Not My Gift

Dear Mom,
Painting watercolors is clearly not My Gift, but as MelissaWhoSpins told me, it is good because it is not fiber-related. Something inside me has shifted and I've gone from being tickled when something sort of turned out okay totally by accident, to being discouraged because the paintings don't always turn out okay.

Maybe my standard of what is okay has shifted.

I still have lots to learn. This is good. I like learning.
For me, a Big Part of that learning is knowing when to keep going and when to quit. And to be patient and let the paint dry, goshdangit.

This landscape was a class project a couple of weeks ago. It went through an awkward teenage phase and I really didn't like it, but then I fussed about and somehow by mistake it all worked out.

Next up…

I got this far on this and was happy enough with how it looked to be scared that I would ruin it before I finished.

Olive was lending moral support. She is never too far from my fingertips. I love that.

Such was my fear that I didn't touch that painting from last week's class to this week's. Today I got it nearly done and then it needed some teacher intervention/correction/rescue attempt. When I got home I made another attempt at finishing touches. I think I need to call it quits on this one and know I learned from it.

I may need to reproduce this same image, much the way I obsessively painted all those pears, and see if I can get it right. Or I'll just fuss this one into a sodden lump of wilted paper.

Love,
Kim