Learning to Create

This is a bit of a ramble, but I wanted to get it out in the world.

I am thankful that I was always encouraged to explore things that interested me, from childhood to adulthood. This curiosity and thirst for understanding and knowledge is what keeps me interested in creating. In school I was known as the girl who was always drawing, my high school superlative was "most artistic", even though I felt like other students had some more creative ideas, I was always just doing studies. Learning the technical skills, figuring out the fundamentals of drawing. I was sketching classmates, figuring out how to draw the drape of flags, trying to understand light and shadow.

This constant urge to draw, paint and move my hands didn't stop and wasn't only focused on two dimensional creations. I learned to knit (still haven't figured out how to follow patterns), took a technical drafting class, worked my way through the Betty Crocker Cookbook one summer when I was 13, though I mostly focused on the baked goods. I learned ceramics, dabbled in origami, learned the basics of sewing.

This desire to create and learn new skills hasn't stopped, and hopefully won't ever stop. I enjoy the process of discovery so much. Watercolor is a medium that likes to fight what you want to do with it, and I love that challenge about it so much. So much of the success of the material is influenced by external elements. Is it very humid out? The paint will take longer to dry, the paper might not even dry completely. Is it colder today or warmer? The water in the paint will take longer to dry or dry too quickly. And of course now that I've mostly figured out watercolors (still room for practice and improvement though), I am jumping into a completely different medium. Earlier this year I felt drawn to working with oils. Despite the complexities of watercolors, in a lot of art circles it still isn't seen as "fine art". And while I disagree with that completely, I still want to learn other art mediums.

I picked up some oil paints about two years ago after a bigger art studio closed down in town, and did my first attempt with them earlier this year. I did some research and figured out what I needed to make the painting process easier, and feel like I wasn't fighting my brushes and paints. When I was in Portland earlier this year for a work trip and to visit my brother and his spouse, I hit up a second hand art supply store and found some great paints at an extreme discount. While I was in Vancouver to do a talk on a cruise ship, I popped into an arts and craft store to pick up some basic mixing mediums, brushes and a pack of small canvases so I could dabble a bit more. After 3 paintings, of figuring out the medium, I've started to dive into some more techniques. the internet is full of artificial intelligence falsehoods, and oil painting has been around for centuries, so to the library I went to find some books on the subject. I'm looking forward to continuing exploring and creating into 2026.