I never went to art school (although I wish I had!), I did take art classes and was even shipped to a special one in third grade because I could replicate most children book illustrations without a hitch. I do remember dreading these classes because the teacher had the worse stale coffee and Oreo breath ever and I thought I would die if he leaned over me. I was also made fun of by my classmates because I suppose the other kids (who’s only claim to fame was dodge ball royalty) thought I was some freak, (which was true), I was a tad odd. I really didn’t have the confidence to shrug my tiny shoulders at them or tell my teacher to pop a mint. I just decided to do very poorly in my art classes, until one day I wasn’t invited back. Thus was the beginning and the end of my illustrious art career.
Much later in my life, when I was running a bi-coastal fashion PR firm and thinking I was all that and a bag of chips, I hired a couple of art school grads to intern for me, I was mesmerized by their creativity and introduced to so many crafty things that my head swam with enormous possibility. One of the girls told me to try watercolor, but I scoffed (as I was prone to do). Then one of my clients pushed me to become a graphic designer, try new art supplies and when she moved back to NYC she bequeathed me a veritable library of art + design how-to books from her tenure at Parson’s which I have since soaked up nightly. Granted, I have no idea what I am doing but I can tell you the process of doing it, like any new skill I am interested in is very satisfying, (the clean up? Not so fun). I urge you to find a creative outlet that you have been interested in and just try it out, you wouldn’t expect a baby to be able to walk the first time it tried now would you? Give yourself some wiggle room for improvement and see where your creativity takes you.
::RESOURCES::
Not all these sites are beautiful, but if you can go beyond the first impression and delve a little deeper, you will find they offer lot’s of great information and perhaps that little nugget that you wished you learned long ago:
P.S. If you aren’t interested in watercolor, just do a web search for the technique you are looking for.
P.P.S. If you don’t know what your technique is called take an image to the art store they can usually tell you what type of medium is used in a source image.
