Why do we do this?

I've been thinking about why I love to draw and paint. Why do I feel the need to create a scripture journal? I don't believe I'll ever be one of those with an Etsy shop where I sell my creations, so what's my motivation?

Hmmm...I think it's a lot like self-publishing a book. My sketchbooks are my self-published books. I don't need to find someone who agrees they're wonderful and agrees to foot the bill for putting them into print. I just do it and nobody can stop me, lol!

I don't care about the size of the audience that will view my creations. I don't care about making money on them. I mostly hope my kids will someday find them and have fun getting to know a side of mom they might not have suspected existed. I kind of live in my own head a lot, so this is a chance to reveal some of what I'm thinking, though nobody may see these until I've gone on to glory.

As far as my scripture journal, I think that is the most important of my creations. In it I hope to collect many of my thoughts about life on this planet and I hope some of those thoughts might help my children as they go through the inevitable hardships of living in this fallen world.

I've never thought of my art as just a fun hobby, though it is fun. Most of what I've posted here so far has happened in the last year. In fact, it was almost exactly a year ago that I wrote this first post! This blog has been a vehicle to inspire me to practice the craft of drawing and painting so I might use these gifts for God's glory. I'm still in the practicing phase and have so far to go, but I'm seeing some progress and searching for ways to actually use my skills in real life.

As I said before, I think my scripture journal is the most important thing I've done so far and I hope to continue to fill it with thoughts that will be helpful to succeeding generations of my family, until the Lord returns. I hope they will keep it as a family treasure. To me that's an awesome idea!

So join me in creating wonderful "self-published" works of art that your family will love and that will bring back good memories for years to come!

Shalom and God bless!