artteacher4purpose: Throwback Thursday: Do you know that you are batman?

This is for those who have decided to follow your purpose in life . . .

You will always have someone behind you questioning you in how you do things . . .

"I don't know. . . I don't like it . . .Is that going to work out. . . are you sure?"

But if you're going to be batman, you need to know that you are batman. You need to know who you are so that if any doubt that comes your way, you just brush it off because you know who you are. If you are going to be batman, you need to train and practice your batman moves. Don't let anyone discourage you with their critical words.

This is what happened . . .

I went to a birthday party to do face paint the other day. I love doing face paint because it is fun. I like it when the kids are happy. They see the design on their face and their like "Yes, that's so cool!!"

It makes me happy that they like the end result. I don't let them see it until I'm all finished though. I don't want them to get discouraged by what they see in the process, but instead get excited about what they see at the end. I try to go as fast as I can so that they don't have to sit that long . . 5 to 7 minutes at the most. . . the younger they are, the faster I go.

But everyonce in awhile I get a request from an older kid that challenges me. I love this. The only thing is, I know that it is going to take me a little longer and I know that I don't have an exact plan of attack. But I'm an artist. I know that I can get there or somewhere around the intended vision.

So this is what happened, there was an adult at the party that was so excited about there being a face painter. From the very beginng he was like, "Yes I'm doing that!"

He wanted the Mike Tyson face tattoo. . . the thing though, it was a kid party so I really wanted to do all the kids first. When it got towards the end there was an older kid that wanted the Jordan sign on his face. I told him that I would attempt it, sit down in the chair.

The whole time this Guy (the one that wanted the Tyson Tattoo), stood behind me, looking over my shoulder making comments. . .

"Awe man I don't know"

"Oh wow, do you want that on your face? I don't think that was a good place for it."

"It doesn't look too good."

I kept going anyway, ignoring his comments because I knew he did not understand my process. I did a light stick like figure first to get the positioning and the angles. Then I went back with a paint stick to make the figure darker. Then I took my fine brush to give it some shape and defined lines. The critic thought I wasn't doing a good job, so he left.

Me being an artist, was self critical of my work. This is ok, I always look to see how I can do things better. I didn't like it the sign. There were too many black marks around the figure. So I took some color, made the figure pop out and added some white highlights and then I liked it . . . the kid liked it and thought it was hot. So he asked for the Labron James sign on his fore head . . .

The point: You will always have critics attacking your process. You will always have someone looking over your shoulder not understanding how you are going to get from one point to the other. But you must understand, they cannot do what you can do and that is why they are watching you so closely. They can't see things the same way you see things. They don't have your vision nor do they understand the planning or the time it takes to train to do what you do.

So do what you do and be the best at what you do. Don't worry about your critics. They will just get tired and leave anyway.

All in all, it was fun. I like doing face painting. The situation didn't really bother me that much, it was quite funny because I wanted to do the Mike Tyson tattoo. I had better paint and finer brushes to use for it and it would have looked really good!

But anyway, this situation also reminded me of all of us and how we treat other people that we do not quite understand. We all need to change our minds about how we talk to people and treat people. We need to be sensitive to their process as the art work, and as the artist.

God is the master artist, painting us into his vision for who he needs us to be. He has also made us individual artist to help paint each other into who we need to be. Your words are very powerful and can create beautiful artworks, or distorted messes. Be careful what you say to people, because not everyone knows if they are indeed batman.