No judgmental commentary from me today. Instead, here’s today’s #BobRoss #painting practice. This is the My First Painting from the basic paint set. I did it today, because @annewheaton is doing her own version of this, too, and we are painting together!
I was practicing mountains, and just doing a shit job. I could not get the paint to break, I felt like I was using someone else’s hands, and it was a frustrating, demoralizing experience.
Every time I wanted to stab the canvas, I scraped it clean and started over. Eventually, I ended up with a ton of various blue shades on my pallette.
I didn’t want to just throw it away, and I didn’t want to give up while I felt like an asshole who will never be any good at this, so I just started practicing again, but this time I didn’t care much about the colors. I ended up working with those colors and got something that matches my mood pretty accurately.
I don’t think you can see it, but the *technique* for my trees is real solid, even if the colors aren’t there. The mountain is okay, but not great. I’m struggling like hell to see it in my head before I get into it, and I still can’t do that. I feel like I end up icing a cake when I try to out on the snow, and it’s really demoralizing and frustrating. The distant trees going up the slop make me happy, and I like the reflections I tried out.
I still feel unsettled and kinda pissed at myself because I am just. Not. Getting. It. With the mountains, but I’m gonna a focus on how I ended up with this color study (I guess? Is that what it is?) that just feels like bleakness trying to be beautiful, which is very much how I feel in the empty space where my soul should be.
I still feel like I want to put on a heavy coat and grab some hot chocolate and go hang out there for a couple hours.
funny thing, without the artist’s commentary, you’d never know how much struggle went into this painting, or how much work went into getting it to look like this. You’d think the artist just tossed this off no problem, or something.
I can’t tell if the shadowy mountains in the distance are previous fuckup mountains that got removed, or if they’re there on purpose, but honestly I wouldn’t have doubted on purpose without the commentary. It looks like a fog is descending and there’s a whole mountain range back there, half-hidden.
I think it just goes to show that as an artist (or writer, or singer, or whatever) you see all the ways that it didn’t turn out how you wanted it to, but the audience only sees the way that it did turn out. The audience isn’t comparing it against the imaginary perfect artwork in your brain.
Posting this here because someone might just find this relatable. A comic I drew as therapy, to help me get over some big creative issues I’ve been dealing with recently. Hope it can help some of you as well.
