Everytime I paint a cityscape or something architectural I am completely drained mentally at the end. I think it is all of the editing, deciding how to handle what seems like a billion little angles and perspective issues plus the lack of experience with these subjects that wears me out.The above painting was no exception.
Painted with Plein Air Nashville on Saturday morning and we painted in Edgefield, one of the older areas of Nashville that is being remodeled and is actually a very nice area, especially architecturally. Lots of nice homes. We painted from East Park and I tackled this little church. It was a foggy, damp, thick kinda' day with clouds and no sun. This painting did not come easy for me and I was very dissatisfied with the result. It was about to be "scrapped off" but was spared and taken home. After looking at it for a while I actually saw some things in it that I am quite pleased with even though it will never see the inside of a frame. Ya' know, 2 years ago if I had done this painting I would have been doing backflips. Now, it was almost scraped.
It is so rewarding to go back and look at what you were doing a year or two ago as an artist. You never feel like you are getting better until you look back. Getting better has been a very organic process of just painting so much and ingesting so much information it just happens. I don't think I will ever be as good as I want to be but it is nice knowing if I continue to work hard it will be dramatically better than it is.
4 comments:
A lovely piece....love you way of doing trees!!
Thanks for the comment. As you can tell from the blog I had very little confidence in this piece. Your comment may have saved this paintings life!
This is a keeper. I like the fuzzy/foggy brush work. Paul Lenk would approve of your perspective.
Thanks Ouser. You need to figure out your schedule so you can go with us on Saturdays. It's a great group and a lot of fun.
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