Batting Practice

Pool in Oswego Creek 16x20

Sometimes when things just aren't flowing, you have to keep showing up for batting practice, keep the arms swinging, even through the misses.  I can feel discouraged when I can't achieve the same results I have recently painted, but I have to have faith that I haven't taken a hit to the head and forgotten everything I have learned; it's all in there somewhere, I just need to tap back into it.  Like the baseball player in my analogy, I have to step back into that batting cage and face the humiliation of the swing and the miss.  Not every step will be a step forward.  It should be, but it isn't.  In the above painting, I was drawn to the way the light brought out a different quality in the color of the water as the pool deepened, and as the sun reflected off that spot, but the painting reveals a disconnect between the colors that makes it feel disjointed.  Or maybe it's the composition that is too jumbled.  There is something to be explored in the dark warm greys of the stones, purplish against the greens.

I want to explore the nuance in the temperature of colors of the face, even while continuing to work on finding resemblance.  It is exasperating to get so close to laying in the various elements and still miss the essence of the individual, the soul that great portrait painters can capture, making their paintings even more alive and truthful that the living model themselves.  

On a side note, I am giving away a few of the bumper stickers I have ordered, below: