Painting workshops - The fear of failure?!

Perhaps you have already read the great day by day coverage of Mr. Lee about a painting workshop in Aachen (if not: do it, its worth a read). These articles made me think over some things and I just felt like having to write down my thoughts WHY I always missed the opportunity to go to one of those, even if they are only one or two hours away from me. I always look into the description of the announcements of the workshops in the big tabletop forums (perhaps I should add Brushbrothers in the future too) and especially the ones from Massive Voodoo or GeOrc always get me itchy and I'm always thinking and thinking and don't register myself in the end.
But why do I always hesitate to do it? After thinking and rethinking and thinking over it again, I believe I have found an answer to it:

The fear of failure.

I can't explain it in another way...

So why is this fear clinging in the back of my head and this voice in my mind is always arguing? I am not a complete foreigner to arts. In germany in most schools you have art lessons until you do your exams (and I was lucky and had a very good teacher who himself was an artist and painted backgrounds for theater etc). So color theory and this stuff is not really new to me. In my apprenticeship and my first practical years in my job I worked as parttime layouter for webpages and most stuff of this theorythingy was pretty useful there. I started painting in the nineties (the time when I actively played Warhammer Fantasy) and had some of my stuff presented in my local hobby store (including some of the buildings I crafted together with a friend). I even went to some local CONs and played (and presented) my miniatures there. So why the hestitation nowadays?

Perhaps its because I am older now and am not as easygoing as back then. I know that my painting skills have nearly completely vanished and I have to practice and practice and practice. But sitting alone at your painting table it is not easy to conquer one's weaker self. On the other hand: Painting with other people helps you to increase your painting skills in a much shorter period of time.
I already tried to reactivate/motivate some friends to paint a bit more. But our jobs and private life makes it not easy to find the time together. I even thought about joining some painting session via Skype but the painting group who did this isn't active anymore. So this won't work either. A "doom loop"...

Another thing is that I don't want to disgrace myself as absolute wimp at one of those workshops. It's one thing to paint for oneself but another to paint in front/with a bunch of strangers. And the possibility that the money spend on this workshops is a total waste because my painting skills are not good enough to follow the instructions or I am not talented enough to achieve the results I want.

Even this blog would be a great possibility to present some of my stuff, get feedback and thus improve. If I would finally get some of it completed...
Maybe I should stop thinking and just paint and follow something a real painting god always said:

~ We don't make mistakes, we just make happy little accidents. ~ Bob Ross


So how do you think of painting workshop? How do you conquer the Fear of Failure? Comments and Suggestions are really appreciated :)


So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: I hope this stuff is understandable. Expressing these kind of thoughts in a foreign language is not always that easy :)