Wednesday, September 29, 2010

My First Experiences and Getting Started

As with many of my friends, I am a self taught artist.  Throughout my life, I have been attracted to arts and crafts.  During my teens and early twenties, I cooked and did a lot of sewing.  Looking back now, the only painting that I did was a paint-by-numbers kitten that my Mother and Dad had framed and which hung in their house until Mother finally had to sell the house and move closer to us.  Now I wonder what happened to that "painting".  I have often dabbled in painting doing props for performances at school and church.

Many years ago, I bought some rubber stamps and began making my own greeting cards then I got into scrapbooking and have numerous books put together.  That is a wonderful way to be creative and relive those memories.  I haven't had much time to scrapbook lately but have lots of pictures organized along with huge amounts of paper, stickers, ribbon, and tools just waiting for my hands.

In 2004 I actually created my first "painting" in acrylics.  After going back to college, I was told that I had to do some hands on art as part of the curriculum.  After much discussion with my professor, we decided that I should walk outside and take a photo of what I saw then try to paint it.  I did and now I look back and see how bad it was.  Although the painting is framed and hanging on the wall today, I still look at it and think that I am glad that I can do better now.