Blank Slate

The three unfinished paintings hanging on my walls taunting me are now two.  Not because I finished one, but because I white washed it.  I had spent hours and hours on it, and it was nearly there, or so I thought, but never quite right.  Those are the hardest ones to fix.  One of the others has a lot of potential, but the mistakes are very obvious.  The other really has nothing wrong with it, it just needs to be finished. It's the ones that are almost there that are the toughest because while you know something is not quite right, you just can't put a finger on it.

So there it hung.  I still like the idea and subject matter, round hay bales sitting in the summer sun.  But it was flat, lacking dimension, and last night I had the sudden realization that the fault lay with the composition, which could only be corrected by starting over.  Before I could second guess myself, it came down off the wall was coated with white paint.  It's a hard thing, to learn how to let go and move on when things aren't working, but I know it was the right thing to do for this painting.

After that liberating decision, I did a few quick sketches, thinking of ideas for another pastel.  Between a cold that won't go away and the holidays it may be a while before I get to it, but maybe if I put the thought out there to the universe (or the cloud anyway) it will happen.

Value Study, Round Chair 5x7 graphite pencil, copyright 2011

Wipeout

It's been a rather frustrating and frantically busy week.  Between a karate tournament, a soccer game and gearing up for the summer shows, I haven't had much time for painting.  And when I was able to carve out a bit of time, it really didn't work out so well.  "Wipers", or sometimes oil painters call them "scrapers", are a part of the process.  These are paintings that just don't come together and get wiped or scraped off.   It happened to me twice this week.

The first was a large pastel that has been sitting for awhile as I hoped to be able to salvage it.  But it never really felt right and I finally admitted it and wiped it clean.  The second was a smaller pastel that wasn't right from the beginning.  It didn't take much convincing to wipe that one off.

I'm finding that the more painting I do, the more willing I've become to admit defeat.  It's a hard thing to get past "I can fix this" but I'm getting more comfortable with the idea that it's okay to fail.   Looking back over the past year's pieces, I can see that I'm making progress, slowing getting better.  A step or two backwards is frustrating but at the same time it can be liberating as I know a step or two forward is just behind that paint rag.