Thursday, November 1, 2012

Never Give up...know when quit and learn from it.

At this point, I knew I was in trouble, but thought there were some possibilities

 In between removing and adding layers....A muddy mess at this point, so how much more damage can be done...should I give up or see if I can do some sort of magic here...I think it's move on time.  But I hate failures like this. 
I seriously considered avoiding the embarrassment of this disaster by just throwing this one away.  Especially after visiting some of the websites of the most accomplished artists, who are beyond making the many mistakes I made in this one.  In fact, my mood might change and I could decide to remove this post.  So if you are one of the lucky (or unlucky, depending on how this makes you feel), this might be the shortest lived post I've ever done.
The reason I decided this morning to post, is because one can always learn from mistakes, disasters, failures.  This one started out with a light Gouache wash on Bristol Plate. That would allow me to work it without killing the  paper.   Unfortunately it was too much white, and the mud began to show early.  Nonetheless, I tried to move thru, thinking something good might emerge. In the top photo, things were starting to look okay, but it bothered me how dull, yet busy it looked.  I scrubbed off all those little hilites and confusing shapes in the background, but that  revealed all the flaws in the subject...it doesn't help that my enthusiasm for painting flowers is minimal at best.  I hated the flower shape and tried to give it some sort of believability.
It has not even come close to that.

I am now at the point where I will have to decide whether or not to scrub the mission.


Yes it can be done...This is the successful flower I did last year..Please Read RH's comment and my reply  below

4 comments:

  1. Kevin, you were painting something you hate? Always paint something that you love - something that moves you!! And you were painting on Bristol Board? What a challenge! I like the flower and stems - and think if you went in really nice and dark with a variety of darks in the bg, you could save this one and it would pop off the page. But that's just my opinion and I never know when to give up! ha ha Put it aside for a day or two and look at it again and think about darks in the bg and see what happens :) You are not seeing the beauty in this one yet but it's there - I can see it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I always forget to enter my response in the reply box...Please read my comment below. Also, what I meant to say at the end in the following comment is...ABOVE is the painting that came out....

      Delete
  2. Thanks RH. Initially the idea was to keep the background as dark as possible, but I think the composition bothered me a little, and I started messing with that to compensate. I'm really struggling with the flower, just like last time. The reason I took this on is because the last one I did came out so good, and I love the challenge of looking harder at what seems tedious. Used to be I found landscapes boring to paint. Now I can't seem to get away from them because I found success. And as I've mentioned before, it's not that I hate painting flowers (I did hate the shape of how I composed it), it's just that they don't inspire me like other subjects. Here is the painting that came out so good that my daughter took it to work to display at her workstation...

    ReplyDelete
  3. ah, go ahead and leave the post up--(I've seen a lot worse)...and it's helpful to others when we confess that our work doesn't always match our expectations. If it were me I'd call it done and move on--you'll get it right next time

    ReplyDelete