Good Morning, Gents!

I finished this last weekend. This is a Ruby Throated Hummingbird sitting in a field of marigolds. My grandma used to grow marigolds & they were always so beautiful. She actually hired me to plant them around her house several years. This is my second attempt to see if Hummingbird hysteria is hype or real. My first attempt showed some promise, so I'm anxious to see what this one reveals.

This took 24 hours for me to make. In fact, each flower took about 40 minutes. Actually, I free handed the flowers, which was pretty sweet. People often say that I must have incredible dexterity in my fingers or hand eye coordination. But I find spatial awareness (the ability to get proportions correct & to scale) more impressive. I also sketched the background out using pastel instead of pencil. What's the difference? You have points with pencils (easier to make lines). With pastels, you're lucky to have a point or make one between the half spherical top & the cylindrical base & even then it doesn't last long.

Actually, if I was teaching art (thank God I'm not), I'd use this as an example of incorporating your mistakes into your artwork, which I think is a valuable skill set to have. Working with different mediums exposes you to skill sets that you probably don't use that are endemic to that medium & can cross over to your preferred medium. I can erase pencil, so I only needed to learn this working with ink. Ink is like free diving or free climbing. Prior to developing this skill, my choices were to just ignore it & keep going & hope it all turns out okay, which tends to feel like swimming with an anchor around you. Or I could destroy it & start over, which not only wastes your time & resources, but often times your motivation.

And I think there's a life lesson here. Incorporating your mistakes or setbacks into your life is a valuable skill set to develop. It makes you exert control over it, & so it doesn't define you. People may try to define you by it, & I've noticed people try to define me by some of my setbacks, but I am much much more than my setbacks. Likewise you are much much more than yours.

You stop fearing it, because it's hard to fear something you control. You gain a sort of confidence from the experience. Suddenly other problems, mistakes, & setbacks that come up don't seem as big as that one. If I can survive it, this one will be a piece of cake. And you have a sort of boldness or grit to you going forward too.

Another life lesson is that I know how many mistakes I made on this piece & what they are exactly. But if I asked you, you'd probably say this, that, or the other, & I would most likely say, no I meant to do that. Actually, I did that on purpose. We think our mistakes are glaringly obvious, but in fact, they are probably imperceptible to most.

Also, in another year, I will probably be unable to give you a run down on those mistakes, especially if this proves Hummingbird hysteria to be real. Our mistakes tend to lose their significance over time.

This isn't a mistake, but it lends itself to making mistakes. Probably one of the hardest things I've had to do with this so far is get people to take this seriously. One person sent me a text this week of a pic from X. Can you draw this? I'm not on X, so I had to get on X in order to see it. And it was quite small on both my phone & computer, so I said it was too small to duplicate precisely, but I could draw something like it. Oh, well, only if you feel inspired. I like the picture. What does any of this mean? Am I being hired to do a job? Is this a commission? Is this just for fun? For you?

2 people asked me this week why I don't print my art on coasters or magnets or tea towels. (What the hell is even a tea towel?) Again, do you want to buy an image? Or are we just training me to jump through hoops? For entertainment? I'm not quite sure art is entertainment. It's not like content creation or gaming or acting. I'd say our society is WAY too dependent on entertainment. Ultimately, if people aren't buying, then I'll take everyone's suggestions & put them at the bottom of my to do list. In fact, I told one person that this has taught me patience. There's plenty of time to do what everyone else wants me to do, lol.

At my old church, my old Sunday school, we had a couple of people die & a few people in the hospital. One woman was in a coma for a week or two fighting for her life. And everyone said we should chip in & get them flowers & a card. HELLO, I sell cards! And I actually struggled with this, because I wanted to put that out there, but was afraid of how that made me look & wondered why people didn't consider me as an option, since everyone knew I was doing this. I could donate a card, but I wanted to train them to see me as an option, not as a charity. And I knew it would become expected of me to donate every time someone was sick. That's not what I'm going for. Ultimately, I decided it was best to let them come to this conclusion on their own. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. If people come to the conclusion on their own that this is legit, then that discovery will be more valuable to them than if I had forced it on them. I wonder how other businessmen have gotten people to treat them seriously? My sister commented that they can't seem to support you, but have no problem exploiting you. That was so on the nose, it actually hurt my nose.

Finally, I was able to talk with the new owner at the coffee shop this week. Still approved to get into her other locations, but no green light yet. However, something happened that may help me with that. Before, they had this weird set up for pay outs. I'd come in at the end of the month, write out an invoice, & hand it to the barista (NOT the owner). They would promptly throw it away. I don't know how many I told to keep it & at least let the owner see it. The BARISTA (again, not the owner) would cut me a check. She said that they've had too many problems with that (who woulda thought). Email her the invoice & she'll Venmo me. Now, she'll actually see the sales that I'm making there, which are impressive by my standards, & perhaps this will motivate her to get me into those locations sooner, hopefully before the holidays get here.

Have you any other benefits to incorporating your setbacks into your life that I missed? Ever had to train others to take your business seriously?

Off to work, ugh. Hope all of you have a great day. (Someone should.)