I’m determined to learn how to paint on-screen. The tools are finally here for me to do it — a pressure-sensitive stylus and a tablet I can use like a piece of paper. With digital, it’s possible to get really even tones that will reproduce well, but also to play virtually with media that I wouldn’t dare use in the real world. (Hello big, messy textures and multiple levels of “undo”!)
The painting part is fine — way more controllable than watercolour, though admittedly also absent the ‘aliveness’ of it. The real challenge is that I’m accustomed to having such tight control over the lines I produce with a pen. I don’t want a big, fat, rounded digital magic marker, I want variability — which is available to a certain degree, but it’s a different feeling than I’m accustomed to. I would love to be capable of doing this:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puyMmARTqck&w=500&h=305]
In other news, I drove every day last week and was feeling all ready to take my practical driving test. Then I had my lesson on Monday and made a right hash of it. Every manoeuvre was awful, and the car was very jumpy under my control.
Of course, my instructor’s car is a peppy little diesel number, while our car is a petrol-powered refrigerator, so this is a bit like learning to play the clarinet and the saxophone at the same time.
After the lesson, I had to take a bus crammed with high school students to Latheron to pick up my artwork. I had no idea if I’d sold anything, and was struggling to lighten up and not get moody about everything: “I suck at driving. I just had to pay £255 for ten more lessons. My art didn’t sell. I don’t know what I’m doing.” *proceeds to eat worms*
It turned out that two of the paintings sold — I’m officially an artist! — and the two I was taking home happened to be the ones I kind of wanted for myself, at least for now.
Craig, my wonderful paramour and greatest supporter, arrived in Latheron with the car and made me drive home. The trip was smooth, fast, easy, and fun.
Dan at Strategic Coach says, “Progress, not perfection.” It’s so hard not to have impossible standards for myself. Even after fifteen years of working with the company, writing material for very successful entrepreneurs, I still feel like somehow I’m different, I’m an exception.
Over the past several months, I’ve achieved the impossible: I learned how to drive. I still have things to learn, but I’ve got to keep a sense of humour about that and not let my ideal take away my sense of progress.
I was feeling a bit lost yesterday (and wrote a letter to a new friend in that state of mind, so I probably came across as a loon), so I sat down, doodled, and talked myself through it — the best thing I could have done! Why are we not taught and encouraged to do this?
