This is the sketched out scene from Paris that I shared last week, and was so looking forward to painting:
Unfortunately, my enthusiasm didn’t translate hi particularly well!
Admittedly, this is a poor photo, taken when the paper was still damp and cockled, but even these extenuating circumstances don’t make up for what is a disappointing result.
It’s sometimes a struggle when your heart just isn’t in it, and that’s how I feel about my painting at the moment. I know that this is partly due to pressures elsewhere in life but in the past, my painting has been a kind of outlet or release valve. At the moment, however, it feels much more of a burdensome chore – which feels like such a terrible thing to say about a pursuit that I love so much.
Not sure what’s going to come next, but my instinct is telling me to seek refuge in my sketchbooks; to work a little smaller, a little faster, hopefully more freely and without any sense of expectation.
This is something that has worked for me in the past, so I have to have faith that it will be helpful once again!
1 thought on “Testing times”
If it helps, I often find myself struggling to finish a painting but I just tell myself it’s a MAWGUN (pronounced Morgan) Moment = “might as well give up now” and, since I know I always get them in the middle of any painting, I push on through and the end is normally okay. When it feels difficult to enthuse about even starting a painting, I look for a complete change. For example, I’ll switch to a pen-and-ink drawing or just a pencil drawing or two in order to face myself with new challenges. Or I’ll find a new challenge in a new kind of subject – something I haven’t successfully painted before. So, for example, I’ll go from portraits to landscapes or animals or full-length portraits or even still-life. Another challenge is a texture or material that I haven’t really painted before – could even be a particular type of sky. One of these will usually freshen things up until I find something that I’m desperate to paint again. Good luck!