Learning to love the uglies

At the end of the day, you need only be satisfied with the performance

of one person: YOURSELF.

  

Sometimes I say I don’t like something I painted. It’s not false modesty from me. I just am like this. Others may say something along the lines of “I like it” or “I think it’s OK” but it’s not OK. I found out I’m unable to distinguish between a polite “Um, I like this” and a sincere “I really love it”. So the first filter for me is myself. If I like it, I’m satisfied and I don’t really mind if no one else does. If I have some objections, that’s another story. Sometimes, it nags me so much I have to rework the piece – not always getting the result I wanted. When I look at some of my paintings, I feel the frustration, the toil behind them, the dissatisfaction they brought. I’m still learning to embrace these unfortunates and I’m happy to say there are fewer of them now.

These are the latest examples of reworking gone not-so-good:

This page started wonderfully. I was so absorbed in the process that I failed to notice I had the page sideways when I started to glue down the quote. There was a piece of tissue paper as the first layer, so I managed to peel it all off in one piece and glued it down correctly. But somehow, the layout balance was gone for me. Also, I don’t like the font and I didn’t really get the colour of the letters right (I tried several colours – nothing seemed to work). I photoshopped the the quote out and added it in a different font. And nope, I still hate it. 

............................................................................................

I did a similar background in my Documented Life journal. I liked it, it got a lot of praise on the FB group, so I decided to recreate it in another journal. I still liked it a lot. And then I added the quote. And all the joy vanished. The background is very busy; it just doesn’t work well with anything else. It's OK, but not good enough.  

............................................................................................

This next one was a tough competitor. I just didn’t want to be conquered. I didn’t understand it. I tried and then I tried again. It was jinxed. I tried all my “regular” techniques but I was still getting “irregular” results. And I gave up on this one. [pun intended]

version 1

version 2

(no improvement...)

I think I know where the main problem lies. I used a couple of fabric sprays – and they did something strange – they somehow managed to react with every layer of paint/medium/finish I put on this page and created this “wonderful” muddy colour. I looked good when it was wet but it always dried to a unsatisfactory result....

empty teabags + some texture + a lot of inks/sprays

Then, after a couple of month, I decided to gesso over it. The old version got several coats of media and spray finishes. There is absolutely NO NEED for the original colour to seep through. But it just continued to defy me.

I give up...

............................................................................................

I was quite happy with this page. I started on a black background and added thousands of dots. But I still wanted to add something to it. I usually make a scan when I have a nice background - I didn't this time - and I'm kicking myself...

I had some leaf die-cuts, so I coloured them yellow. And then I had a bad mood and wrote my negative feelings on the leaves. And it just didn't look right. So, instead of painting over the leaves with more paint, I ripped them away completely. It waited in this desolate state for several months. Last month I finally finished it. And I'm happy to announce, I like this one very much.

All is well...