In Life and in Painting a Goal with a Plan is What You Want

I painted a self portrait.  At first I didn't like it at all, but the more I look at it the more I like it.  It is far from perfect, but I got some things right.  The proportion is wrong, the nose is too small, the mouth is hugemongous, the eyes are kind of scary, but for all that it still is kind of cool looking.

I used the Photo below to paint from.  As you can see not entirely successful, but still similar enough that I have hope I will grow this skill if I continue to practice.

Then once I was finished with my painting and didn't want to do anything else to it.  I still wanted to paint.  I couldn't figure out what I wanted to paint.  My husband suggested I paint a bowl of fruit, I thought that might be an interesting experiment.  As I didn't have any fruit to put into a bowl I went online for images.  There was a dearth of anything I thought was interesting and I could paint at my current skill level.  I finally found a pencil drawing of some apples, bananas, a lemon, strawberries and grapes.

My attempt was a complete failure, I didn't like the colors how I mixed them, my proportions were way too wrong.  So I stopped and painted over it all with all the colors I had mixed, I have a muted rainbowy background waiting for a painting on it now.  It got me to thinking.  I listen to motivational speakers on CD when I'm driving to and from work, many of them talk about deciding what you want in great detail, writing it down, envisioning it.  Until you know exactly what you want how can you work towards it?  A good painting is much the same as living a good life, you have to have a plan, and know what you want, or you will just aimlessly be putting color to canvas.  There are people who say that abstract paintings are like that, and maybe some are.  But I think that the good abstract paintings convey an emotion, a feeling of being in a specific frame of mind.  You can't fall into that by accident, you must create it.

So, my next painting I'll spend more time actually planning it, up til now I've just kind of played.  The most planning I did was to find a picture of myself I thought I might be able to paint, and modify it so it would print decently on our little black and white printer.

I'm not sure what I'll decide to paint next, though I am thinking of a bowl of fruit.  If I do paint a bowl of fruit, I will first go choose fruit from the grocery store.  Then arrange it in a bowl and take photos of it.  I'll then get the photos printed, and paint from one, or all of those.  I will probably look into how to get a good handle on proportion.  I may even attempt a sketch first.  So I'll get back with you once I have my planned out painting done.