I don't always make good paintings. Sometimes, no matter how great the planning or carefully I work, the painting ends up dreadful. I don't usually throw them away, contrary to what everyone thinks. Sometimes I use them as foundations for new paintings, turning them upside down or sideways. Sometimes I cut them up and use sections of them for other projects like cutting butterflies or birds. This time I decided I was going to fix it. There were so many elements to the painting that I really loved - the color was bright, the vase was interesting, the metallic powder added depth- I just had to try. These are all the steps on this painting from start to abandonment and back to a little salvation.
I wet the paper and dropped acrylic inks on to the sheet. I added some darker pigments to create flower centers for my bouquet.
I taped out the area I thought would make a great vase and started to paint and stamp circle shapes.
I continued to add colors to the circles . I brushed the vase with acrylic glazing medium and shook a little Pearl X bronzing powder on the vase. I pulled a fan brush lightly through it to create streaking.
I was so disappointed in this painting, I did not even photograph it when it was finished. It had a terrible composition, lacking dimension in the flowers, and a strong division between the surface and the flowers. Yuk! I walked away from it for the weekend.
This morning I decided I'm going to fix this painting. The first thing I did is analyze what I liked and didn't like, and then tried to find a way to resolve the compositional errors. I used white chalk to draw a new design of flowers and shrink the vase. I taped out the vase to protect the new shape.
As you can see from the left to the right, the difference in the new painting compared to the old one. These flowers have a center. Some face front, a few face the back and a few more face the sides. I have a mixture of buds, fully opened flowers and a few petals falling away. I've also added leaves.
The next thing to tackle was the table. It was uninteresting and blended into the container. Since I did not have flowers breaking the plane of the table I thought I needed to do something vertical to bring the eye back up to the bouquet.
This is my completed painting. I really like it and am pleased with myself that I didn't throw the painting away. Here is what I learned.
- Give every painting a chance to survive. There are always options with the trash can being the very last one.
- A little time away from the painting changes the way you view your work, so be sure to wait a while before you do anything.
- If you are going to make a list of what is wrong, be sure to make one of what is right. Ask your self, Why did I paint it? In this case I wanted to try a new technique for a container and knew that I didn't want to give it up.
So pull an old painting out and give it a new life.
Cheers,
