Arty Boosts in Group Confidence

When I was small, one of my favourite TV shows was Art Attack. As the name suggests, it was an art show. However, Art Attack was aimed at kids, and many of the things featured were made out of stuff found around the house. With just a few pieces of card, one can easily make all sorts of things, from towers to space ships to monster-shaped bins.

As I got older though, I gradually moved away from using cardboard and similar things from Art Attack. Aside from a brief period making Team Fortress 2 weapons out of cardboard, I found myself starting to lose interest in art overall. In its place, I began to write more and more. Until writing became my ONLY source of art.

However, a couple of weeks back, a friend of mine started doing little art workshops. Every other Thursday, she hosted a small get-together where we would all make something. The first of these I went to was to do with decoupage. We basically cut out pictures from old magazines and stuck them to glass. Of course, because I am quite contrary, I wanted to do something of my own. So I free-handed drew a quick Phoviverse character and stuck that to my glass.

I was expecting people to be confused. But actually, the group all thought my design was amazing. I then helped another member of the group, by drawing a Bird of Paradise for them. They had a lovely time colouring it in and had cut neatly around it. Their final product, in all honesty, was better than mine! They had coloured in the flower really nicely, then did an excellent job cutting the drawing out and gluing it to her glass of choice.

The group mostly consisted of a circle of older British and South African expats, all retired and in need of something to do. Most of the art group meetups were on Thursdays, but one Friday, for a treat, we did a painting session. Following a Bob Ross video, we all painted a nice scene. It took us a lot longer than the video did, but we all drew something cool. Everyone was impressed with my painting, despite the fact I hadn’t painted for years.

The best thing though was the nice guy sitting next to me. Poor guy was colourblind, so I helped him with the colours. His final landscape came out amazing! In fact, he was so proud of himself that he was carrying his canvas around, even to the airport.

All of this gave me a large confidence boost. How? Well, it’s quite simple. Turns out humans saying how cool your art is in real life makes one happy. After all, someone saying out loud that your art is cool is a much bigger statement compared to a text message. Compliments are best shared in person.

But there’s something extra special in these small art sessions. The art produced from every session is excellent, yet also amazingly unique. When we did the Bob Ross session, despite us all having identical tools and paints, all our final art pieces varied amazingly. Despite not having honed our artistic skills, every single one of us created a piece of art to be proud of. In fact, every single session we do, you get the same massive variations. While we might not all be artists, with a bit of help and a splash of creativity, we can all make something amazing.

As for me, I am very much looking forward to other sessions. It’s just so much fun, creating something with others.