A collaborative detour (Works in progress)

Earlier in the week I gathered up my art supplies and sat down to start work on a piece for @everlove 's CollaborativeArtJourney challenge. The challenge was simple enough, print out this picture

Then add your own spin.

As I don't have a printer I decided to try and paint the photo, then add my part on top instead. I started by adding texture to the page with gesso, old book pages and kitchen roll and started adding the base layer of paint.

Then I started staring at it, I knew what I wanted to do, I'd sketched and planned but nothing happened I just couldn't progress with it, or anything else I tried to work on. It was my first case of artist block and I was starting to think I had permanently lost my art mojo.

Until this morning when I opened my eyes and saw this staring back at me from my bedroom wall.

At some point last night in a codeine fuelled post dental surgery haze, I had moved everything upstairs, commandeered a section of wall and started painting.

I haven't got a clue if drugged up me had a specific idea for each of these pieces despite the small mountain of indecipherable scribbled notes she left stuck to my mirror, but she clearly wanted to break the funk by practising different brush strokes with the colours I had picked out from the photograph.

So I followed her lead spending the art time I had today working on these 3 pieces, there's still a way to go but I think this will definitely be my permanent workspace from now on.

How do you veteran artists break artists block? I'd rather not resort to dentistry and drugs next time.
Thanks for popping by

PS while I haven't technically followed the rules for the Art Collaboration (or compleated the project in time, I have opted for the 50/50 payment split so that 50% of this posts earning can help @everlove on her journey to steemfest.