Chalk Lessons

How do you feel about failure?

This summer, we made chalk paint with cornstarch, food coloring, and water. 

Summery delight!

See our driveway canvas?

 Little did we know that a thunderstorm brewed two hours away.

All our chalky wonders washed away overnight.

It's that resonance of art and failure that makes us strong, right?

Do you ever wonder if we can learn as much from our flops
- our sloppy first drafts, our rejections, our imperfections -
as from our neat and tidy successes? 

I have this thing. This fear of ruining a brand new notebook or sketchbook. 

I figure if I'm constantly working at something, then naturally, I'll keep improving. 

And when I look at my old notebooks stuffed with terrible first drafts and awkward brainstorms, 

I get panicky. What if this first page represents who I am through that entire notebook or sketchbook? Can't it at least start out perfect?
Talk about writer's block, eh?
So, I solved it. 

It's my secret to hurdling the fear of failure. (in a notebook.)

I just skip the first page. 

Then I'm set. I have a one-page cushion keeping me from a first-page flop. 

(Really, it means that the second page becomes the first page, but shhh.)

But really, don't we gain something in being brave with each feeble offering of ourselves?

In truth, even if I jump right into the first page of a notebook and ink it up with a scratchy failure, 

actually my "failure" teaches me something, and that becomes growth.

And if that's true, then maybe "failure" isn't so much of a failure. 

Maybe the effort of trying something stretches and grows our skills. 

And actually, that is beauty right there: being brave.

So, go out and be brave, my friends!

Ruin some second pages.
Scribble your heart out.
Make sloppy chalk paint that gets rained on overnight.

Get all muddy and splash around in those glorious flops.

Our Sidewalk Chalk Paint recipe:

Mix equal parts cornstarch + water.
Add a few drops of food coloring. Voila!

 

 Chalky books!

Journey by Aaron Becker
Quest by Aaron Becker
Chalk by Bill Thomson
Art & Max by David Wiesner
The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds
Harold's Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson