Sometimes, we Create Our Own Problems

I have not had fun with this painting.

To be clear, I don’t necessarily thing it’s a bad painting - in fact I rather liked the start of it. But I definitely didn’t do myself any favors with this one today. I think maybe subconsciously I wanted to feel like I’d messed up?

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the little sketchbook drawings for the last week or so. They’ve all been good to draw and I’ve felt like they turned out how I wanted them to. And for the past few weeks the painting has been going well too.

But today: today I wanted to paint. I didn’t want to paint a landscape. And I didn’t want to work on anything that I had already drawn out, or ideated. I even went over my recent sketches and things that I’ve been working on in the background to see if anything struck a chord with me today. Nothing. I wanted something new - fresh material.

So I picked this reference from a while ago, with absolutely no idea how I was going to paint it. And it’s a floral piece - something that I’ve historically struggled with. And without any prep-work or any strong idea of what I wanted out of it, I got started.

It doesn’t take an awful lot of critical thinking about this to see that this would crash and burn, on the practical level of creating-a-painting-that-actually-looks-nice. So I guess I brought this on myself this evening.

I guess the take-away here is that if I want a successful painting, I should have a clear concept of what I want, and how to go about making that happen. And a bit of prep-work wouldn’t hurt anything either. I think a pretty good rule of thumb is that if I don’t even know how I’d go about drawing a particular subject, perhaps I shouldn‘t try painting it.

Now like I said at the beginning of this thing - I don’t think this is even a bad start, or that it would turn out badly if I continue on with the painting. And perhaps I will. I’m not quite sure yet. But from a purely desired-outcome standpoint here, today did not go well.

Silver linings though: I enjoyed the way that I started on the painting. I tried a method that I’d been thinking about trying for my start today, and it was super fun! I had fun mixing paint, and applying paint and just generally being around paint. But I probably should have had more of an idea of what I was going to do than just “try a new method for starting a painting”. Perhaps having a plan would have actually let me have fun with the painting.

Oh well - lessons learned.

-ZR