Fools Rush in …… !

Only fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so goes the old saying and I fear that’s what happened to me with my ''new'' painting! You noticed fear and my doubts about what I was doing by the fact I went out sketching trees, didn’t you? And so nature took its course, I painted and painted and slapped on more pastel and got more blobby and finicky and something in my head said stop! Let us step back and take a peek at my thoughts.

And now without the comments! So let's see what I'm thinking. Firstly, you know my fear of hills, this was the first go at tackling them …. And yes, the hilly foggy part top left, I felt was going well, but what’s with the purple sky? Why did I do that? My plan in my head was for a kind of muted grey feel to put the focus on the golds and yellows. This putrid purple sky isn’t helping anything! 

Good, on a positive note I love the sweep of  the foliage which was definitely a compositional element I wanted to emphasise but it fizzles off into a meh at the terribly fussy, overblobby tree. 

Do you know what that overworked, fussy, blobby, finicky tree is telling you? Fear, lack of confidence, hill phobia! Confident strokes where I'm dealing with the known, brain busting, cramping fiddliness  with the unknown …… that tree is standing on a hill! And there is the rub! 

First of all the tree started squat, wide and branchy, it has become taller, wider and totally nothing to do with the tree I wanted to paint, twisted, gnarled and decked out with the odd golden cluster of leaves but really I should have realised from my reference, it was too small. 

When choosing the motif for a painting, you are wanting to tell a story …. The story of this painting should have been about that tree and the lovely swoosh of foliage sweeping up towards it. That requires a ''diva tree'', one that is in focus and stealing centre stage, not a pathetic apology for a blobby lollipop. On the reference photo I liked the contrast between the garlanded tree and the skeleton tree beside it, however the naked tree just looks completely ugly, and the ''story'' just doesn’t work. You are looking at naked fear here, so what now! This. 

I have never scrubbed off a piece of work before, this is a first! A scary premier … but let’s be honest, no loss. Can it be saved? I'm not sure and yes I could just bin it, but a) I'm a mean Scot and b) that would feel like capitulation …… and I'm  not a giver up. This one is a lesson, I'm always an over thinker, I plan my paintings in my head, if I feel uncomfortable with certain areas I do a couple of composition sketches just to give me confidence. I like to feel I have ironed out difficulties before I let rip because my mark-making should look spontaneous and confident, which it certainly isn’t doing here. 

Of course, as an observer you should look at a painting and enjoy it, read the story it tells and not think about the hows and whys and wheres …. Just feast your eyes on the image but sometimes I think it’s interesting to think about what goes on beforehand and maybe during. 

My family and friends always think I stand in front of my easel and I'm in my happy place having fun, that really would be nice but it’s ''artwork'' and not artfun. There are moments when it is ''fun'' and even more moments where is brainbustingly frustrating like at the moment. 

Do you know what? I even think the scrubbed out area is nicer than before! Well, however this one progresses from here (maybe into the bin), it’s been a valuable lesson well learned. Fear pushed me into this corner, throwing caution to the wind and resulting in a mess, I was afraid of hills and that fear has taken its revenge, confidence in tackling all of this has completely ebbed, maybe I should give up landscapes and start painting portraits of dogs! 

That was definitely a joke, if there’s one thing I can’t paint it’s animals ……. at primary school (where I won the first art prize ever awarded) my horses were legendary, stunt-necked and standing on two legs on one side, the other two legs were bent up at right-angles at the knee (never thought about the fact they would topple over)  even my doting mum was hard pushed to say something positive about them. I was definitely no Landseer, lesson learned, haven’t painted horses since. Hmmmm, perhaps I should give up the trees too!