When you paint you are doing nothing more than making corrections to the line you put on one second ago. You go over and over it till you find the voice of the painting and then you listen to that voice and obey it and paint it and that is how you get a painting.
Nobody but nobody knows what the finished product will look like.
So with this in mind I am going to teach the kids art class about respecting the line just before you get the good one. The line that looks awful and the color that is horrible and not at all what you want to say.
Those lines are the structure upon which you make the corrections. You can’t make any corrections unless you do something first. anything first.
So if you embrace the structure as structure and not a mistake and a commentary on how bad you are as an artist you will save a lot of time.
You will see what needs to be done next if you don’t get all caught up in the egoness of it , all in the mud.
the mud is your best friend.
Nobody paints inspired work right out of the shoot. If you can pump out lots and lots of good looking work without going through the mud stage then I would venture to say you are not inspired.
You have to let go of the side of the pool to be inspired. You have to trust the angel wings to hold you up when you are inspired and you have to not be afraid to look bad to be inspired.
the old addage it is always darkest before the storm is true true true.
This painting I am showing you here is one of the hardest ones I ever did. It took me three weeks and many hours of mud and screaming to get it out.
But in the end it is sublime.
Inpired work is more than you normally can do.