The Description of an Artist

I've always been good with words.  From a very young age I wanted to be a writer.  Create magic worlds for people to escape into.  Storycraft always made sense to me, in comparison Art seemed magical.  No words used to create a beautiful painting, or sculpture, or drawing.  Yet so much can be comunicated by a single piece of artwork. 
Artists are magicians, instructors, interrogators, instigators, detectives.  Their work can in turns; reveal, conceal, communicate, transform, unify, divide and so much more.  The world of art seemed like one I had been denied entrance to.  Now I see that artists are struggling with life's questions through their work, the same way everyone else does.  The end product of their process is just more accesible to the world at large.

I did some searches online to see if there were any tips and tricks to this painting with acrylics thing.  I found This Website where I got a free ebook for just sending in my email address.

Now, in some things I am very good at following instructions and getting good results the first time.  I found this process to not be one of those things.  I got the sky down pretty well, but the clouds escaped me.  They look ok, but not as realistic as the instructional photos.  And the trees are covering up my failure of a mountain range in the distance.  I don't know whether it is my paint mixing, or my technique... probably both, but the trees don't have nearly as much depth as I was going for.  But I figure the only way I'll get better is to practice, and learn, and mess up.  So here is my second effort on my second week.  I am determined not to give up just because I am not getting immediate results, that is one of the repeating failures in my life.  I am not going to fail because I quit this time.

My First Painting

I have never considered myself to be an artist.  I've known too many people with much more skill in bringing their creative vision to fruition.  This is a prevailing issue in my life, comparing myself, and my life results to other people.  Why I can't just relax and enjoy the things I have accomplished, and allow myself to learn and grow I don't know.  My inner critic has a very loud voice, one that sometimes I would like to silence.  Recently though I've felt that my vision is lacking, or absent.  I don't like that feeling and for whatever reason painting seemed like the answer to my problem.  Maybe because I know I won't be the best, the voice of my inner critic isn't as important?

This painting came mostly out of my desire to play with the Modeling Paste.  (a tube of paste to make your paint thicker, and keep it's shape when it dries)  I didn't go in with a plan.  I'll have to sharpen my skills so I can make a plan and execute it.  If I tried to paint anything specific right now I don't know if you'd be able to tell what I was trying to do.

As you can see my skills at taking a photo of a painting are just as rudimentary as my painting skills.

I'm calling this one Blood Moon.  Cause it's the first thing I thought of once I got my sun and stars together, it's not actually a sun.