Guilt=My nature.

I don’t need to know my heritage to know my own nature. I’m guilty. I worry. It’s what I do. If it’s genetic then I don’t need my ancestors to show me that, but it may be a key to discovering who they were. They were guilty. They worried. At least one of them did.

I bought a couple of huge pencil sets a couple of years ago. I admired them. I protected them and packed them away. I broke them out and admired them some more. I love my art supplies as much as I love art. I’ve created with much less. I’ve created with cigarette butts that looked like charcoal drawings and broken used hand me down drawing utensils. I loved them too.

I feel guilty having these beautiful unused pencils and not putting them to use yet. When I crack them open, I’ll feel guilty wearing them down. I feel bad that all my old ones are packed away in different boxes all separated from each other. The ones I claimed to have loved. Out in the cold garage. I’m torn between gathering them all up together and keeping them organized between old and new. I used to have them sorted neatly within color groups. Cheap along with Fancy. OH but these brand new ones, I’m going to break them out and use them. I don’t even have any stumps or burnishers handy for them, but I’m sure I can swing it without them. I’ve no mineral spirits on hand either but I’ve got baby oil and wd4o. I remember. I know what to do. I did my best work with less. I’m afraid of my new pencils, but not that much. They are quite the lookers. They will be old one day whether they be put to good use or no use at all. Who even thinks of these things? Why do I feel ungrateful? Is it because I have such colorful lookers of drawing utensils or that I’ve yet to make them perform? I’ll always keep my old pencils down to stubs (they become water colors then).

I’m going to start with a small page in my art journal of my mother or maybe my grandmother. I have my tools and I need to work. I’ll consider it part of my research. 🙂