Today's Quote: "Formal learning can teach you a great deal, but many of the essential skills in life are the ones you have to develop on your own." Lee Iacocca

I made a frustrating discovery at my painting class this week, only to make another startling one an hour or so later. Fairly new to this class--this was my fourth lesson--it dawned on me that everyone had a formula for organizing their palettes. Each student had a color scheme that he followed very precisely, and each one laid out paint onto his palette in exactly the same way.

I didn't make this observation until this particular class, because I had never allowed myself the liberty of walking around the painting loft at the beginning of class before. This class had been going on for many years. Everyone knew everyone else, and Clyde, our instructor, had known his students for years, too. They lunched together after class, joked around during painting time, and in general, were one big happy family. But I was intimidated by them. They were all very New York artsy. Most were much older than I, each with ten to twenty years painting experience. I was the baby of the class. The one with a dozen or so paintings under my belt. No one really asked me my name. No one particularly cared. So when I garnered enough courage to ask Clyde about this palette technique, he responded that yes, there was a precise way, with very precise colors, that one laid out his palette in preparation to paint.

That's not how I had been taught. Two previous teachers had done it much differently. My original instructor, Luisa, is Colombian. A brilliant painter, she painted with a Latin flair. With boldness, yet with precision. We students painted casually, poolside, with frequent interruptions by Luisa's Colombian housekeeper, who refreshed us weary painters with piping hot espresso at the snap of Luisa's finger. We made up our palettes by laying paint onto Styrofoam plates, and we laid out only those colors that we thought we needed for our painting that day.

My second teacher taught me only six lessons. She hated the plate idea, and when I showed up for my first class with a stack of Styrofoam, she relegated me automatically to the neophyte bin. She insisted that I go out and buy a proper palette, and enlist a glass cutter to custom-cut a rectangular piece of glass to fit inside. That was the proper palette---and don't I dare come to class without it! And again, we laid paints as needed for our particular painting of the day.

So by the time I got to Clyde's class at the famous Silvermine Art School in New Canaan, with proper glass-lined palette in hand, I was feeling fairly confident. Several canvases tucked under my arm, my enormous art bin loaded with tubes, brushes, charcoal, Liquin, turpentine, and the like, I settled in quite easily. And Clyde had never discussed my palette with me. So on this fourth class, I finally asked Clyde about this palette thing. He immediately walked over to Alex's easel and brought back a chart--very official looking--of oil colors arranged in a precise order around a rectangle, with no variation and with exact oil colors spelled out. We were to lay our colors around a rectangular palette every week when we arrived, in exactly that order, regardless of what we were painting. And he hated the glass idea. He wanted me to use disposal paper palettes masking- taped to a tray table. Hmmm.

A couple hours later, I went to our local library to look up the paintings of Wolf Kahn. No luck. But I did read the latest issue of American Artist magazine, which had an inspiring article about John Asaro. I drooled over his work--he has an unusual palette of glorious, sun-bursting colors and a fresh, bold stroke--to get to the bottom of the article and see that he had a very precise palette, which the writer spelled out to a fault. It was different than Clyde's.

Why all this fuss about my art class and palette? Most of you don't paint in oils anyway!

The lesson is this: All three of these art instructors were extremely accomplished. All were prolific painters. All had exhibited in shows. And John Asaro has received international acclaim. But they had all learned the proper fundamentals. Then they went on to discover their own technique. Their own style.

Such is motherhood. There are certain fundamentals that you must learn. You must learn proper care of a newborn. How to clean out her ears, suction her nose, bathe her. There are fundamental principles of good hygiene that you must not only practice yourself, but teach to your children. You must learn the fundamentals of good nutrition so that you can provide nourishing meals for your family. You must learn the fundamental principles behind aerobic exercise and of strength training, so that you can be a model of fitness for your kids as well as help them begin a lifelong commitment to exercise. You must learn about certain classical readings, so that you can help develop your children's minds. I believe it is fundamentally important that you nurture your children's souls by providing them instruction in religion, and that you guide your children to have faith, reverence, and love for God. It is fundamental that you inspire your children with gorgeous music that transforms their souls and instills in them appreciation of the giants who have come before them.

But the techniques with which you do so can be as varied as there are moms and kids. For I might instill proper fitness by having my daughter perform classical ballet; you might let yours tap dance on your kitchen floor. I might teach my kids music appreciation by having them play classical violin. Yours might fiddle, or bang on their drum set in your garage.

It's important that we learn from each other. Through direct observation, and from reading good articles and books on creativity and on motherhood, we can gleam great insights into how to do our job even better. I learn a lot from my readers, who send me emails with priceless stories and anecdotes, whose perspectives have blessed me and have helped me grow as a mom and as a person. I would not have learned the "palette lesson" had I not directly observed other students. If I did not ask questions.

Motherhood is not a science. It's an art. As you lay down your colors, make sure you have the right fundamentals. But then release them with your own style. Your own technique. Dare to paint your days with your own fresh, bold stroke.

Carolina Fernandez earned an M.B.A. and worked at IBM and as a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch before coming home to work as a wife and mother of four. She totally re-invented herself along the way. Strong convictions were born about the role of the arts in child development; ten years of homeschooling and raising four kids provide fertile soil for devising creative parenting strategies. These are played out in ROCKET MOM! 7 Strategies To Blast You Into Brilliance. It is widely available online, in bookstores or through 888-476-2493. She writes extensively for a variety of parenting resources and teaches other moms via seminars, workshops, keynotes and monthly meetings of the ROCKET MOM SOCIETY, a sisterhood group she launched to