Study Time--Day 0

So I've done some preliminary stuff already, like getting materials together and deciding on my focus. There are just so many aspects to even one kind of art 'larnin' it's easy to get lost or overwhelmed.

Which brings me to one of my first points: It's hard for an anxious HSP (highly sensitive person) in a learning environment made for normals because the cautions and comments meant to be guides and reminders are, for us, so often detrimental.

An example.

I was told in driver's ed that I needed to constantly be checking my mirrors and paying attention to everything around me. For a normal this means occasionally glancing to make sure a psycho in a doomsday car isn't about to slam them with a gout of guitar flame. For me it meant paying even more attention when I was already hearing and seeing and feeling everything I could. 

A more topical example.

Art teachers will often talk about how 'every single mark counts'. For a normal it gets them to think about how they put things down. For someone sensitive and scrupulous it's this terrorizing statement about how something they already pay attention to HAS to be done WELL or else the artwork may be ruined forever.

So for someone like me it's more important to say something like: don't worry too much about how and where you put marks because mistakes can be addressed and things can be reworked.  And if a piece of art fails, that's alright, too. You can always make another so long as you sit down and learn things from the last one.

I don't need to be bullied into paying attention; I need my neurotic ass calmed down so I can focus and not spin out.

Because there is no class for people like me, I have to transmute these 'doomsday messages' myself.

I'm still not GREAT at it, but I feel like I'm learning how to slowly.  

SO.

That aside, my lesson plan for myself is going to involve a lot of compositional elements chiefly, but when I'm bored/overwhelmed/chewing on that I'll be trying to take in artwork that I find stirring (to my intellect, not my stomach) and also just plain thinking more about the kind of artwork I want to make, either for myself or in a commercial sense.