I took a risk on my new painting knowing that I could really mess it up, but knowing that I’ve got to mess it up to make it work. I’m reworking a whole section. The painting was not working as a whole. Parts of the painting were/are working very well and they ask more of the other parts. Maybe its the dimensions that are making it more difficult than expected – it is a long, tall painting – or… I don’t know what. When you have been working on something for so long, you lose perspective. A painting is a riveting puzzle. Like a good book, it doesn’t want to reach conclusion, so the only thing you can do was push it further. The change helped but the work has a way to go yet. I’m closer. The picture in this post is a detail of the painting, but not the section of the painting that was changed. The section pictured is not done yet, either.
I used Photoshop to test out the change before I implemented it on the painting. This made it seem less frightening, although repeating a simple Photoshop technique in paint is much more labor intensive and takes far more skill. This made me wish there was a Photoshop tool for acrylic painting. But a painting is not like a photograph, it cannot be altered or reproduced easily. A painting is unique in that it is one frame that will stay permanent. It is a decoration that will never move or move infrequently, and will only change with light (and dirt). Forever. So its a pretty daunting task to paint a painting and call it done.
