Crash and Burn – when it goes wrong
Feb 20, 2018
Last week I mentioned a new painting of a Historic Woolshed – well it didn’t go well! It’s definitely not the first time and won’t be the last, this time I decided I had a boring composition, it looked predictable and ‘chocolate boxy’, so it met with the fire yesterday.
Rather than being upset (trust me there is a moment when I feel like throwing a brush at it), at risk of sounding cliche I’ve always learnt loads from the failures. And on the flip side there’s probably a humdinger good painting coming. I compare it to baking cakes, sometimes the cake just goes ‘god damned perfect’! – sometimes it just goes a little flat!
Like baking a cake I start with a basic recipe – composition knowledge, technical ability etc etc, but there is still the great unknown when you start turning a blank canvas into a finished painting. There’s so many facets to this whole art game that I love, but the nature of an unknown result is really cool. Every painting is its own unique creation, I become completely engrossed and experience a range of highs and lows, deal with problem areas and discover techniques, while always adding to the skill and knowledge base that drives me to paint the next one better!
So, I’m not done with this Historic Woolshed, I will be back! take the lesson, pull out the parts that went well, reconvene, re-stretch and start over. Here’s crop of the block in, I did like the sheep idea.
Meanwhile I have just received an order of new frames for stretching, the idea of a couple of large format seascapes has been growing in my head and now the frames are here, no promises! I have a new smaller seascape on the easel at the moment – it’s going well.
Cheers, Wayne
