Have you ever just stopped and looked back on your life to see how far you have come? Do you take time so reflect on what the Lord has done in your life and how you have changed through the years? I love glance back to see where I have been. This helps me envision all the possibilities I could still lie ahead.

I find that I get so frustrated with myself in my art sometimes . For instance this painting above on the right. It is one of my latest pieces. You will remember my struggles to get her face just right. I repainted her face a million times it seemed, before I got it to a place where I was totally pleased with it. Why was this so frustrating to me? Of course my thought process was that I just wasn’t good at painting anymore. Which isn’t true, but it felt true. The actual problem is actually just the opposite. You see, the longer you do something, the clearer you see things. This is actually what drives us to continue on the path of improvement.

It’s kind of like when a person needs glasses. Before I got my glasses I really didn’t know how much I wasn’t seeing. I probably needed glasses years before I got them, but it was a slow process of loosing the ability to see things clearly. Once I got my glasses I was amazed how much detail was in the world that I had been missing before and didn’t even realize it.

In the same way as a beginner artist we look at our original first attempts at art and are pretty darn pleased with our selves. Which we should be! But as we progressed in our skills we start to see colors and details in things that we never noticed before. It’s like we put on a new pair of glasses.  The funny thing is, that when I got my new glasses I didn’t beat myself up for seeing better, I was excited! This is where LOOKING BACK can really help to encourage us. It’s like taking the glasses off for a minute and seeing the blur again.

SO the first picture above was one of the first attempts I made at portraiture. I had just been gifted the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Which I highly recommend. Anyway, the first exercise they want you to do (before you read the book) is to try and draw a portrait. This first portrait is dated 1994, so it’s been a while. This is that same daughter that I drew back then, that I just painted. Of course she was a little girl then and is a grown woman now. I don’t know about you , but I see a huge improvement over the years.

At the time I was a young mother of 4 and didn’t have a lot of time to devote to drawing. If I had been able to work on my art everyday, Like I do now, I could have progressed much quicker. This encourages me because I know that as I spend more time devoted to my art today, the faster I improve. This is very exciting to me.

I hope you will spend some time looking back to see how far you have come in life. Let it challenge you to move forward with expectation and anticipation.