For some unknown reason I got in the mood to try oil painting about 2 years ago. I bought all the necessary supplies and watched videos before commencing on my first painting. The first started off well. People said, “the sky looks really great”. But then when it came to details and the foreground i shelved the project for 2 years.
This winter a friend was out walking her dog in the snow at sunset and she caught such a beautiful picture I got inspired again. This project has had its ups and down. I get rolling and the fatigue hits and suddenly the brush drags down the painting and onto the floor.
But, aside from the innate challenges of trying to do something like that it’s the things people say. For example:
That’s a nice hobby.
That should keep you from getting depressed.
You will learn how eventually.
Looks like a good start.
At least with oils you can fix it.
I thought, ‘these people mean well’ but I couldn’t help but fell a thud in my stomach.
At the end on March my neurologist asked me what I had been doing for fun. I to,d him I had been oil painting but feel frustrated with the tremors in my hands. I didn’t expect it but he increased my dose of Primidone, which has helped with the ever worsening tremors.
One day last week I had energy and felt like painting. I took my dose of Primidone and went to work. At some point in the process I felt like the MS had lifted and I was that 28 year I was working at a drafting table. I thought, ‘I am a professional architect. I spent 20years of my life drawing and painting and designing buildings. During my internship the bis would put something on my desk and said, I need this in 45 minutes. The triangles, templates and architectural scales would be flying. I had so much practice in those skills that they became second nature.
Something took hold of me. I wasn’t going to succumb to being a participant in a ‘nice hobby’. I was fast and furiously mixing colors and making the forms and colors the way I wanted them. I worked and worked.
When I forced myself to quit before I got tired and wrecked it I looked at it and through, ‘hmmmmmm, this looks more like the old me’.
Then, a few people cam in and the first said, “oh my God, you could sell this!”
The second didn’t have many words but he couldn’t stop looking at it.
Anyway, I don’t know what the moral to the story is but this is what happened. I couldn’t bear to let MS get in the way of something so intrinsically part of me but someday it might. I don’t think I could bear to listen to those platitudes so I probably would quit.
I’m glad your spirits are good enough to do that.
This winter a friend was out walking her dog in the snow at sunset and she caught such a beautiful picture I got inspired again. This project has had its ups and down. I get rolling and the fatigue hits and suddenly the brush drags down the painting and onto the floor.
But, aside from the innate challenges of trying to do something like that it’s the things people say. For example:
That’s a nice hobby.
That should keep you from getting depressed.
You will learn how eventually.
Looks like a good start.
At least with oils you can fix it.
I thought, ‘these people mean well’ but I couldn’t help but fell a thud in my stomach.
At the end on March my neurologist asked me what I had been doing for fun. I to,d him I had been oil painting but feel frustrated with the tremors in my hands. I didn’t expect it but he increased my dose of Primidone, which has helped with the ever worsening tremors.
One day last week I had energy and felt like painting. I took my dose of Primidone and went to work. At some point in the process I felt like the MS had lifted and I was that 28 year I was working at a drafting table. I thought, ‘I am a professional architect. I spent 20years of my life drawing and painting and designing buildings. During my internship the bis would put something on my desk and said, I need this in 45 minutes. The triangles, templates and architectural scales would be flying. I had so much practice in those skills that they became second nature.
Something took hold of me. I wasn’t going to succumb to being a participant in a ‘nice hobby’. I was fast and furiously mixing colors and making the forms and colors the way I wanted them. I worked and worked.
When I forced myself to quit before I got tired and wrecked it I looked at it and through, ‘hmmmmmm, this looks more like the old me’.
Then, a few people cam in and the first said, “oh my God, you could sell this!”
The second didn’t have many words but he couldn’t stop looking at it.
Anyway, I don’t know what the moral to the story is but this is what happened. I couldn’t bear to let MS get in the way of something so intrinsically part of me but someday it might. I don’t think I could bear to listen to those platitudes so I probably would quit.
I’m glad your spirits are good enough to do that.
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