Learning to Paint
It's all too easy to get disheartened by other peoples' work, particularly if you think that it's head and shoulders above your own - or what you think you can ever do. Let's face it, that can be a compelling argument from your inner voice; to not even try. You can take a degree of comfort in the knowledge that many people feel the same, regardless of their actual ability. I had a guitarist friend that pretty much gave up because, in his words "there were kids on YouTube that were better than he would ever be".
I'm not really a fan of YouTube at the best of times - chewing gum for the eyes, and some - but I do think that a lot of so called tutorials out there are actually counter productive and serve only to dishearten the viewer and bolster the YouTuber's subscribers (and consequent ego). When it comes to tutorials, I think that there really is no substitute for a human teacher.
What we try to do here at Arapuni Art is to encourage you to build confidence for yourself. We try to give you techniques to help you to create work that you can be proud of, be it paintings, jewelry or objet d'art. It's a fact that some people are more talented than others, but who cares? There's always someone better at something than yourself. So should you not even bother? Of course not.
You Can Do It
The first classes I'm offering are little more than tasters. Depending on how things go, I'll likely offer longer classes, or sets of classes in the form of courses, but for now the classes are short and sweet. At just an hour, it's a lot to cram into an hour, but the idea is not to produce a masterpiece, just to have a play with the paint and plant that all too elusive seed of confidence.
Already I've heard those fateful words "I could never do that!", but the goal of my classes is not to teach students to paint my pictures, but to paint their own. And everyone can do that. The original child in us all didn't care about what other people thought of their art. They didn't care about success or failure. They just created. Unfortunately, as you get older, you quickly get taught to fear failure and this prevents many people from even trying.
So well done to those who have already taken the plunge and signed up to the first classes.
By Mark B
Mark has been drawing and painting since the late 1800s and has exhibited work in galleries and venues around the UK.