I can draw! I love to draw! I know when I pick up a pencil, whether it be graphite, charcoal, pastel or colour, that it is going to do what I want. My hand knows how to hold a pencil. I know how much detail I can add with a pencil. I know what the result will be before I even start. I really love drawing.

I have attempted to paint in the past .. I have acrylic paintings on my walls at home, which are….meh! But let’s be honest, I’ve never really put in the effort to learn. Painting is messy, it requires space and drying time and is certainly not something you want to leave around the house with toddlers lurking. But now my youngest child is in school, and I have a little space and a tiny bit of time, I have branched out and purchased a bunch of oil painting supplies.

I am an absolute beginner with this stuff. When I was about 14, my father bought be some oil paints and set me to work in the yard with a bottle of turps and no instruction at. I had a great deal of fun, but i didn’t know anything about mediums or thinning down paint, so I ended up with these big thick impasto blobs and a wreck of a painting that couldn’t be touched for the next 6 months. It’s no wonder I didn’t fall in love with painting.
These are my first attempts and there are plenty of mistakes. I’m sticking to subjects that are easy to draw out, that way I don’t have to feel bad when I stuff them up!  I keep accidentally mixing my colours together, I have no idea what brush does what, I have no idea what I’m doing with that palette knife (although I like the results) and I’m doing horrible, horrible things to my brushes trying to clean them… but I sure am having fun.