When we last left the canvas in my dining room, it was still blank, but I had made a pile of colorful textured paper, too. You’d think I’d be ready and eager to make art!

Nope. I didn’t have a plan, and that scared me.

Art and fear go hand in hand, at least for me.

Almost ten years ago, I went to a workshop at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts. The class was geared toward teachers to model Carle’s process of collage. I wasn’t a teacher. I just went for fun.

I had a plan for the perfect picture—a landscape with clouds, hills, and maybe a little brook running through. But when we sat down at a table with an array of paints and tools, the instructor told us not to think about the final product. She told us to just make pretty paper.