“Every artist dips his brush in his soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” (Henry Ward Beecher)

This weekend, I registered for a watercolor workshop that will take place this summer. I’m so looking forward to it. For me, the notion of being able to observe immediate demonstrations, watch other artists as they're painting, and learn from doing is a thrill, but it also leaves me with some anxiety and trepidation as well.

As children, we create art with such jubilation. If you’ve ever looked at children’s drawings or paintings, they’re filled with life, whimsy, and joyous color. They don’t think about “rules” in the works they create. They just hurl the images out there with wild abandon. As we get older, we tend to “edit” ourselves, and unfortunately we often lose the freeness and freshness of our early efforts. We’re “not good enough,” or we “did a lousy job” on this piece.

If only we could play those records in our brains that we did as children! (Or maybe it's that, as children, we just didn’t play records at all!)

“Painting is very easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” (-Edgar Degas)