I saw someone mention timing their actual painting time and I thought, ah, I should do that, I bet I'm fine. So I kept a little notebook for a week. Ten hours in the studio turned out to be maybe four hours of my hand actually touching paper. The rest was rearranging pastels, wiping dust off my hands, staring at the reference photo, deciding the face is wrong and redrawing it from scratch, and one full hour of just sitting there working up the nerve to do the eyes.

Four out of ten. I don't know if that's normal or if I'm just deeply afraid of ruining a good thing. Because the weird part is, once I finally start it's fine, the fear goes away. It's the getting in that's the battle. I tried today just to not put the pastel down for the first half hour no matter what and I got more done than in any of those ten hours. Maybe the answer is just forcing it. I hate that the answer is probably forcing it. 🙂