My first attempt at drawing in my brand new Moleskine watercolor sketchbook—arrayed hopefully next to my new brushes and paints on the white IKEA table in our studio rental in Stockholm—was a disappointment.

The hope I brought to my goal to sketch daily on our travels in Sweden devolved very quickly into feelings of shame.

Shame? Because I couldn’t sketch a pretty batch of marigolds that caught my eye as we walked through Mariatorget?

It took me aback, the shame. Yet it was also helpful. I don’t think I have ever so clearly identified that familiar feeling I get when one of my efforts fails.

It interested me, this shame, not that evening, when I closed the sketchbook and just wanted to cry, but a few days later, in Paris, at our friend Leyla’s apartment. We were discussing our grown children, newly out of college, and how they are learning to juggle everything at once—renting an apartment, getting a job, shopping, cooking, and maintaining a social life outside school.

What happened to me at that busy chaotic age was I gave up on the Big Important Thing in the midst of the daily demands. I wish I had known that putting time in on the bigger aim—for me, it was to be an artist, a goal I gave up at 24— and making mistakes, is the only way to learn. Shame got the best of me then, but not now.

On our second day in Sweden we visited the Nordic Museum’s folk art collection. I stood in front of compositions on fabric, of kings and queens, orange and pink angels, and the baby Jesus in a polka-dotted cradle. These 19th century biblical illustrations, filled with cross-hatching, stars, dots, stripes and squiggles, were painted by self-taught Swedish peasants. Staring at them, I had an epiphany: I would copy these pretty angels. After all, I learned how to draw as a kid by copying the simple lines in my Archie comic books.

It was easy to make a loose pencil sketch of the angels, so rustically drawn it is hard to go wrong. I snapped a photo for color reference, and spent a happy hour finishing it up that evening in our little studio, thinking of peasants doing the same, once upon a time, in the southernmost part of Sweden

It was only day two, and already, my efforts (and knowledge of Swedish history) had improved.