It was hard to work with men grunting and groaning as they dragged themselves under the house. It was even harder to concentrate when they came in asking if they could flush the toilet a few times because there was bathroom tissue over the camera lens. I chuckled in the studio for a long time over that one.
Distractions aside, I decided to try to make some oceanic-themed ATC's for my sister's friend's project (the one where the cards will be given to school kids as an award of some type). At first, I regressed to old bad habits, Googling ocean themed ATC's. Then I shut down the computer and dug out my box of blank ATCs. What a happy surprise to find a few where I'd already applied paint as a starting point. I finally had to admit that a bunch of elementary school kids across the country just weren't going to bust my chops about my work, and so I was just going to have fun. I was thinking about when my daughter moved to Australia to study for a portion of her junior year of college, and all of her tales of jellyfish and barracuda and all other manner of scary biting and stinging beasts when she was getting her dive license in the Great Barrier Reef and I was inspired! I'm an amateur, but an amateur having a good time making art today and not beating myself up because it isn't commercial. It was just fun. The only way I'm going to get better at anything is to keep trying. Heaven knows they can't get any worse, right?
Being creative in an area that is way, way, way out of my comfort zone is hard. Sharing the pictures is even harder. If I don't give it a try, I'll remain a scaredy-cat and I want to stop feeling so tentative and nervous about not being great at art. What the heck. I made something today, even though it was a tiny and silly something, and that's more than I've done in quite a while.
