This week I dove into my online Heart Led Landscapes watercolor painting class. Whew! Deep heavy sigh. It was hard to stay in my joy as I worked on assignments in the class. The instructor makes it look so damn easy! When I attempted value study paintings of the landscape photographs I had chosen to work on in this class I ended up with a rorschach test looking pile of paintings. In fact I had to look at a couple of them several times to figure out which landscape they were supported to represent.
I am experiencing
Growing Pains
and it isn’t fun. I get to practice what I preach here about painting simply for the joy of it. Though the truth is I found no joy in value studies. When I let go of wanting them to look like the landscapes they represent, they are kind of fun though.
It reminds me of this Ira Glass quote that I know I’ve shared here before. It seems like a good time to share it again.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
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Despite my frustration today, tomorrow I will paint value studies and color studies again. And again and again and again. And I will also pick up my paintbrush and play with color for the sheer joy of it. Because I need the joy to sustain me through these growing pains.
What about you? Are you having growing pains in your creative life? Remember to choose joy even while you do new hard things.
May you walk in beauty.
P.S. I’m showing you all of these photographs of my work so that you understand that the initial learning phase for any creative skill is often not pretty or skillful.
Color studies with reference photo
More value studies
Yesterday’s joy painting
Playing around with camera movement
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