Karen Sperling’s Blog

Painting by Karen Sperling from her photo, featured in Painting for Photographers.

When I lived in New York City in the last century before karaoke and American Idol, I attempted a singing career.
I performed in clubs around Manhattan on open mic nights. I also created a cabaret act and performed it several times.
I always say we’re our own worst critics, and my photo is next to Own Worst Critic in the dictionary.
I knew my positives were that I was attractive and could sing on key.
I also thought I knew my negative was that I didn’t sound like–insert any female singer here.
I had a lot of experience singing.
Throughout my student years I sang in the school chorus and in school musicals.
And I was serious about my singing career-I took singing lessons for a year before I started to sing in the clubs.
My biggest negative that I wasn’t aware of back then was, lack of confidence.
The clearest example was at one open mic night where I gave what I thought was one of the best performances of my short-lived singing career.
I could hear the audience chatting throughout my song and when I was done, the audience applauded politely.
I sat down and the next girl got up to sing.
She was decked out in a very sexy outfit and when she sang, not very well, and off key, she mesmerized the audience.
No one talked during her performance and when she was done, she got a standing ovation.
Huh?
My singing teacher was there with me that night and he explained that the other singer sold the song with her confidence despite the technical flaws, while I, really the better singer of the two, sang like I was apologizing for taking up the audience’s time.
Simply put: The other singer had confidence and I didn’t.
In retrospect, I probably could have learned to sing with confidence and succeeded in some manner as a singer.
To succeed, though, you really have to be passionate about something, and I made the decision that I had other passions that burned more brightly than singing.
The moral of the story is, no matter what you’re doing, whether it’s singing, painting from photos, or making films, you have to do it with confidence.
Talent isn’t the deciding factor governing whether you can do something.
Confidence is.
Talent is a nebulous commodity.
You might be more talented at something than you think.
How will you know if you decide you don’t have talent before you try?
You might be cheating yourself out of the thing you’re best at!
You have to do what interests you and have confidence in your pursuits.
Interests become passions as you pursue them.
Most people never give themselves a chance to do what interests them because they think the rest of the world has talent and they don’t.
What the rest of this imagined world has that they haven’t got, to quote the cowardly lion, is courage. You can say that again.
My new book, Painting for Photographers, is for photographers who think they can create paintings from photos.
The book proposes, if you think you can paint, you probably can, after you learn the art lessons and painting tools, and then practice.
If you have the dream to paint photos, or create books, or movies, or companies for that matter, you have to stop dreaming and find the confidence to start putting one foot in front of the other to make things happen.
Meanwhile, confidence to paint from photos doesn’t end with buying my books and tutorials and attending my classes.
The confidence is also required to keep going!
Some people read the tutorials or attend the classes, but get discouraged in the beginning because their paintings aren’t masterpieces.
Part of painting-good painting-is trying and trying some more, and with practice, getting better and better. And that can be said of anything.
As I say in my tutorials, books and classes, everything you paint is an interim step.
You may not like how it’s looking, and you might get frustrated with the results.
The fact is, the more you paint, the better everything gets!
The nature of a painting is that the early stages don’t look very good–no matter how experienced the artist is!
You have to keep going–it does get better the more you work on it!
And it takes confidence to know that the more you paint, or write, or sing, the better you get.
Next time you paint, or write, or learn to cook-anything-forget about the mysterious things you have no control over like talent and have the confidence that if you’re interested in something, you probably can do it, if you follow the right steps, and keep at it!
Of course, if you have both talent and confidence, you will do very well.
And obviously, if you’re really bad at something, all the confidence in the world ultimately won’t hide the fact.
The opposite is true, too, though.
You can be the most talented at something, but if you have no confidence, you’ll never get anywhere with your talent.
What I’m talking about here is the person who probably can do something that he or she wants to do, like paint photos, but is afraid to try because of lack of confidence, and blames the excuse, he or she has no talent.
Just go for it!

Part II: Four Ways to Find Confidence

Postscript: I got the news later in the day that I posted this blog that my art’s been accepted into a new gallery show, “Highly Toxic,” at Gallery Godo, 6749 San Fernando Rd.#C, Glendale, CA 91201.
Opening Night: September 25, 2009, 7 pm to midnight.
Please join us!
Karen Sperling’s art

Tags: The process of art (Corel Painter) //