Trying anything new is always trying. I'm deep into my illustrating project and I'm visiting places I've been before. The whole progression was a learning curve. First I designed my characters. Then I did a storyboard of each page. Those parts went fairly well. Next I had to find out the specifications and format I had to submit it in. That took more digging, but I got it now. Last comes the hardest part of all…deciding what medium to use to create each page. I had to spend a lot of time experimenting and watching how color combines and behaves in watercolor and oil pastels. I found a picture of an ambitious fish painting exercise (for me anyway) done in oil pastel with an underwash of colored pencil. I was nervous to try, but the teacher was good and I learned a lot. It's not bad.
I learned I really liked the method and used it to begin my first page today. It's quite a different road when there's no teacher to follow step by step. It's all up to me – the line drawing and the choosing and mixing of colors. It's scary to step out on my own on a blank sheet of paper. At first I struggled, but I didn't give up. I did one, and used it to experiment on. I'm half way through another one of the same page. I'm keeping calm and being patient with myself – after all, I can do as many as I need to until I like one.
It was fun to sit and paint all day in my PJ's and then go to night yoga. In savasana my teacher was coaching newbies. She said, "Lying still and breathing through your nose are learned behaviors. It takes time and patience." I laid there, still and breathing easily through my nose, thinking about how I couldn't do this in my early Bikram days. Remember my blogs about how I thought I was absolutely positively sure I was going to die in that hot room? And now, I'm in that same place with my illustrating. I have to practice the same kind of patience, over time, that I learned in Bikram. And, give up? Never. Bikram certainly showed me just how much more I'm capable of doing just by sticking with something and riding the learning curve.
And so, as another day goes by, trying new things IS trying – but it is the TRYING and not giving in to fear or frustration that counts, and….I have written.
love it!!!!!