Self Belief Miss!

This painting taught me a lot. And is aptly named for me.

Each painting is a journey, a rollercoaster of highs and lows, much like life. That's why I love it so much.

Sometimes things work, sometimes things need touching up, sometimes re-doing, sometimes re-doing a number of times. And sometimes, usually at 1am, things finally come together nicely and the high is heavenly.

The first attempt at Self Belief Miss! did not work. To the extent that I painted over it. Had only got to the outline stage but there was nothing about it that I was happy with and so I got rid. (That's one of the beauties of acrylics. You can either wash it off straight away or leave it a few minutes and paint over)

So I left it on the Friday night, had a little crisis of confidence over the weekend, and came back to it with a clear head and a more positive attitude on Monday morning.

I'd had a complete false start and that had not happened before. It is easy to go off on a downer. Much harder is to keep the faith that determination, hard work and self belief will win through.

And they did. The most important one of those three for me here was definitely self belief. When you have self belief it brings a calmness, a confidence, an unflappability, a resilience and a reserve that can bring you back to where you need to be every time.

Sometimes that belief gets overshadowed by doubt. That's the time for a deep breath and a step back, to learn from the experience, and then had another go. My kickboxing mentality tells me to keep getting up, slog away and go again. But sometimes it's easier than others to keep going.

But come Monday morning I was ready to do battle. This time it was a straightforward and thoroughly enjoyable process without further incident. And so Self Belief Miss! was created, both in painting form and in my own head. #selfbelief #acrylicpainting #acrylics #art #kickboxing