Saturday, February 13, 2010

Art tip for the day...It's Okay to Give Up but Reconfigure if you can!


It's OKAY to throw away your painting if you don't like it. As artists we always hate to do that. It's like you have to chop off our arm to part with one. This is another tip from my art teacher, Robert Rumel. I learned how to do this. In fact there are probably some garbage men with some of my paintings that I put on top of the trash (or they may have squished them and called it good). My sister was working on a painting of a swamp in the south and got sick of it. She put it out for trash but changed her mind. When she went out there it was gone! But you do have to be careful. Consider whether you can cut it down and save some of the good elements. If it's canvas it can always be re stretched. Back to the garbage men's paintings-There's one that I did of my husband in high school with his old Rocket car. I wish I could get it back and save that part. It was just the scenery we didn't like.

Another thing you can do is cut it up into smaller pieces and use what you've done as underpainting. That works out quite well because you will get some elements that you like and you might want to include them in your new painting. Or you can just paint over the whole thing but you have to be careful if you do. You can't paint over acrylics with oils. It will peel off. So, you would have to continue with oils (you can paint over acrylic with oils just fine as long as they are a nonslick finish type).

Tomorrow I'll tell you about one painting I did resurrect. That will be my tip of the day as it includes some new ideas.

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