…]
To paint is to love again, live again, see again. To get up at the crack of dawn in order to take a peek at the water colors one did the day before, or even a few hours before, is like stealing a look at the beloved while she sleeps. The thrill is even greater if one has first to draw back the curtains. How they glow in the cold light of early dawn! – Is there any writer who rouses himself at daybreak in order to read the pages of his manuscript? Perish the thought!

Henry Miller [via brainpickings]

Also check out my blog post about how I paint a page in this Hahnemühle Watercolor Sketchbook (process video). This journal is also where I did my starry starry night sky painting that I was quite pleased with. It is one I am filling slowly, but every session inside it is a joy.