Gotta accept your bad art b4 you can get good at it

I'm still dreaming about (trying) painting. Time to put some effort into the 2D world. Got my table laid out better with my colour options where I can see them and more media at hand so I don’t need to go scrabbling around in boxes to find stuff.

Thought about painting for so long but done little to actually get started. Read a piece on perfectionism. Apparently it's pretty common for folks to get so wound up about how to produce a ‘good’ painting right away that they never start for fear it will be rubbish. Well, I’ve done a few paintings and for sure...they are pretty rubbish.

And I'm showing them here because...why pretend everything goes as planned? That every sculpture is fit for sale and every painting turned out just as you imagined? Truth is it can be hit and miss when starting out and even accomplished artists mess up things and throw canvases in the bin.

So, had another go at an abstract dance piece but I ran out of ideas on how to pull it all together. Just didn’t look right, with a large empty space in one corner, three ribbony bits that were too similarly located, a spot in the middle of the 'swirl' that was a bit vague about how it fit and it did need the other leg to be clearly defined. But the colours were nice though they look washed out on the right side in this pic.

It’s since had a total revamp into something I never ever intended after a major amount of fiddling (still not happy with the figure itself) and...it’s very colourful but not sure it’s very ahm, sophisticated?!

This is a first do over but I’m still pondering how to rescue the revamped version so not showing it...yet.

Here's how it looked before I messed it up. The craft knife was for fixing up the swirl i.e. to scrape off some of the modelling paste...Ah well, at least I have some colour combos I know work pretty well.

Did a square piece which again, having stuck my base colours on and found some nice swirls appearing, grinds to a halt re what to do next. This is my problem. Start off with a general idea then don’t know how to develop it and get too fixated on the initial forms to dare mess with it! So much for intuitive painting. If I work that one out I'll put the before and after in the next post.

Hmm, what to do about this? For starters I got out my note book with scribbled notes on composition, design etc., for pointers. Then snagged a book on colour recipes on a visit to Kingston a couple of weekends ago (first time there since before the first lockdown!). It’s blessed with both a Cass Art and Pullingers with The Works as a bonus for cheap but good quality canvases.

What I really wanted was one of those silicone wedge painting tools that are the rage these days. (Is another tool really the answer?) They make really nice effects and blend paint well and it all goes on the canvas instead of excess being left on the paint. Then again, if you use a plastic palette you can peel of the dried paint and use it in mixed media.

Neither shop had them. Had to order one online. Anyhow, I hoped it would loosen up something in my head but dayyum, it’s hard putting things together in a way that doesn’t look like a dog’s dinner. So many things you could do but I just don't know what the 'right' thing is. For my taste, a lot of abstract looks like messy, random, horrible colours...but it works for someone so who am I to say when I can’t even finish any painting?

But time for another bash at things. Prepping by watching some Youtube videos, it looked simple enough.

Hahahaha!

I should know better by now after trying acrylic pours. My first piece had one too many colours and it’s certainly bright but the composition doesn't work. I guess I can work on it to try and bring it under some kind of control and along the way might even figure out why it does or doesn't work.

So here's dog's dinner #1. Somehow I feel this is going to be a heavily used piece to do very radical (for me) things to a canvas.

The next one I did using a pad of canvas sheets. The canvas isn't great but good enough for practising on. Stuck to deep purple plus magenta then a bit of white at the end. I just blobbed some paint on the canvas and started but realise I should’ve spread it around a bit first then scraped as it was so dense and heavy and the magenta got lost in it all. Okay, ‘nother lesson learned.

The next one was a similar colour mix to a 'simple' tutorial piece I’d watched. This time I didn’t overlay the colours, spread the paint around first then swooshed and it worked much better. Composition still naff but the markings looked good and the colours retained their clarity.

Progress!

Can't decide if it's better to work with colours still 'wet' or let them sit a while. I've seen both being used while others go for blending right from the start but you have to know your colour mixing to not end up with an odd brown shade like I did. Hence my splurge on a colour book since I'm a bit bad at that.

Here are dog's dinners #2 and 3. I tried to use a bit of white around the edges to soften things which really didn't work well at all. I'm using tubes of cheapo paint I bought from WH Smiths years ago and also b-sides of bad drawings for these test pieces so I'm not fretting over wasting the good stuff. It doubles with clearing out as I go since I have way too much stuff that's sat unused for years. Bonus.

Now I'm going to go back and watch those videos again and really pay attention to what they're doing, look at their colour choices and try for myself to see what kind of effects, patterns and line control is possible. Maybe it will give me some ideas of how to use this tool to develop my own style, cos who wants to do work that looks like someone else's?

There's no escaping it. Drawing and copying what's in front of you is a whole other skill to using paint and putting together a composition that works. Some folks just get it, others have to work at it. Playing with ideas and producing bad art is tough to do as a grown up after spending a childhood on pencil drawing from photos on random bits of paper with no thought beyond one single image. That's my excuse anyhow!