Nearly But Not Quite.

This is an odd title but denotes what I feel about many of my paintings. A sense of not quite getting there. The one below, done this week, is an example.

What I was interested in here was the heads of the animals, a rare Scottish breed, I reached this point and didn't quite know what to do next. Perhaps I should have stopped. Charles Reid says when you look at a painting and wonder what to do next the best thing it to stop. After reflection I carried on, feeling it was a bit too unfinished but was I right?  I don't know. Certainly overpainting is one of the worst faults artists painting in watercolour do. They just keep on when stopping - even if the painting is slightly unfinished - is the best option. Judi Whitton taught something similar.

Stonehenge Aqua not 16" x 12" 'Highland Cattle 'or 'Mother & Son'.

One of Charles other pearls of wisdom is that you reach a certain point in a painting where - if you make the wrong decision - it goes downhill or alternatively the right one and a decent painting emerges.

The other day I decided to take Robert Wades advice, illustrated in one of his videos, of going through that pile of paintings and discarding the ones that don't come up to scratch. In his case most of us would be delighted with the ones he tore up but.... I have a huge pile built up over some years so started on the first batch, about half the total. I segregated them into three piles. Those to be discarded, those where I could paint on the back - at over £1.50p a sheet now per block of Waterford this is an  option, and you can do it whatever might be said to the contrary. The late Ron Ranson told me he had a painting hung at the Royal Academy that was on the reverse of a 'failure'. The third pile were those I considered decent, although a few are borderline. Remember this is a hobby painter talking not a high profile artist. The discarded ones were torn up and put in the recycle bin. Do I feel better after doing this. Robert said he did and so am I. Actually it tidied things up somewhat.