I followed a Bob Ross painting tutorial.

In pursuit of something new.

For many of us, the Lockdown brought an abundance of free time; and with it, came a pursuit for new hobbies, or a revival of lost ones. For me, it started with my ever-perfectly-curated YouTube algorithm recommending me a Bob Ross painting tutorial. After shamelessly watching episode after episode of this paint wizard build beautiful worlds from thin air, I was feeling inspired. So I raided the back of my wardrobe for my paintbrushes, oil paints, and easel that I'd all been gifted years back, and began my painting journey.

Everything was a mess.

Ever worked with oil paints? If you have, do you have trouble keeping your work station tidy? If you don't, may I politely ask, HOW?!

What took our expert Bob here a measly 24 minutes, took me an astounding 5 hours.

Trust the process.

Sky complete. Clouds complete. Mountains complete. I am unashamed to say that I was feeling pretty proud of myself at this point (see picture on below - left). Things actually seemed to be going to plan. Albeit it took literal hours and a lot of pausing and rewinding of Bob's tutorial, I got this far as planned.

But then came the dreaded... ART FEAR. To surmise, a fear of making decisions to finish the painting. What if I made a mistake and ruined everything that had taken me literal h-o-u-r-s to create?

Then came the trees - both background and foreground. Disaster strikes and I am bathing in art anger. I looked at my canvas, this world I had created (see middle picture), and all I could see was a nice cloud, sturdy mountains and a giant blob of failure. I had ruined it. But alas, Bob gently reminded me that we have to trust the process. And so I, rather skeptically, painted on.

A few trees, a shower of snow and a whole lot of excess paint on more surfaces later, I had a painting. It was right there on the canvas for my keeping. My own little world; this cold Winter scene.

We must remember. Be patient. Trust the process. There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.

Thank-you, as always, for reading.

Love April :)