Beauty is Pain

Beauty

This painting has been the bane of my existance and the love of my life for about 9 months now. It is sickening to think of how long is has taken me to get to this point-- this point of knowing it is near finished but there is still a lot of work to do. 

The hours put into this painting, messing it up, fixing it, messing it up, fixing it.. it is frustrating to think about. You would think that with all of the skill that I possess, that I would have been more efficient. That my brush would have been more sure. Such is never the case. Because my work, whether it is commissioned or not, reflects what is also going on within me and within my world. If my painting is messy, it is likely that my life is just as well. So that's where I was in the initial stages of creating this. Just unsure and not confident about where I was going with it. 

I recall walking by it a few times, looking at it, and uttering a curse. Artists are damned by being so passionate. You know that you've hit an all-time low when you can knowingly admit that you have become defeated by a painting, by an unanimate object of your own creation.

It is nice to be able to see this in the same context that you all are looking at it now. This image was taken with a cell phone camera much better than the one I'd been working with before, and uploaded via my Instagram. I can really analyze it outside of the studio which helps me look at it from a wider perspective. 

With that said, I can't believe I'm still not happy with the majority of it. Instead of seeing just a few tweaks to make her hair transition nicely into the background, I am thinking about re-doing all of her skin to match the face, because I like those tones much better. But I know that once I do that, I will also have to add a bit more color to the blanket. All of a sudden I have much work ahead of me.

Time to get started.