Musings on The Art Process

I'm going to talk about an aspect of the art/ painting process again today after a blog post I saw yesterday sparked some thought on it.

In my studio: Works in progress

It was this post by Pam Garrison, where she's showing the work process of some paintings. (Beautiful colours!)

A gorgeous little loose painting of a bird appeared, and then she said that for better or worse during the painting process, it had disappeared under another layer.

how beautiful is it..!?

This happens to me so much, and was it was interesting to read this process from another artist. I've been working on a painting recently, only quite small, about 8 x 10", and the layers it's had are plentiful! There's been flowers, birds, shapes... but I never stop until I've reached a point where I'm happy. I do love the texture and history that builds up in the process, which is a positive that comes out of this process.

And sometimes that means loosing something that you quite liked along the way.

And you can never look at a painting and guess how long it took to do. Sometimes they come out quickly, and others are a struggle. A lot of hidden hours can be layered under one piece.

Here's some images I lost in the painting process. (These were a painting challenge I did which you can read about here.)

I still haven't got over the fact that I didn't leave these paintings as they were!

And these are under paintings completely made to be painted over. I quite liked the second one as it was, but it's gone now.

And who knows where it will end up.

My sketchbook where I repeatedly cover images over and add layers

This is the one that has lots of layers, there are birds and flowers and fronds all hidden away in there :)

A close- up so you can see some of the built- up texture

So I hesitate to put a good or bad label on this aspect of the painting process, as I think it's sometimes an integral part of the process, depending on your painting style. Sometimes it's sad when you loose a certain aspect, but painting is not a linear process. Art is not created in that way. The rules are elusive, it's formula is hazy. Something that worked before may not work again. You can apply the same rules and come out with something fantastic, or something mediocre (as subjective as that may all be, anyway.) The universe takes your previously successful methods, churns them up and spurts them back out at you just to keep you on your toes. Because I think if we ever end up truly understanding the art process it wouldn't be Art anymore. 

Don't you think?

Jules :)