Saturday, August 1, 2009

A Confession

I am not the only artist who has heard that it must be "so much fun" to paint. Many times it is. But there are times when it can best be described as tedious drudgery.

A professional singer does scales. A football player runs drills. A student works on his calculus. None of these activities could be considered "fun."

But, they are necessary to achieve the final result. The perfect pitch aria, the touchdown, the.... well, maybe calculus was a bad example.

A "this is no fun" mantra accompanied painting some of the foliage and smaller branches. I couldn’t just blob on the green if I wanted that airy feeling of the acacia. So, it was slogging through it, bit by bit to achieve just the tone I wanted.

Detail of painting.

The next step is to paint the zebra and leopard.

No comments: