It's now been a whole year since I stumbled upon this crazy lady with an incredible array of hats teaching people on YouTube how to paint. We were stuck at home isolating as my then 14 year old had come down with quite a nasty cough and Covid was then new in the UK, at the time they weren't offering tests so we'll never know if she indeed had it, but to the fact she is the sort of kid who rarely gets ill and then rest of my children followed suit with the cough and myself and husband spent weeks feeling ourselves again...anyway. I LOVED art as a kid and I had aspirations to do art as a subject after school. Unfortunately I didn't have the best teacher...and even worse...I paid attention to her criticisms and I never ended up taking art as a subject in college.

Fast forward a little over 20 odd years and I had started the rock painting craze and was loving creating again and seeing peoples reactions to finding my pebbles which would be shared on local groups...but they would rarely be rehidden, instead claimed by the finders so I mentioned to my husband that maybe I should have a go at painting on a canvas. I mentioned it many times, but never did anything about it...until my birthday in March 2020 when he called my bluff, he bought me a little easel, paints, canvases...so I started playing about. Looking at pictures and copying them (nowhere near confident yet to try out my own stuff). I still lacked something though, I wasn't sure how things were managed...how to get colours and certain shadings etc

Then on a Pininterest page...there she was...The Art Sherpa. Totally my sort of person. Nerd, funny, great sense of humour and an amazing teacher. Something I hadn't managed to find here in the UK and there my adventure properly began. Yesterday I had one of those WOW moments. I did one of Cinnamons tutorials. I stepped back and actually said out loud...'I did that!' and even more...I was proud of myself too...

I had hoped to become a patron back at Christmas, but unfortunately our business was still taking a big financial hit due to the effects of Covid. Thankfully we're starting to to pick up again and as a Birthday present I got my membership and I'm very excited and really looking forward to more learning and doing something that's just for me!