An Artist in the Making?

Because I believe it is important to stretch my horizons and try out things I have NEVER done before, when a friend who is an artist invited me to participate in her drawing class, I hesitated, but eventually accepted. Now you need to understand I am not now, nor have I ever been artistic. I was seriously traumatized by my art classes in school, especially when my teacher gave me some terrible comments and grades on my work. It was because I was so afraid to fail I was terrified and so I was totally inhibited. Consequently I never did a thing with art and steered clear of it. So Gabi's invite was a chance to test out some of my new found freedom from fear (yes I did finish reading the book on fear). I decided to give it a plunge. I did 3 drawings in the first class. The scan at the left is my 3rd drawing. She said to just look at the lines and draw the lines, not draw my hand. So that's what I did. And you know what? It actually looks like a hand... even looks like my hand ( I think my family will attest to that). I don't know how to contour or shade or anything, but I got a start with not being so afraid of paper and pencil. Yesterday the task was to reproduce a Picasso. But here's the catch. It would be upside down and I would have to draw it upside down (the picture, not me!!!).
Ok, now tell me which is the original and which is mine? Yeah, right, like it's hard to tell!!!! But still the result is pretty good. It is an amazing process, because I covered up the picture and just did things a line at a time. Surprisingly, the lines met up (like on the chair, without even knowing that I was drawing a chair). It took almost 3 hours and I stopped before finishing because my hand my killing me. I tend to clutch at my pencil in a death grip. But I'll tell you one thing, you totally lose track of time and forget everything happening around you as you draw. It is really fun. And I am meeting new people, as there are 3 others in the class. They, however, have experience in drawing.
Next week another upside drawing. The whole idea is to learn to "see". She says we think we can't draw because we don't know how to look at things with our right brain and really see and reproduce what we see. Maybe it will work and I'll learn something new. Hey, maybe you can even teach an old dog new tricks...