Loose and Bold
5x7,soft pastel
It's a beautiful day today...lots of gorgeous fresh snow. BUT, I think maybe I have had too much coffee. I started on the next piece but couldn't settle down (it's a piece that has a lot of detail). What to do....what to do!! A change of plans.
I decided to do a plein air looking out the window at a beautiful evergreen covered in snow.....BUT, no matter how I tried, it just wasn't happening. I tried...wiped it off, tried again, wiped it off, tried again, wiped it off....and so on and so on for at least a couple hours. I REFUSED to quit....which was in fact part of the problem. By gosh, I was going to paint today if it killed me!!!! (have I confessed yet on this blog that I am a bit stubborn?) By this time I had pretty much rubbed off the grit from the paper...it was a soft mushy mess! I was in a battle with this paper and I refused to give in and pull out a fresh piece! (Hmmm, stubborn to the core)
I wonder if other "artists" have this problem...and I do mean "artist" in quotation marks because I sure didn't feel like a real artist today. I felt like such a failure...does anyone else go through this much frustration? Well anyway...I decided my last try would be to attack the canvas...go all out and take my frustrations out on it...then I could get the agnst out of my system once and for all. Or perhaps be carried away in a straight jacket!
I practiced on a piece using a recent painting by Karen Margulis as an example of how to loosen up and be bold. Karen is a great artist and has a blog titled Painting My World...check it out and you'll be amazed. So, today was a practice day.
I'm really not sure if I have just committed a terrible sin using someone else's art for practice. I hope not...I certainly won't sell it. But the Little Catholic girl inside me is secretly feeling guilty. I promise to say three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers. All I know is that I needed the practice...and more importantly I needed to excise the demon within!
