My journey has begun

I decided to take one of Tamera Laporte's summer classes over at willowing.com because I have always admired her style and I wanted to do something a little more stylized and whimsical. I think I can tend to get too serious and bogged down in my art, and that is not what I want. I want my art to be fun.

 So I decided on the Summer Fae class because it is a profile and that is something I have yet to master.

I had so much fun!!!

I loved doing it so much that I then went over to her site and took the free course Art Heart and Healing. I skipped over most of the healing stuff, I don't have a lot of issues, (although I did find it interesting). But the techniques were also really fun and I had a grand time following along. Especially the face shading lesson and the lesson on whimsies.

So now I think I am going to take her Wonderful World of Whimsies class.

I love whimsies. But for a long time my inner voice has said, "If you do whimsies no one will take you seriously. You will be irrelevant."

Now its not that I have some agenda with my art where 

I want to change the world or make some kind of political statement.

So where are these doubts coming from?

For years I was a dollmaker and in some situations it actually made me

 uncomfortable to tell people what I did.

 They would look at you like you were a child.

Playing with dolls.

There was no way to explain how hard it is,

 how much work I put into it, 

or how much I had studied and developed my technique.

I thought that this time around I could avoid that.

But I'm beginning to realize that the majority of people out there have no idea what art entails. They will look at you that way no matter what you are making.

And WHY DO I CARE what random people think?

Thant is so silly!

If I care about developing my own style and finding my voice 

I have to follow where my muse is pulling me,

 don't I?

This is what I'm thinking today.