I am an art nerd.
Many guys in Wisconsin count Bass Pro Shops as their happy place. Me? I’ll take a good art supply store any day of the week. Oh, I have a few tackle boxes, they’re just packed with paint tubes, pen nibs, and drawing pencils of varying lead grades.
When I was in high school, I loved getting the latest Dick Blick publication in the mail. More than just an art supply catalog, it was filled with pages and pages of creative possibilities.
As I perused materials and mediums I’d never seen before, much less worked with, my eye was always drawn to the top-of-the-line sets. It didn’t matter if it was professional markers, colored pencils, or paints, I dreamed of having the set that featured every color the manufacturer made. In those days, they were way beyond my means, and perhaps that’s what gave them part of their appeal. I dreamed of one day getting to a point where sets like those would be in my reach. Why, there’d be no limit to the art I’d be able to make!
This reminds me of even earlier in life, back to the days of pining for the Rolls-Royce set of crayons: Crayola’s box of 64, complete with a sharpener in the back!
It featured exotic colors not to be found in the pedestrian collections of 8 or 24: Periwinkle. Brick Red. Cornflower. Thistle. Goldenrod. And of course, gold and silver. (Which I was convinced were made of real bits of the precious metals.)
There’s no doubt about it: if you possessed the box of 64 crayons, there was nothing you couldn’t draw. You were a true artiste. (My mind would simply not have been able to comprehend that one day they’d make a box of 120!)
You might not consider yourself an artist, but I bet you can relate to this mentality.
If I had double the budget, I could really make some strides with these students.
If I had a few extra hours a week, I could make some real progress on this plan.
If I had another acre, an extra room, or a few hundred more square feet, I could be so more productive and efficient.
If I had a bigger team, we could get so much more accomplished.
Money. Time. Space. Manpower.
Silver. Cornflower. Brick Red. Periwinkle.
Too often, we let the disappointment over what we don’t have paralyze us from making the most of what we do.
There was a time when I could only afford a set of 24 colored pencils. I pined for the complete set of 150 I saw in the Dick Blick catalog and fell asleep dreaming of the possibilities they would provide and the art I’d be able to make.
In the meantime, I didn’t stop drawing. I made do with what I had, mixing colors by layering them over one another to make new ones. In the process, little by little, my skills improved. My high school art teacher, impressed by my potential and passion, gifted me with a bigger set. I kept drawing. Eventually, all that drawing led to my art becoming the foundation of my career, and now I can afford to get whatever colors I want.
No, you might not have the box of 64. Not yet.
Don’t let that keep you from making art.
I know how painful it can be to exist in a place where you don’t have access to all the colors you wish you did.
But thanks to my art training, I also know this: just about any famous painting you can think of can be recreated with just four colors: red, yellow, blue, and white.
It’s ok to want and wish for ALL the colors.
But you can still make a masterpiece with just four.
Leave a Reply