Painting For Beginners

Just take a breath.

What useless advice. You are breathing, breathing just fine. Okay, maybe not fine, since you are close to hyperventilating, but taking an additional breath doesn’t seem like good advice. It’s bad advice, really. If anything, you should not take a breath. And now you’re holding your breath, and that’s not working either and once you start to breathe again it feels so awkward, like you’ve never breathed before in your life and just taking a single breath is making you more anxious and the thing you were doing quite well—too well—now feels mechanical and alien and—

“Charles, is it? You alright? You look a bit red in the face.” The instructor, Janice, seems a kind woman based on her looks and the gentleness of her tone as she asks you this. When you had first entered the room, you almost laughed at the sight of her, with her hair up in a messy bun and a paint splattered apron over an outfit of jeans and a white button up rolled to the elbows. She was exactly what you expected of an art teacher in southern Connecticut, just bohemian enough with her dangly, moon and star earrings, but with a designer purse that either meant she was a wildly successful artist, or, more likely given the lack of money a career in the arts provided, a husband in finance who takes the train into New York every day.

“Yep, just fine, thank you,” you wheeze out and there is concern on her face, but she gives you a nod and a kindly smile as she leaves you to the excruciatingly difficult task of breathing. As she walks away you wonder if she’s wondering why a man in his late twenties who is doing nothing more strenuous than sitting on a stool, looks as if he has just summited Everest. Even if you weren’t beet red you assume she would have some thoughts on you, one of few men in the room and younger than all by thirty years at least. It’s midday on a Tuesday in a rich town; you’re not exactly the typical cliental. However, you have some time off between jobs, and between jobs in a fun way, not a sad way, as you have taken a new job with better pay. Funemployment, you’ve been calling it, which sounds a bit callous considering poverty rates and the economy, but that’s not at the forefront of your mind as you cosplay a wealthy retiree, going full method acting with the breathing problems of an octogenarian.

Where were you? Funemployment, right. You’ve got three weeks off and you figured you should do something with that time. So far that has meant a few days rotting on the couch with your cats, a slightly more thorough than normal cleaning of your condo, and finally dropping the bag of clothes that has been galivanting across the state in your trunk off at Goodwill. That was followed with one more day of rotting where you devised a plan to use the rest of your time to learn something new. You’ve always wanted to paint, but you’ve always wanted to do a number of things—exercise, write, dance—and every time you’ve started you realized you have no idea how to do any of those things and so you get online and do a little research and type up your workout routine and diet and then forget about it and scroll on your phone and that does make you happy. At least, it makes you happy when the worlds not falling apart which it always is these days, so you forget about the something new and fall back into the same old routines.

To break that cycle you decided you needed motivation, and a class and an instructor might provide just the nudge you need. On one optimistic morning you booked a paint class and now, as you sit in that paint class, you are devising ways to get back at that naïve version of yourself. But you’re here now, and it would be rude to leave, and you’d rather die than be rude and given the state of your breathing and heart rate that might be just the sacrifice you’re making as you stay planted on a rather uncomfortable wooden stool.

You share greeting smiles and good mornings with the women who take up the stools around you, but the conversations don’t go further than that as they instead talk with each other and you think they’re talking about you, but if so, they must be using a code because the word you pick out most clearly and frequently is “pickleball”. Your breathing is getting better as you stare at the white canvas in front of you and then down to your supplies, a water cup, a palette with ten little pools of paint, and your brush and then—

There’s no brush. Panic sweeps through you as you look around and see that everyone else has a paint brush, but you don’t and that’s because the instructor knew you didn’t belong and that allowing you to paint would be blasphemous to the entire art community. And while you chose your own seat, you’re sure that’s what it was and now you have a decision: stand up and ask the instructor for a brush or sit still and not paint for the entirety of the class. You’re leaning towards the latter until you see a lone brush on the ground.

Unless you’re going to start to consider gravity as an agent plotting against you, it was a simple accident that your brush is not safely nestled beside your other supplies. You lean and pick it up from the floor, your shoulder knocking against the leg of the easel and your hand grabs it just before it reaches the tipping point where it would likely have fallen over and knocked over another easel causing a domino effect where everyone would be left staring at you and then you might die and wouldn’t that be nice to not have to worry about painting again?

You sit up straight now and covertly look around but no one’s looking at you so they either did not notice or they all saw and will laugh about it once you’re out of earshot.

“Good morning, class,” Janice says from the front of the room, casually leaning against her desk.

“Good morning, Janice,” everyone but you say, and you realize that things are worse than you imagined because these are all veterans of “Painting for Beginners” while you’re a novice. And as you ruminate on how much you do not belong here, the instructor’s eyes fall on you and slowly everyone in the class is turning towards you and seconds go by before you are aware of this and it must be clear on your face that you did not hear because Janice, clearly repeating herself, asks, “Is this anyone’s first class?”

You smile meekly and raise your hand and Janice smiles, and everything is alright and then she does the worst thing imaginable when she asks, “Would you like to introduce yourself.”

You want to say no, but you can’t do that, it’d be rude (see above) so you clear your throat which is thick with phlegm even though you’re not sick and so you clear it once more and say, “Hi, I’m Charles, and I…uh…thought it would be…um…neat to learn how to paint.” They say in unison “Hi Charles” as if this were an AA meeting and you think this interaction just might drive you to eventually need to attend one of those. You feel awkward and you’re examining your introduction, giving an autopsy on a moment you’ll never be able to redo, and you’re not listening and everyone else has picked up a brush and oh god this is going exactly how your nightmares said, although fortunately—and you look down to double check—you are wearing pants.

