Adventure: Courting the dangers of risk-taking

I've hitch-hiked back and forth across the country, walked alone for
weeks through the wilderness and climbed tall, icy cliffs at night,
putting myself at risk and at times exhausting myself. Because in the
end I succeeded, those events were adventures and I the adventurer.
If I had not succeeded they would have been failures or worse. I
could have died or been severely injured. Few adventure stories are
written about failed adventures. Not that anyone wants to write
adventure stories about me! LOL! :-D

I like to embrace an element of risk, though these days, my
risk-taking takes different and milder forms than hitch-hiking alone
across the country. Today, my small and somewhat stupid* risk was
trying a new** art technique, drawing with ordinary Crayola crayons
on heated paper. But my instructions weren't good. In fact, they
were pathetic.

I had beginners luck with the first one (not shown because it was a
card for Biker Buddy)--it came out pretty good. By the time I tried
the second one(the first here), the burner (on my stove) was too hot
and the crayons melted terribly. Although some of the strokes looked
like brush strokes, some looked like messy finger painting. I wasn't
happy.

In the third one (second here), I turned the burner down, and at first
it worked well (the tree trunk and orange leaves), but then it got too
cool and began to resemble a normal crayon drawing--not what I
wanted, I wanted the painterly look.

These are both failures. Normally, I would toss them out, but today I
wanted to show them because I wanted to discuss the importance of
failure in the learning process.

If we never take risks, we rarely improve much. If we never fail, we
don't learn as much as we might learn from our failures.

I want to try this again and see if I can get the temperature right.
I used a pancake griddle and the griddle was too small for the paper,
which caused it to wrinkle and make unnecessary marks. I could use
smaller paper or try a cookie sheet. Also, a better quality paper
might give a better result--this was simply computer printer paper of
the cheapest variety.

I'd like to try again, but not today, too much to do. This was my
little break from work, but it gave me a sore back. AK. I wonder if
they make temperature-controlled heated easels, LOL. Maybe I will go
back to other art forms! This sounded inexpensive and potentially fun.
It eats up crayons much faster than just coloring with them, though!

The first picture is from the "Illustrate the alphabet" assignment from
Monday Art Day. In case you can't tell, S is for Sad. I will not get
my alphabet done in time and in fact, prolly won't enter at all. Now
that's sad. Sort of. In the grand scheme of things, well, it's a
paper cut I guess.

*stupid because I have too much to do to be farting around!
**new to me; I've never tried it before.

PS. Piano Boy just got home from school and Biker Buddy is still at work, but we will be leaving shortly for Hamilton--as soon as Biker Buddy gets home.