Art.

My mum is an artist; a painter. Lately, she has been running art workshops and lessons to ensure a stable income, which can be hard to come by in that certain career.
Today I attended one of those very lessons. Sadly, I had to miss my 9 o'clock cross country training in order to get down to the local art centre and set up. We also had to make a stop to buy some paint, which is quite often used in painting classes.
It was the lesson that taught your some fundamentals in painting, so that's why I chose to go. I was the oldest person there, and, embarrassingly enough, the majority of them were about ten. First off, we created a colour wheel. We were only allowed to use the three primary colours; red, blue, and yellow. We started off by painting one segment red, easy enough. From there we had to gradually lighten the shade until we painted a portion pure yellow. It was not as easy as it sounds. It was, in fact, extremely frustrating. I ended up just painting a red, a light red, three segments of the same shade of orange, then yellow. My mum said not be deterred, because some of the adults who had taking this class had walked out crying because they had found it so challenging. She also said that at art school they had been made to do a wheel of thirty-two shades, and students had been walking around with there head in their hands. We were only doing a wheel of sixteen shades. It is an exercise that really tests you; your concentration, patience, eye, and perception of colour.

Next we had to paint from still life. We were also meant to use our new colour-mixing skills to get the right shade of colour. We were painting vases of flowers. We didn't have to paint everything we saw, we could pick one part, or one type, of flower, but we had to paint it as it was. It as surprising how many people didn't do that. They painted what they thought a flower was, or what they wanted to paint. I tried my best to paint the flowers. I'm not too flash at drawing, so this was challenging and frustrating. It all just really annoyed me, to be honest. I could see the flowers right there, why couldn't I just put them on my canvas in paint?

There is some logic in art, but barely any facts. You can't just learn to paint in one two hour session.
Some people just see the world differently. I wonder what it would be like to see and think of the world as shapes and colours.
My painting wasn't a total disaster, and, my goodness, there were even a few parts I liked. When I didn't over think it, and spent most of my time looking at the flowers, the right shape appeared. I definitely have new found respect for my mother and what she does. She makes it look so easy. But I do believe she is one of the few that see the world in colour. Her clothes are organised according to colour. She has her drawer of oranges, and her drawer of browns. She dresses for colour too, depending on what she's in the mood for.

I think I am going to go to attend more classes and try and learn from my mum. I believe it is so important to keep pushing yourself and to go outside your comfort zone. It not only helps you develop and improve new skills, it helps your grow as a person. Developing the artistic side intelligence and skill, I can see, would be very beneficial.
Leonardo Divinci said simply in his five-point technique; learn to draw.