A short sunflower sketch tonight. My heart wasn’t in it tonight and I felt my concentration slipping tremendously even twenty minutes into the painting.
It has taken me a while to get of the need to make masterful paintings every night. Although I do care about my work, I care that it should be done well and to the best of my ability when I can. But, many days come along where I my head or heart isn’t in it and then the main goal changes to time. I believe that repetition is the best teacher, well, that and time. This is the underlying goal for my daily paintings, learning. If I learn by doing, practicing, repetition or just making enough mistakes and not repeating them, then I’m happy. As long as I learn something.
So what did I learn tonight? Sometimes sunflowers are hard and sometimes their easy. And I think this boils down to just basic shapes and mostly drawing. For some reason on this painting I had a lot of trouble just seeing the basic shapes of the pedals. What ended up was no well formed areas and a lot of bad drawing. So next time, when I begin to loose focus I will do what I have done before. Slow down, focus on the shapes, or just one very small shape. Get it right, then move on to the next.
The Setup
The Subject
