For four days now I’ve been painting Rosario, and today I attempted to add shadows and completely messed up the painting. If I were painting in oil, I could just add turpentine and wash my mistakes away. But I’m painting in acrylic, and as I’ve said, acrylic is unforgiving. The only way to salvage my painting is to use the acrylic as an underpainting and paint over it in oils. That would allow me to fix some of the proportional issues and blending shadows would be easier. So now I have to decide, do I want to just heave the painting into the trash or do I want to wait a few days and let my tempers cool and try again?
I have set goals for myself. I have a vision of what kind of artist I want to be, and this painting is not up to my own standards of quality. I’m not a perfectionist, because I don’t believe perfection is achievable. But I do think I am able to tell the difference between what is good work and what is not. So today counts for a failure, and maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to learn the lessons I need to learn from my mistakes. For right now, I just want to curl up on the sofa and watch period dramas.
