Passion, hobbies and work

It is said that if you have passion for your work, money will follow. It seems that this is not always true or passion for work is disguised by the dislike of working for a living at the best of times. I love my job, I love working in the saw dust and being covered by man glitter. I look like I have a serious dandruff problem in the evenings on my way home to get a hot shower.

My problem is customers, they are not my favourite people. They have expectations that I don't understand. Recently I was asked to colour a chest of drawers to match the colour on a drawer front. I took said drawer front and a piece of wood to the paint supplier and said “I want this piece of wood to be the same colour as this drawer front”. They supplied stain and I went off and stained the drawers and coated them with clear lacquer.

The chest was sold for the princely sum of R 3000, which in today's market is a bargain for a unit with a finish. I have seen drawer units for this price and more without a finish. Raw pine and DIY varnishing.

At this price I agreed to stain and coat the exterior of the unit. The client appears the drawer face and new unit are looking good to me and most people that have seen it. Her comment: “I can see to much wood grain.” “WTF?

You want less wood grain on a solid wood piece of furniture” I think to myself and explain that wood will darken with age so making it darker will be a bad idea. She insists one shade darker, OK then she opens the unit and asks why the drawers inside have not been stained.

This is the kind of thing that is guaranteed to destroy anyone's passion for just about anything. If you want an expensive piece of furniture with stained and glossy interiors, you must be willing to pay for that, You wouldn't buy a Chev Spark and ask why it doesn't have wood panelled interiors like you saw on a Jag or Rolls? Why would you expect to pay for beer and get champagne?

Anyway enough of a rant about the stupidity of customers who according to accepted wisdom are always right, let's get to real passion. Most people I have come across in my lifetime spend their lives working to fund their real passions. These are disguised as hobbies. Some even make a few bucks from their hobbies but few take the leap and spend their lives with their passion.

Hobby

I have a hobby, I have been painting for a few years and the reason I paint is to unwind from my job. My painting has never been good because I have never really learned any skill at applying paint to canvas. I am passionate about painting but my skills sucked.

Late last year I decided that I need to improve my skills and set a goal of creating art that people will pay for. Sue Dickinson, an artist that I did some work for, and she was pleased with it, and I were having a conversation about art and my desire to improve my skills and she loaned me a book which I read and followed the instructions and I learned to draw properly.

I can now do a pencil drawing of a person and they are mostly recognisable, When I first spoke to Sue I could hardly draw a stick figure. I didn't understand the basics of drawing and I decided to learn them. I drew over a 100 sketches in 3 months before I started achieving what I considered to be a reasonable drawing. I crumpled up more paper in that 3 months than I kept. The learning curve was steep, and I got very frustrated but the odd picture showed real promise.

Over the last 6 months I have painted 15 paintings that will never hang on a wall, they are all very one dimensional, with no depth, but as I painted for the joy of it, I was not too worried. My goal of making art that people will buy seemed a long way away.

I turned 50 the other day and my beloved family all clubbed together and bought me a few canvases, a pile of paint and some airtime for my dongle with instructions to use the data only for online painting tutorials. Why I have not done this before escapes me, I did look at a few tutorials a few years back but didn't use the skills I should have learned.

In the last 10 days my skills have grown, my paintings have more depth, they look more real and I can see marked improvement. The skills I have learnt are but few, but the difference is outstanding. My goal seems a little closer. A half an hour a day practising and soon I may be able to make money from my passion, rather than from my job.

What are you passionate about? Can you turn that into a career?