Mariella Hunt & the Tearoom

Last week, I did something that I had always dreamed of.

I had recently blogged about my desire to become an artist, and the slow process of learning to see the world from a different angle. It is a journey that I’m glad to share with you.

Read that post here.

Having long been interested in taking up watercolors, this year I’ve been collecting material, teaching myself with YouTube and Instagram reels, and acquainting myself with colors and how they behave.

Wondering how the painting experience would differ when surrounded by fellow artists, I attended a watercolor class on Tuesday.

It was an Intermediate Watercolor class. I do not consider myself a beginner. But the pressure of being surrounded by more experienced artists, I think, made it difficult for me to participate.

The environment at the art school is amazing. I can only compare it to the excitement, to the high, that I feel when I’m going into the bookstore.

It’s calming as well as motivating to see beautiful things that have been created by human hands, images and ideas that originated in human minds.

While our world is becoming flooded with AI and subpar work, there are still creatives who dedicate their lives and time to creating beauty.

But when the actual class began, and it was time to follow along with what the instructor said, I found that my own mind—usually so full of enthusiasm to set brush to paper—couldn’t keep up.

I felt very small—my own painting looked nothing like the piece that she was creating.

I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised. As the instructor, she’s probably been painting all her life, and I’ve only been exploring the art medium seriously for a few months.

All the same, I felt humbled—and, frankly, disappointed in myself. Why couldn’t I keep up? At home, I’m able to make nice things in my sketchbook.

Why was it suddenly so hard to mix purple on the palette?

Impostor Syndrome kicked in.

What if I’m not meant to be an artist, after all? What if I waited too long, and I am now past the point where I could train my brain to capture things beautifully on paper?

I’m not going to give up. It’s true that I waited a long time to really become serious about this dream to pursue art, but there’s no time like the present to begin.

If I allow Impostor Syndrome to discourage me again, it’s likely that I will never have the motivation to resume this quest. I have already made enough progress on my own that it would be a shame to put my sketchbooks away because I could not keep up in a class.

We all need to begin somewhere. Perhaps I will continue learning from Instagram reels until I’m confident enough to retake an Intermediate Watercolor class in person. Perhaps I’ll go back, anyway, out of pure spite.

This is the year that I will become a visual artist – an illustrator – even if I am the only person who will ever enjoy my creations.

It will be worth it.

Art always is.