“…on one of these three. As usual, I’ll be walking around to give notes and tips, but feel free to call me over if you have any questions.” Janice finishes her instructions, only the end of which you caught, and everyone around you gets started on their painting while you look much like a deer moments away from a semi-truck plowing into it, and you wonder if that deer would like to swap places with you right now. You lean to the right of your canvas and see three paintings on their easels facing the class. To the left there is a vase filled with tulips, in the middle are two robins in their nest up in a branch along with three eggs, and to the right is an idyllic cottage with vines and flowers, the windows thrown open to the spring air.

It does not take long for you to realize that the cottage is well beyond your exceedingly limited skills…as are the robins…and the flowers, come to think of it, but that looks the easiest and so you dip your paintbrush in the green paint, hold it before the canvas, take an agonizingly slow breath, and with shaky hands paint your first line. It’s far too dark, but seeing something on the canvas relaxes you ever so slightly. It’s only one line and not the right shade, but it looks enough like a flower stem and that’s something. The edges of your lines are not crisp, the colors are not quite a match for the example, and your flowers look more like clip art than real flowers, but they do look like flowers. The vase looks enough like a vase, and the forty minutes you spent painting don’t feel wasted. For all the anxiety that led up to the first brush stroke, you’ve actually managed to be put at ease by the act of painting. It was quite enjoyable, you think, right up until you look around at the relative masterpieces the others have managed to create.

The brush strokes feel more confident in their work, the colors nearly perfect to the examples, and some have even added additional details. There’s shading in a few, actual depth to a two-dimensional image that you not only did not manage to do, but didn’t even attempt knowing that it would likely make your painting worse. If these people are beginners, then you are…what? What is worse than a beginner? You’re sure that if the instructor were handing out participation trophies, she would withhold giving you one, that’s how bad your painting is.

Janice says something to the class and everyone begins to stand, grabbing their masterpieces to bring home with them. You stand too, and after staring at your “artwork” for a moment, decide to leave it. This will be just another one of those failed attempts, although it got a bit further than the Google search. You don’t rush towards the door simply because it would be rude to push pass your first-time and only-time classmates who are older than you and so you are the last to leave and just as your hand touches the door you hear, “Charles, you know you can take this home, right? The sign-up fee pays for the materials.”

Janice’s voice is jovial, but cautious and though you wish more than anything to put this ordeal behind you, you stop and let the door swing shut before you as you turn towards the instructor. She’s standing before your painting, examining it with attention the piece does not deserve.

She looks up at you. “Not half bad for a first time.” And then she adds, “Oh come now, did you expect to be Monet right away?” You wonder what she saw that made her add that, maybe the drop of your shoulders, the frown on your face, or perhaps you couldn’t help yourself from rolling your eyes.

“No”, you say honestly, because you didn’t expect to produce much more than this. Janice smiles at you and waves you back to your easel. She stands beside you, arms crossed at her chest, and continues to inspect your artwork.

“What is it you don’t like about it?” She eventually asks.

You aren’t sure, but you know she’s looking for more than just “Everything”, so you look at it and then the example and then you say, “They don’t look like real flowers”, which, to be honest, is not that far off from saying “Everything”.

“That’s because they aren’t,” she says. “When you decided you wanted to learn how to paint was it because you wanted to learn how to make photorealistic paintings, because that is a tough thing to do and requires a lot of hard work. I’m talking spending multiple hours a day at it, potentially quitting your job, enrolling in art school, spending almost as much time studying different techniques than actually painting. Was that the goal?”

You gape at her. “Of course not.”

“Okay,” she says, “then why do you look so disappointed.”

You shrug. ‘I don’t know,” and then after a moment of awkward silence add, “All the other ones were better.”

“Of course they were, they’ve been coming to this class for ages. They like to chat with their friends and paint a little and, more importantly, this class time lines up nicely as something to do before pickleball and lunch. You must’ve heard them talking about it. Still, you’re not wrong to be a little envious of them, but it’s got nothing to do with their skill with a paintbrush.”

“Is it their money?” You ask and like that it makes Janice laugh and you manage a smile too.

“Yes, but that’s not what I’m talking about. You look at painting as if it’s something to master, they look at it as if its something to do. They enjoy it, so they do it, and sure, they’re half decent at painting, but if you keep at it you’ll be there in no time. If you started over right now you’d be stunned at how much better the second one is. That’s how it goes. You’re learning something new, of course you’re going to be bad at it. All that matters is that you enjoyed it. Did you enjoy it, Charles?”

You ponder the question and your painting and try to recapture the moment before you looked around the room. You did enjoy yourself, almost the entire time that you were painting and there was a moment when you were done that you were proud of it.

“I guess so,” you say, and the only reason you don’t say yes outright is because your mood dictates you still hold on to a modicum of pessimism.

“Oh, you loved it,” Janice says, knocking her shoulder against yours, and you smile. “Look, I’m not saying you have to come back for another class or even that you have to keep painting, but you’ll never do anything new if you think you have to be a master right from the start. You don’t even have to be good to keep doing it. Hobbies are meant to be fun, relaxing, enjoyable; leave your stress and imposter syndrome at work.”

You laugh at that and thank her and, before leaving, you grab your painting. It may not be good enough to hang in a museum, or even on your wall, but it’s yours and as you look at it more you are a little proud of it and proud of yourself for taking the first step. The next one will be better, you tell yourself, and you’re sure that there will be a next one.