Yesterday, I rolled over in bed and thought, “I’m going to start painting again.”

I don’t know where that came from. Or maybe I do.

When I started painting in high school, I was taught there was a “right” way to do things and a “wrong” way to do things. My art teacher had very set ideas about what he wanted us each to achieve, and when we didn’t do exactly what he’d told us, he just erased what we had done and drew it himself. “Put blue in this, red in that, green over there,” he’d bark. And we did. We got to put our little signatures beneath each painting, but it always felt like the work, the ideas, even the painting, were his. When those paintings were exhibited, that achievement was his, not ours.

I’ve loved art since I was a child. I couldn’t draw for the life of me (because I couldn’t get it “right,” I gave up quickly), but I loved coloring, playing with the shades, mixing up paints. Many years, for my birthday, my parents would give me a drawing/coloring book. Later, in school and in college, I drew abstract art. There was no meaning to it, no shape, no form, but I loved doing it, I loved coloring in those lines, playing with that randomness, seeing what colors matched, what didn’t. A few years ago, in a state of “I’m not an artist,” I tore them up and threw them all out. No one but my mother ever saw them (I think). The sad thing is that while they weren’t special and while they weren’t ART with capital letters, they were mine and I loved them. I spent hours, days, on them. I now wish I’d kept them.

Recently, I came across this website: IllustrationFriday.com. Suddenly, it felt like a part of my brain that had been closed up for all this while is eager to open up again. My fingers are itching to get hold of some paper and pencils and start drawing. That idea of whether or not it will come out right is slowly disappearing. I want to move my hand over paper again and see where it goes.

One deadline today. Then I’m heading off to the shops to get me some art supplies.