A café acquaintance, artist, hosting a little Xmas card making party at the Art Gallery last week. I'm invited.
And while I really have no need of a "card making" party I might as well go, my rounds of the café's and library are making me a little narrow.
And so Thursday, still smarting from my failed attempts at painting a still life, I'm off to the Gallery.
She's a table set up in the lobby, with perhaps 10 or a dozen adults all gathered around. Most of them seem to know her, she's pretty social saying "Hi" to everyone at the café so I shouldn't be as surprised as I am.
This "Card Making Class", it becomes clear pretty quick, is basically just a Kindergarten for adults, there are scissors you can help yourself to, glue sticks, all manners of wrapping paper and scraps to cut up, card-stock, (No first aid kit, which I'm going to suggest for the next one), and everyone is really working way too hard on this, cutting their perfect little trees out of paint swatches, some of them, it becomes apparent, are pretty talented at cutting Christmas Trees and stamping Snowflakes and arranging their little personalized Xmas greetings.
Me, I only need a couple of cards, and I'm not going to overboard on this, I'm really there to support her Craft Course. And I'm annoyed. Annoyed that other people are taking this so seriously, annoyed that my Bob-Ross Styled painting failed so miserably, and still wondering "Why?", reflecting on the grim incompetence I'm faced with whenever I set up an easel or open a tube of paint, it shouldn't be this way, not a little bit, not at all...
And the thing is I quite enjoy the process, the making, it's merely when I'm confronted with the results that my heart sinks to the pit of my stomach, no, this won't do, this won't do at all...whereas Bob Ross only ever had "Happy Little Accidents" my paintings too often turn into full on abortions; and given the abundance of videos, guides, step-by-step frame-by-frame tutorials how am I still this bad?
Bitterly I'm wondering why this card making class is so simple, there could be rubber stamps, stencils, watercolors, we're at a gallery after all, there should be razor blades, glitter glue, glitter, maybe I'll host my own card-making class...
Why why why so many questions I don't dare to ask....
Meh, I'm done, take my two cards and leave, have to find a couple of unsuspecting victims for my cards, people who'll wonder what three year olds they know who are sending out Xmas cards, they'll figure it out pretty quick, and all my complaining comes down to my inability to see or follow through on the most inane "how-to" of YouTube videos...