Oil & Water

There’s something super humbling about trying something new. Allowing yourself to be an absolute beginner can be so messy; sometimes it can feel like a waste of time, a waste of materials, a waste of energy.

Yet still, I love it.

I love the “whoops” and the “what now?” and the “oh that worked!”, the trial and error of figuring it out and learning something new. I remind myself of when I first tried to crochet and wound up with a whole bunch of knots, but now I have scarves and hats. Every new hobby or skill starts out a bit clumsy,

This weekend I started playing around with oil paints. I’m not attached to this first canvas, I didn’t even know what to do with it, I just started mixing colors and saw what appeared. I watched maybe twenty minutes of YouTube videos about supplies needed, basic tips… the advice to paint “thin to thick” echoed in my mind as I struggled to keep colors from blending more than I wanted them to.

I’m excited to keep going and see what happens, little by little I’m learning something new. I had a few new years resolutions for 2023, two of them involved hobbies: learn to oil paint, learn to water paint. It took me ten months to dive in, but here I am, starting with oil before I move on to water. So I will continue to share this experience as I work through it.