" Can you paint with all the colors of the wind? "

Last year I had wanted to start up a blog and began preparing posts. However, I decided not to because with school and work I would not have been very good at keeping up with it.

Today I was dabbling with watercolors and remembered something I had written up last October during my beginning stages of painting with acrylics.

I thought that I would share this post with you today, because while I was painting today and I found I had many of the same experiences as I did last year.

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One of the most special things, I brought home with me, from Texas, were a few of Aunt Debi’s paint brushes. Painting has always been something that I have wanted to try, but was always too afraid. Afraid to find out that I would fail at it, that I would never be able to get onto paper something that I had envisioned… but with bringing home the paint brushes, I decided I had no choice but to give painting a chance.

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            Sitting in the middle of my living room floor, tablecloth laid across the floor with a blank canvas in front of me. I stared. I stared at that blank canvas wondering how would I start, what colors did I want to use, and how would I get the vision in my head on to that canvas?

 I don’t draw. I can copy things fairly well, but I am not an artist. I do not draw with great perspective. Actually most of the time my doodles turn out cartoonish and childish. But if you’re going to do it, you have to commit. You have to take that first leap. Pick a color and paint the backdrop. Then take the next step a swirl here, a swirl there. Add a different color here and mix this color with that. Then let dry. After it dries I hand sketched a basic idea of what I wanted. And thus began the painting process again. At first glance it looked like something a child had painted. Frustrated I kept going, layering, perfecting, adding shading here and shimmer there. Trying to not be afraid of using more paint to add texture, and telling myself that really there was no right or wrong way of doing this. The only wrong way was not trying.

Finally, I finished. I sat up and looked at my painting and I found something that started off as a blank canvas, then turned to something childish, had actually turned into something I was proud of, something beautiful.

I learned from this process. The hardest part of doing anything in life is taking that first step, then after that first step you have to remember that things take time, and its not going to look perfect right away. It may take going over things again and again making a small change here, and a small change there. It may involve taking risks and trying something new. However, eventually you may find that you have accomplished something beautifully YOU.