Day 8 - Painting with a Twist

When I was in first grade, I had a teacher who was quite an artist.  So she enjoyed having us do artistic projects I suppose.  I can still remember the time I was traumatized by my teacher when I presented my picture to her, and she told me that I would never be successful or graduate from high school because I did such poor work.  Obviously, if I can remember that from so long ago, it really did have a negative impact on me.  I'm pretty sure I didn't really know what graduating from high school meant at the time, but I knew I was a failure and had displeased my teacher and that is not something I handle very well!
So when I saw an ad in the  paper the other day about Painting With a Twist, I decided I would get out of my comfort zone and put myself in the middle of having to try to be artistic once again.  I didn't get anxious about it, because now I realize I have other talents--and I did graduate from high school after all without ever being good at drawing or painting!  So today I went down to the studio, and when I entered and told them my name, I was told that I was the only student in that particular class today so I would get a private lesson!  That certainly took some pressure off--no one but the teacher would see my work, and surely she had seen some pretty awful stuff.  She was a sweet young lady and gave me my completely white canvas (somehow I thought this would include an outline on the canvas and I would color in the lines and be good) and a plate full of paints and three brushes and off we went for two hours.  At first I was very tentative but relaxed as we went along.  I messed up a few times and she gave me some help in making those less noticeable.  By the end of the two hours, I had another "first" under my belt--an oil painting I like to think of as reminiscent of Grandma Moses--pretty primitive!  I enjoyed it and plan to try my hand at painting again now that I have nothing to flunk out of and failure is just a state of mind I'm not inviting to the party!