I often feel as though I am unteachable when it comes to art. I am often so impatient that I just want to start doing the thing and make mistakes (that were entirely avoidable) but at least I’d be doing something! I can figure out or research how to fix those mistakes in the future, I just want to go do this thing RIGHT NOW.

I think this attitude has not been terribly helpful for me in the past. It’s kept my skill level stagnant and the fact that I am constantly drawn from one type of art into another means that I am not consistently practicing one thing. I want to achieve some level of mastery in my art but that’s difficult to do when I refuse to slow down and learn the tips and tricks of those that have already figured out the pitfalls that I will inevitably fall into.

It’s because of this that I have been wanting to take acrylic painting classes. I have had art classes in the past that covered drawing, composition, some color theory, etc, but what I’m currently struggling with is how to best use acrylic paint to make my vision come to life. I need a teacher that is going to help me learn more about the medium specifically. I was hoping that an in person class will help to get me over my feelings of being unteachable. I had a free hour today where I tried to find in person classes near me but got overwhelmed. It seems like there are a lot of classes out there for beginners but very few for intermediate students and if acrylics are offered, they’re one of several mediums offered and thus wouldn’t have the sort of material focus that I really want. I got overwhelmed and ended up with no art classes.

Despite this setback, I think I finally managed to take small steps towards becoming less unteachable today. For a while I have felt rather intimidated by my sewing machine. In middle school we all took a home economics class where we learned how to use a sewing machine. But it’s been quite a few years since then and I had quite forgotten so I kept putting it off and putting it off. I hypothesized that the project I have been working on for the past two months could really use some machine sewing and today I discovered that I was right!

I spent at least 100 hours working on a hand embroidery patch that I then wanted to sew onto a long sleeve shirt with a picture on it that I didn’t like. Considering that I had poured so many hours into hand embroidering the thing I didn’t want to mess it up at the final step where I finally applied it to the shirt. My attempts at hand sewing it onto the shirt failed miserably so I decided to give the machine a try. Considering the stakes (breakage of machine, injury, ruining 100+ hours of hard work), I decided to carefully read the instructions for my sewing machine and I even did some practice runs before finally turning to the embroidery patch shirt. And I did it! It’s not perfect, but it’s done and I think it looks amazing!

This success has made me feel like I AM capable of being taught. I’m capable of sitting down to learn the hard thing in service of the art that I want to create. I already have a book on acrylic painting and color theory and I want to study those books more intensely going forward. I don’t want to be wasting my time trying to discover some acrylic painting secret that may already have been explained in the pages of the book that I’ve been avoiding reading. So off I go into the land of educating myself!