Creative Day 5: Practice Makes Perfect?

Sometimes I get really jealous looking at how artistic others can be, wishing I could do that myself.  This week, as part of the Thirty Creative Days, I decided to do something other than watch the Green Jealous Giant Monster grow inside my head.  I picked up a paint brush.

It turns out that when paintings look easy, it's because the painter probably has some talent.  I'm not talking Oh, this is white-on-white-on-white, isn't it genius? type of bogus talent.  I mean real, honest-to-goodness-Robert-Johnson-soul-selling talent, like Bestie #2.  She saw that I was trying my hand at crafts again and she decided to paint.  She now has artwork all over her living room and it's incredible.  The Green Giant definitely started making an appearance!  At least this Monster is a bit more practical when it decides to wreak havoc with my mind: I hear whisperings of "Psst, kid, come over here. See that painting? You could totally do that. Seriously. You should go try it."  Apparently when this monster plays around the only things that get permanently hurt are art supplies.

I can't paint.  My first attempt looked like a child's fingerpainting gone horribly wrong.

As you can see, I stopped before finishing, hoping to let the paper dry so that maybe one day I can salvage it.

My next attempt turned into a doodle-fest with paint.

It was at that point that I realized I really needed to practice and I didn't want to use any more "good" paper.  What to do, what to do?  That's when I looked across the breakfast table and saw the morning's paper that hadn't quite made it to the recycling bin yet.  Plenty of practice paper!  And so I practiced.

See the squirrel-cats in the bottom/middle?  Practice has not made perfect...yet.

And so I learned a valuable lesson.  I need to practice.  A lot.  And I can paint if I find it relaxing but I should stop when it becomes a chore.

And yes, some people seem to be born with the talent to paint.  That is not me.  But maybe one day I'll be able to draw a squirrel and a cat (instead of some strange hybrid) and that, at least, will be an improvement.