Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Urban Escape 4

Depressed. Only artists know what it's like to mess up a picture and today I've tried to "fix" the strange butterfly buildings in Urban Escape and accidentally make them too dark and that has affected the composition dramatically and detrimentally. It was my fault for spontaneously deciding to paint them like butterfly wings during glazing. In the past doing that has usually worked but in this case the tonal changes were too radical and I used iridescent paint that was difficult to control. I should have ensured that the tones were established during underpainting or been less radical in my inventions. Now I must try to rescue the picture and I think that a darker glaze in the shadow of the horse is the best option. On the plus side though; I think that the butterfly wings were the right thing to put there and the painting without them would not have been as true. Also being spontaneous is the essence of surrealism so that too should never be eliminated. I lost concentration regarding tones until too late so must remember to think twice and paint once; but every painter says that after a mistake. Lessons have been learned then. A plan of action formulated. But it still hurts.