I Was Afraid Of A Blank Sheet Of Paper

     With my recent readings and blogging about the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, it brings to mind my own fears when I returned to creating pictures after years of not creating.  My first fear was that "I've lost it".  I can remember hearing from unreliable but well meaning sources that is you don't use your talent you will lose it.  With having that thought in my brain, I would think about drawing and not attempt it for fear that I couldn't draw any more, how sad!  I started getting excited about art again when my daughter took an art course in high school and her teacher was very encouraging to her, which got my creative juices flow a little bit.  I will blog about my first attempt at another time, I need to show you both my first attempt and my reference piece, for which I am not ready to do today.
     I will, however, tell you my funny story about my first art class that I signed up for to get myself going again.  When I finally felt I had the time to devote to creating paintings, I chose to study water color painting, a subject that I had never been taught before.  I felt that this would be a good start since it would all be new, even if I was creating with a different medium.  I love the finished water color painting, the flow of the colors, the blurriness, the suggestions of images not necessary painted in detail. Then, of course, there are the paintings by masters who do nothing but beautiful detail.  Anyway, there I was sitting in my class at the Worcester Art Museum with the great William Griffiths as my teacher. He referred himself as "The Guru" and taught the purist method of using only the correct primary and secondary colors, mixing them to create all other colors and the big rule of using no black or white. His palettes were referred to as the tetrads and it was important to stick to these colors because if you introduced something else, he would know!  That was enough to instill fear of the ire of Uncle Bill being brought down upon us.
      After we had classes teaching the the basic strokes, methods, techniques, we could start our own painting.  There I was with my Arches Water Color paper, my pan of water, my paints unopened, my reference picture in front of me.  I had penciled in a few reference lines, but was totally clueless as to how to start my painting. I was scared to death to even make attempt!  He always went around and sat with the students individually and gave tips on what to do, but this week, he started at the other side of the room, and I was the last one on my side of the room, so I just sat and waited patiently, telling my neighbor I didn't know what to, and it turned out, she didn't know what to do either.  Finally, it was my turn, he sat down next to me, looked at my reference picture, looked at my paper, and all he said was, "cover the paper with a yellow wash".  Ok, I said, (taking a deep breath), I prepared my perfect yellow and water, took out my large brush and I was able to paint a perfect yellow wash.  I was very proud of myself.  But this is where it ends.  I was too afraid to even attempt to my painting, I was completely stuck without being told what to do next.  There was no time for Bill to see everyone again, and I went home and proudly showed my daughter, laughing, "see what I did with a 2 1/2 class!" and showed her my yellow piece of paper. I was so afraid to paint back then, believing that I may do the wrong thing and I didn't want to face this.  It is terrible how paralyzing this is.  There are probably countless paintings that are given up on because of fear.  I have made a lot of progress since then!