Day 7 & Lessons Learned

Day 7 of the painting challenge produced a flop, a painting and taught me a lesson!

I started my day off early in the studio. Grabbed an 8 x 10 wood panel, turned the music on, sipped my tea and got right to work. I bought myself some flowers yesterday for my desk and I thought hmmm I think I'll paint a vase of flowers today, I was feeling inspired. I sketched it all out and thought about it for a bit and then got down to work by first laying down my background color. I was happy with the colors I was working with and happy with the arrangement of flowers in the vase - liked how the vase turned out, I was excited - so I started painting the flowers, and painting the flowers, and painting the flowers. I over painted the flowers - then I hated the background! I kid you not, I repainted the background 6 times. With each color change I got crankier and crankier - I stepped back from it, had some lunch, then painted some more. I ended up with my background being the very same color that I had started with. ------grrrrrrrrrr------ This painting and I were NOT getting along - I had over worked this painting so much that it didn't even look like my work - it was feeling so forced and I was beating up on myself for creating a disaster - so I stopped, tucked the painting out of sight and grabbed another wood panel. I took a deep breath, loosened up on my paintbrush and myself and ahhhhhhhhh.... I created a little gem I was very happy with. The exciting part is that I see ways to expand on this painting - elements within it will make great patterns. I felt my voice in this painting - I stayed true to myself and let go of what was not me.