In my mind, I’m an artist.  Outside of my mind, I am somewhat less than an artist.  I have a relentless desire to create that sometimes drives me to attempt things, like painting, about which I know nothing.  It’s so much harder than it looks. 

I picked up the framed canvas that I bought two years ago and got out my acrylic paints bought with a groupon and decided to paint a cat (inspired by the cat hair stuck on the canvas).  I love my cat and have always wanted to paint something to remind me of her – she is gray.  I mixed what I thought might be black paint with white paint which should have been gray, except the black was really thalo blue.  So I have a blue cat.  But she looked kind of funny sitting in the middle of a large white canvas and I didn’t really have a plan for any blue cat environment. Hmmm… 

I like yellow with blue, but because I didn’t rinse the blue out of the brush well enough I got a bunch of green too.  Grass maybe? Did I mention that the blue cat has no features? I decided I was painting her from the back.  I added some red. I don’t know why I did that – maybe hoping for a miracle discovery.

At that point, to avoid total disappointment, I changed the focus of my painting session.  New goal: cover the canvas and learn how these paints mix with each other and what textures they produce.  Realistically, I didn’t have my heart set on creating a masterpiece and that was wise. I learned that colors look better not mixed, but separate.  I learned that it’s better to have a general plan in mind if you don’t want to waste a lot of paint.  I developed a new appreciation for painting lessons, which I might actually seek out.  I’m just sayin’, it’s not that easy.  Will I try again? Probably. I have a lot of paint to use up.

Notice this is not a signed painting.