I started a little painting a few weeks ago. It was nice to pull out my paints. It's been so long that I jumped right into applying paint to the canvas without going through all the prep work that used to be automatic: laying down newspaper, having water and paper towels aplenty, ensuring the wind won't flip something over onto wet paint. My carelessness became apparent when to my dismay, I found myself with yellow paint all over the wooden patio furniture, my shorts, and my hair. I had fun, nevertheless, putting down the base coats and getting a feel for the thing.
Weeks later, during a particularly mind-numbing workshop I was observing at work, I used some crayons lying on the table to plan the next steps of the painting in my notebook and felt quite pleased with the crayon results.
That weekend, I set up my work space carefully before turning to the canvas, heartened by my crayon plan and inspired by some photos of light and shadow I took in a magical park in France. But the minute the brush hit the canvas, I cringed. Not really getting the same effect as I did with the crayons on my notebook. Yikes. How to salvage the situation? Oh, well, I'd begun - no going back. I worked without much hope of success until I started experimenting a little with dabs of paint. And began enjoying the technique without the pressure of caring about the result. After a while, there was enough thick paint on the canvas that I couldn't do much else until it all dried. I packed up my paints and put the canvas aside, no longer sure where I was going with it.
A couple of days later, I bumped into the painting and it was as if I was seeing it for the first time. And...I kind of liked it. Looking at it in the morning light today, I was pleased with my progress but identified a few areas I wanted to work on. I occurred to me that I wasn't sure when I would consider the painting done. Will I just haul the thing out every couple of months and dab here and there, changing the feel and direction of the thing as it morphs from dappled sunlight to, say, post-apocalyptic dawn? Or will I leave it as is, enjoy what I like about it, and allow myself to contemplate the areas "to work on" as mysterious possibilities?
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