Hello New and Returning Readers!
I’ve spent the first half of this year really delving into my hobbies and interests. While learning and growing is always steady for me, I decided to lean into creative pursuits once I discovered so many amazing classes I could take within 3 miles of where I live. I have LITERALLY been in some sort of art class, art expression session, or doing artsy projects at home a couple times a week, if not more. I have been doing this for the past 6 months, often spending hours just painting, creating, and using my right hemisphere.
I have always considered myself not creative because I am so very Type A. I can’t come up with an original work, my imagination isn’t really there, but I enjoy the creative outlet and process. It’s good to be “bad” at things and have hobbies that you enjoy for the sake of it. Not everything in life has to be about improvement, progress, or growth. It can be just for fun. And the creative process is one of those things for me.
I’ve learned a lot about myself during these art classes. They are one-time classes or workshops so I never have the same teacher twice. And these are many different types of classes with many different materials - fabrics, water color, dirt, clay, paper, yarn, etc. I always felt stressed because I felt we didn’t have enough time. I felt rushed to finish the “assignment.” And I learned a lot about technique or best practices even in 1 hour which was by trial and error. The more I stuck with the art classes, the more I shifted the perspective of MYSELF.
It started very small and by coincidence. A lot of the classes, at the end, we would walk around to all the other tables to view everyone’s work. We would also speak about our project, sort of similar to a show & tell, except we were all adults and not in preschool. LOL And the great thing about the class was, you heard from other people which pieces were their favorites, and why, and once or twice a teacher would say privately to me about why they liked my piece or another peer would say mine was their favorite. This was surprising and very nice to hear.
I always saw my own work and thought it was fine, or okay, or good enough. And I would take pictures of my art work, the inspiration of what I was trying to copy and my version. I would send it to my friends and family for fun so they knew what I was up to that week. And more than once, I would get asked, which one is mine and which is the original. They would mention they can’t tell, they look exactly the same. And I was floored. Because I would send a screen shot from the internet of what I was copying and then my piece, so I figured it was very obvious because a little bit of the text for the title of the art work, artist’s name or web page would be showing. So I would say the one on the right is mine.
When I would look at my art work in real life I felt meh about it. But for some reason when I looked at the photo of my work I could be a little bit more objective about how I did. When I would look at the photo of the side by side comparison I could see a little bit more why my friends and family asked me which one was mine. It was as if the photo gave me some distance, a literal different lens to view my work objectively.
To me it’s like how you clean your room, leave it and close the door, and then come back in to see it with fresh eyes and someone else’s perspective. Or how you write an email or essay and wait a few days and revisit it and see other things you didn’t see before. That’s how a photograph worked for me with my artwork. I could distance myself from the artwork as if I was viewing SOMEONE ELSE’s work.
By the 5th or 6th month of taking art classes constantly, another shift happened. My different art teachers would notice me working away and comment that I had experience, such as “Oh you’re not new to this! You’re doing great!” and I would be shocked and respond, “Oh. I’ve taken a lot of art classes lately.”
The other day, the exercise was to draw and then paint what we drew. I chose my object and the mini instruction was to look at the object you were drawing and not the paper. The more you look at your object the more accurate you would be. Use one line and don’t lift your pencil off the paper, just draw very slowly. So, me being Type A, follow the directions to the T. I did just that. I thought my drawing was fine, but I had a question about scale. I can’t use an entire sheet of paper because I can not spatially gauge correctly. Even at home, I will always use ¼ of the paper. I asked my art instructor how do I get better at scale. So she sat down with me to look at my work and I explained I did exactly what she told me. She took one look at my drawing and answered quietly so no one else could hear, she stated I already knew how to draw. Those directions she shared earlier don’t apply to me. That she gives the above blanket tutorial because most people do not know how to draw. They tend to look at the paper so much and draw what they think the object looks like vs looking at the actual object and drawing what they see. She did give me pointers to lightly outline for placement and use my entire arm and shoulder to draw instead of just moving my wrist. The fact that she said I already knew how to draw was mind boggling to me. I would have never said I knew how to draw; that it was a skill I possessed.
I did several variations of my drawing trying to improve each one. And I really looked and practiced deliberately. Because this class was on the longer side at 2.5 hours by the last 30 minutes I was getting tired and bored. So I decided to trace the object’s outline instead and only freehand draw the inside details as practice. And I painted each drawing a different color.
When my instructor came back around I showed her my progress; she mentioned if I wanted to get into the arts, I should consider being a textile or wallpaper artist because I enjoy precision and order. She pointed out one of my painted drawings and wanted me to imagine being hired for that design on wallpaper that would go well with a home in Morocco.
The striking part of this story is, when I was showing her my other versions, I told her I traced the last couple and I only worked on the inside lines freehand. And when I went to show her the 100% freehand vs the traced ones, I had to pause. I struggled for a few seconds, puzzled. I could only figure out which ones I had traced because I manually counted. I could no longer distinguish at a glance which one was truly mine and which one I outlined the object. They all looked exactly the same now, even to me…
Epilogue
It’s now been about a month since I originally wrote this piece. I have been painting more, and gifting what I create. I had a breakthrough moment when I decided to paint an animal I never attempted before and it came out really well. It wasn’t perfect, but it was close. And I was really proud of myself. It was that day I decided I would be comfortable stating out loud that I painted; I put in enough time and commitment that I was no longer dabbling in this new hobby. I was no longer a novice. As of August 3rd, 2026, I have an additional descriptor. I am now an artist.
