YouTube and the curse of beginner's luck

    Long before I heard George W. Bush discuss how painting had changed his life, I bought several stretched canvases at Michael's for 70% off.  I already had a basic starting kit of acrylic paints and decent brushes, sponges and stuff. So, I set everything up in my son's old room last week and decided to give the visual arts a try. (I had taken an all-day watercolor class last year and had learned many tips, including watercolor is probably not the best medium for a beginner.)

    This time, I decided to attend the YouTube School of Painting, dialed up this instructional video on how to paint birch trees with a palette knife and basically did the old monkey-see-monkey-do routine.  Five hours later, give or take, I had a painting good enough to hang anywhere....in my daughter's apartment, that is. 

My first painting.

   Motivated by her willingness to accept it and my husband's raves at my obvious God-given talent, I eagerly choose the next piece to, well, copy. This one, found on Pinterest....

  I don't need no stinking video, I thought. So, last Thursday, I went to my makeshift studio, turned on some soothing tunes, brought up the photo on my iPad and fearlessly applied paint to canvas. An hour later, I ran screaming to the kitchen for a heaping helping of comfort carbs, leaving this behind upstairs.... 

I couldn't even get the sky right!

I shall return to it some day this week, hopefully, with a huge jar of gesso and a new YouTube video. 

Did I mention George W. Bush had a private teacher?