Making Believe I know what I'm talking about?

Just a musing today!

After doing my best to make a video with Premier Pro...well actually two or three videos, I was reminded what learning is all about. Again.

At one time I came to a hurdle in my art career. I realized I could see what I wanted in my mind but I did not have the skill or expertise to execute the image. That's when  I put my projects aside and decided to study again.

2 hour painting of a live model.

My inability to paint what I wanted was like a game we play at baby showers . The hostess shows you a tray of items. You get a few seconds to look at them, and then they are covered up and you have to write down what you saw. It's then that you realize how poor your memory is. Or at least I do!

Or if someone asks you what color someone's shirt was when you saw him a few hours ago, and you can't for the life of you remember what color it was.

I would try to paint a person holding a basket and not remember how the fingers are placed around the handle.

Or how light falls on  a person's face at noon. Or what position a human body really can take. The only way I could possibly learn these things was to paint from life. And so I began hiring models, and going on plein air painting trips.

Leonardo di Vinci demonstrated keen insight when he said that 'true art is learning how to see."

And so I have to learn how to see all over again.

So it is with writing.  That's why I find having a Pinterest page so valuable when I'm writing a story  because I can research objects, places, and environments, put the images on a board and refer to them when I want to describe something in one of my stories. I'm not sure if it's my age but I so easily forget the details of the images in my mind.

Pinterest page for Pouraka, Images I used as references to describe places and events in the story.

Better than taking photos is actually experiencing the content of one's novel. Granted living under the ocean isn't something  I'll be able to experience in this lifetime. I don't scuba dive, though if I am going to write many more mermaid books I might give it a shot, still my son and his family does and the more I can glean from them the better my stories will be. I'm thrilled that I have some footage of his underwater videos. I'll be posting a more professional video than the one I had, soon. I hope.

Which is what I was doing in Premier Pro - that and trying to edit some footage for our upcoming crowd sourcing we'll be launching soon for Cassandra's Castle. (Stay tuned please. I have lots to say about that one!)

In any case I guess what I'm trying to say is there is always so much more room for improvement! Never stop learning!