Why you need to paint badly with pride

This was the title of an email inviting me to watch a video explaining the need to not be ashamed of poor painting but to do so with pride.

It made me smile. Why? I had a bad session of painting this morning. Watercolours and me don’t get on. I gave up and did some doodles. I wasn’t particularly pleased with them. In fact I was feeling fed up. I had downloaded a free workbook of art practice to help with creativity from Art by Ro. One of the suggestions was doodling. So I doodled. I had done some mindful meditation earlier and was still in that frame of mind..

I shared the results on their Students Facebook page saying I wasn’t pleased. It got a response by the Admin saying she thought they were great and did’t they make me feel inspired? I replied by telling her not today. All I could see was how poor they are compared to those I see online.

I checked my emails and that’s when I smiled. This is the opening of the first email I read:

Hi Elizabeth,

It sounds like a crazy notion but I believe that if you want to learn to paint well you need to be willing to paint badly… and rather than being embarrassed about this you need to do it with pride.

So that’s me told!

This afternoon I watched the video and made some notes on my sketch book page as a reminder and continued to doodle. I need to also learn when to stop!

If you are interested, the video I watched is on YouTube by Tim Packer.

https://youtu.be/GwLh5sr4vCA.

I subscribe to various artist groups and they all have something to add to help me in my journey as an artist. I am grateful for all they offer free of charge.