Where Did My Muse Go?

Yesterday I had an art class at USArtQuest in Grass Lake, Michigan. It is really almost in Jackson and only about 20 minutes from me. In the class we made checkbook covers by first painting a background on the presewn Studio Cloth and then using PPA to adhere them and finish them. There were ten of us, plus two instructors, Frankie and Sue. It was apparent almost from the start that I was the only "pretender" there. A couple in the group were on their way to Novi for a big stampers convention, at least one was a successful watercolorist and everyone (except me) knew exactly how to choose pieces from paper napkins to make beautiful compositions on their presewn studio cloth.

As might be expected, my muse almost immediately jumped up and ran and hid in the parking lot somewhere (or maybe she actually went further away than that). I was so out of my depth in terms of ease of working with art products and self-assurance. Everyone was very nice and said nice things, but it was apparent that I was the left-brained one and they were all surely right brained.

I surely wish I had taken my camera with me. The designs were absolutely beautiful - many of them actually did some hand painting to add dimension and interest to the glued pieces of napkins. At the end Sue added hand drawn leaves and berries to some of them (at the request of the artists). On the last one I saw her playing with she used 101 to make dimensional leaves. She is awe-inspiring to watch!

I didn't get much done on my checkbook cover. I do like the background. I only adhered a couple of flowers to the outside and part of a butterfly to the inside. When I got home, I stamped some script with a background stamp I have that I think made the cover much more interesting and looked quite nice inside.



I must say the Studio Cloth is really nice to work with and I just happen to have a roll of it here in my art room. When I decide what I am going to do with it, I will play more and show what I can do when I am more relaxed at home and not so intimidated by the talent around me.

I will definitely take more classes and will hope that my muse will not totally abandon me as she did this time.

I need to do a little bit of grocery shopping today and I think I will go looking for a new shower curtain for the master bath that the hubster painted yesterday.

And I am going to do some art. I think I am going to practice the brush techniques that Sue showed yesterday. Mention was made of Donna Dewberry (of whom I've never heard) and her one stroke method of painting. I got online today and went the the Jackson District Library site and then to MelCat and reserved a couple of her books.

What I'd really like to do is have Sue adopt me and spend lots of time teaching me all that she knows. I might have to live to be 100 in order to feel more like an artist, but it would be worth it!

Okay, enough beating myself up. My muse will return. I'm hoping she has been hiding out in my art room all along and didn't get lost somewhere near Grass Lake yesterday.