Some days are genius and every stroke with the brush is perfect and every color comes together without thought. Other days I mar the canvas with every stroke of the brush and can’t mix an accurate color to save my life. Days like that make me wonder why I even bother. I’ve read a few articles in the past explaining that the difference between successful and unsuccessful artists is their work ethic. The successful artist will sit down and work nearly every day and work through their struggles while the unsuccessful artist doesn’t. For years I only painted when I felt inspired. As a result, I completed a whopping 3 paintings in nearly 10 years. I decided that wasn’t the artist I envisioned myself to be so I forced myself to paint regularly. This led me to complete 9 paintings in 2015 and 6 so far in 2016 and I’ve seen a definite increase in my abilities.
For this blog, I’ve been trying to churn out a painting a week. This week is the first week that I failed. I have two painting close to completion and a pile of other paintings in the beginning stages. I’m struggling with all of them. I sat down to paint last night and probably made all of them worse. I hate days like that. I know it’s a natural part of painting, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about it. I just need to keep pushing myself to sit down and do it.
Here are two paintings I’m currently working on.
Keep it up 😉
I like your paintings, there is depth and movement in them. My favorites are those with big cloudy sky, they are lovely!
I do hate days where I lose that magical connection with my brushes. What helps me in days like these is to do color mixing charts, abstract painting and small color study as a warm up exercises.
Good luck!
Thank you! I’ve been trying to do busy work on difficult days. Building canvases, gessoing, varnishing, painting edges, etc.