Painting is hard. My painting is not very good. It’s more skillful than some people in the class with me, but not by much. There’s a real pridefulness to things like this, it’s a good thing to reflect on. Why does it matter to me that I’m any better than these passionate ladies? Why do I care to impress our teachers?

Our teacher says that he’ll spend many months on an icon, we have a week to learn the craft and to make one. I think we’ll start to make ours tomorrow, so that doesn’t leave all that much time, really. This feels like learning how to do a sketch, really. But that’s a process I enjoy. Many of the other people in this class work methodically on one sketch or one practice exercise, agonizing over their sphere or their drawing of Jesus’ face. While this isn’t better necessarily, I tend to blow through the exercise and start again, and again, and again, completing it four or five times before time is up.

The tough bit is that going slow and really trying is a big part of this, you can’t rush. From sketching to meditating, to the medium itself, you have got to go slow. But I see this whole thing as being given the tools to begin to practice, so getting more times in practicing feels…right, I guess. Though it probably isn’t. There are a great number of things like that; things that feel right that probably ain’t.

Playing a silly game and reading a science fiction novel instead of practicing my icon painting is likely one such thing…