So I’m taking an art class.

I have zero formal training. I taught myself calligraphy, drawing, composition, colors, etc. I don’t think I’m doing a bad job, but I was feeling the need for guidance from someone who wasn’t starting from scratch. So I signed up for a local art class on painting with acrylics.

The first week was basically just covering what we’d need to purchase, which was helpful since I’ve just been trying random things hoping they would work. This past week we started on mixing colors, something I had really been looking forward to since I had zero idea how to do that.

Turns out I’m a color whore (sorry mom!).

I love love love mixing colors. So much so that I finished an hour and a half before the other students.

Not awkward in the least. I felt like I spent the rest of the evening playing damage control, assuring both the teacher and the class that I wasn’t a stuck-up art diva prodigy, that I really was here to learn. I won’t lie, I had a moment of self-aggrandizement where I was thinking pretty highly of myself, but there is simply so much that I don’t know that it didn’t last too long. And as my ever-helpful brother-in-law pointed out, I didn’t actually create a color wheel, and if I finished so early why didn’t I go back and make it more interesting-looking?

But I feel as if an entirely new world has opened up. I love colors, I know how to make them flow together to make them appealing to me, but when it came to acrylics and the primary colors I was just not getting the results I wanted. I am practically bouncing off the walls (not a normal state, I can assure you) with excitement.

I have several more weeks to go in this class but already I’m feeling pretty confident. Not too confident, the teacher has people who’ve been painting for awhile come in to do demonstrations and I can’t do what they do (yet) so, you know, humble soup. But guys. I can mix colors.

Now go forth and art!

*In case you were interested this is my supply list. Affiliate links included, I go through lots of art supplies:

These paints. I like them well enough and the teacher said it really didn’t make a difference until you were seriously serious about art.

Apparently it doesn’t matter if you buy the cheapest canvas out there. I have my doubts about that-I want to paint on what the greats paint on-but this is what I bought.