How it all got started: This isn’t my first (or last) hobby.  But like the rest, they all start with nearly the same intent: seems like fun, will give it a try.  It was the Summer of 2020 and my work team wanted to do an event together–yet remotely for social-distancing reasons.  My leader arranged for us to do a virtual paint party, where he sent us the paint supplies and an online host taught us how to paint a lovely night sky over a lake.  I liked how mine turned out.  I really liked how much fun it was to paint with others–even the gruff database engineer was enthusiastic about it.  So I thought hey, my birthday’s coming up, I could host a paint party for my friends!

When I went down the rabbit hole

Here I followed my usual pattern of geeking out incredibly hard on researching paint parties and supplies.  I eventually landed on The Art Sherpa, who does YouTube tutorials of varying degrees of difficulty.  I picked a real easy jellyfish for us to paint, and it was again super fun to paint together.  I dove into Art Sherpa’s other tutorials and realized my brain was blissfully QUIET during my painting sessions.  And I liked how my paintings turned out.  And I found myself with a bit more energy and metaphorical “spoons” to spend on regular life.  THAT feeling kept me practicing and returning again and again to paint more, even when I didn’t like the resulting work.  

When it became a social distancing event

At some point, my family asked me if I’d do another paint party for them.  And another.  Suddenly we were doing spooky Van Ghosts for Halloween and snow-covered trucks for Winter.  The setup, once I figured it out, was workable and fun.  My sister and I would pick out an Art Sherpa tutorial, she’d organize the invites, and I’d run the video during the party and pause/rewind as needed.  We were together, making lots of mistakes and laughing and arriving at very different but still amazing works of art.  My cousin varied the color palette based on the paints they had on hand and it turned out even prettier than the original.  My dad started using slate stones instead of canvas, which sometimes was an improvement and sometimes . . . less so, depending on the painting techniques and subject matter.  

How can you get started?

It’s here that I’ll reaffirm that I am not considered “The Artist” in my family.  I grew up being told I had shaky hands and bad handwriting, so I wrote off sketching and painting for decades.  Maybe you have too?  But then Plague Times hit, and I didn’t really care anymore how good or bad I was at something.  If it helped me wake up and face another day with any level of positivity, I was gonna do it again.  Bonus points for not being illicit drugs, you know?  

Maybe you’d like to explore the Wild World of Art too.  My recommendation is this:

• 1.  Pick an Art Sherpa tutorial that you like.  
• 2.  Make sure it’s under 1 hour.  Click on the website link in the description and make sure the community has rated it a “1 Hoot” because you want to ease into this.  Don’t believe Art Sherpa’s own rating because she’s amazing and has lost some sense of what’s easy and what’s not.  I love you Art Sherpa.
• 3.  Look at the supply list in the description.  Know that you can start with a cheap paint set and it will be OK, but student paints are less opaque and if you find your yellow and red are not behaving like AS’s, it’s because she uses more expensive paints.  
• 4.  Buy the supplies you feel comfortable buying.  Again, know that better results will come from more expensive supplies, BUT if you’re just trying to figure out if you like it, it’s 100% OK to go cheaper to start.  
• 5.  PAINT.  BREATHE.  You will get frustrated sometimes.  It’s OK.  
• 6.  If you want, share your painting on social media and let your friends shine some compliments on you.  Or don’t, and just enjoy your painting however you like.  It’s your art.  You are an artist.  Be unpredictable.  

Anybody else find a new hobby during Plague Times?  Pictures or it didn’t happen!