This could be considered a sad update to the last post.  As detailed in the previous blog entry, I had sketched out this complicated weird perspective piece.  I always take on more than I think I can handle with these paintings, forcing myself to learn/paint new things.  However, this time it was just too much.  I’ve never painted a forest floor like that before.  The usage of the Cheshire cat holding the camera was really awkward.  The rabbit’s footing doesn’t make much sense and was really hard to imagine at that off-angle (I don’t exactly have a rabbit to pose in real life to study from).  However, more than anything, the small size of the canvas (11×14) was making painting the small lines necessary for the playing card army impossible! (how the hell do painters do tiny detailed pieces with acrylic paint?!)

So, on Tuesday night, I had a mini-breakdown and felt like I did in college and the few years after where I would try to paint, get a horrible result and eventually give up assuming I was a terrible artist.  This always occurred because I didn’t know what to do or how to do it.  My painting “instruction” in college consisted of critiques, not technical (color mixing, glazing, etc.) lessons.  Back then I thought that the things I didn’t understand were supposed to be latent (after all, why ELSE would my instructors never touch upon it?).  I didn’t realize until much later that even people like Norman Rockwell took photographs of everything they were about to paint so they could get it to look right and “real.”  It turned out that my instructors in college weren’t concerned with the “real” and were focused on “modern” and/or “abstract” art.  They conveniently forgot that even Picasso was a classically trained artist and could paint in the realist style very well.  Check out this portrait of his mother he painted:

CLEARLY Picasso had skills developed in similar fashion to the old masters before turning to more abstract forms.  In fact, Picasso’s father was a fine art instructor, and his family sent him to the best art academy in Spain that counts Dali as a fellow alumni and Goya as a director.   The lesson here is that great art doesn’t appear out of thin air – or just “from your imagination” as many like to say.

Needless to say I have no photographs of walking talking (and angry!) playing cards, old rabbits or cats holding cameras.  After about a week of work (maybe 6 or 7 hours) putting paint on the canvas I was getting slower and slower, enjoying it less and less until Tuesday night not at all.  I was trying to force something good out of my “imagination.”  However, without any experience with the subject matter my imagination hit severe stumbling blocks, like what a cat’s paw REALLY looks like holding a camera.  It was too much.

I did something I rarely do – stop, admit failure and start over.

Just for some perspective on how hard this was for me, keep in mind I never dropped a class in my entire collegiate career or even arrived late!  I don’t quit things.

But I did quit.  And painted over the above disaster on Wednesday night to start something new.  Of course, since February is a short month I’m now under the gun to get the new piece ready in time for the show!

On Wednesday I sketched out a much simpler concept (inspired, I’ll admit, by Ray Caesar‘s work).

To be fair, I noticed the next day that the pose is very similar to a sketch that Sam did last year in her sketchbook of a little girl holding a pig.  However, I haven’t seen that drawing in a year, and obviously didn’t sketch over it – so I don’t think I’m pulling a Shepard Fairey or anything….right?

A bad xerox scan of the unfinished drawing appears below…