Now, in real life, I am right-handed. And painting is not my forte... I don't have as much control over a paintbrush as I do a pencil, and so I prefer to do pencil drawings rather than paintings. Realizing, of course, that control is just a matter of practice.

I don't remember painting anything as a small child. Which may or may not be linked to my perceived lack of brush control.

The first three years of high school, I painted quite a bit in my art classes. The art program was structured: everyone was working on a similar project at the same time. So everyone was painting with tempera or everyone was doing scratch board or everyone was doing a water color wash or whatever. It was important to get to class early so you could pick out the best brushes. If you were late you got stuck with brushes that were bristling in every direction... or worse, brushes that only had two or three hairs left. ha.

My senior year of high school, I moved to a different state and a much smaller school. The art teacher wasn't so serious about teaching art, especially to the seniors in the class. We were allowed to do pretty much what we wanted.

So, I experimented. Painting and brushes require a lot of clean up, so I don't think I even touched them the entire year. I did pencil drawings and sketches with markers... huge drawings with big sweeping lines. I was pretty impressed with myself at the time. But looking back, it seems mostly a big waste to me. The quality of my artwork went way down and there was no one around to tell me that.

Anyway. So I don't paint anymore. It's just too much trouble. And I don't own any decent brushes.

Silly excuses, I know.

And, yes, it's suddenly all green here. You can read about the new site design here.