Except that I didn’t fail to draw, I took the plunge. I should, perhaps, change it to *fails to draw well* because I certainly did that. I failed wholeheartedly, however, by attempting the picture of my mum (rather than a stick figure) – yes, it’s laughably bad and I can’t think of anything good to say about it except that it’s the face of a woman rather than a man or a llama. My picture is marginally better – looking in the mirror, I had a bit more idea about drawing a nose, but the whole thing was extraordinarily difficult and it’s going to take willpower to see this thing through. I don’t mind doing it badly and I showed all three to Tim, which shows I have no vanity to care about, but it’s hard to convince myself that it’s worth persevering. I am taking the correct view that the teacher knows what’s what, so if I fail it’s down to me. And, since this is my choice, it’d be stupid to give up at this stage. I genuinely wonder why I’m bothering, though – but I’ve worked it out. It’s a learnable ability that I’ve never been taught and it’s about time I learnt. No point in doing so unless I genuinely want to and am prepared to work at it.
*sigh* I could just dabble in watercolours and not do it very well, but amuse myself by buying a whole lot of equipment. I know people who’ve done just that.
The book says to put my pictures away, once I’ve studied them to see what I like about them, and not look again until I’ve done the course and repeated the experiment. Fair enough, so my apologies for not showing you them yet.