A couple of weeks ago I did a little three-day art retreat with an artist friend. We were at my home. I cleared out part of a room that had good light and we set up our art stuff, brought along plenty of materials and ideas, and spent three days painting. When I say “three days,” what I really mean is three 5 hour days with a brief lunch break. Painting takes incredible focus, and five hours of it just wiped us out. There is a reason the results are called “art work“! I know there are professional artists who work all day, but they have spent years building up to it. I usually work no more than a few hours at a stretch.

I made five paintings. Two are losers. Maybe I will eventually do something with them, but maybe not. One was not quite finished and I tweaked it over the following few days. But I will show you all of them here, in the interest of letting you see how erratic the process of painting can be. Years ago, when I first started painting, another pastelist invited me to see her studio. I remember her explaining her process, and at the end she said something like “…and if it’s not a success, I throw it in the fire.” It was wonderfully freeing. Not all paintings are a success, even for the most accomplished artist, and certainly not for me. Occasionally I can go back to one and change it up until it becomes something I like, but some just never see the light of day.

Here they are, in order in which I made them.

“Observation Post,” 8″ x 8″. I had already given some thought to how I wanted to approach this, which was very helpful. I knew that I wanted to add direction and texture to the sky to offset what was a fairly static image. I knew that I wanted the tree needles to be spiky and rough for the same reason, to add interest to the image. When I finished I was still not completely satisfied and felt that the color palette lacked spark. I added a line of red to the breast of the crow, which pleased me. It’s an ART crow, it’s not a real crow! And then I put a sprinkling of red in the tree as well. I quite like this one.

One of the losers. I feel that it just is not that good, and I’m not sure what I would do to salvage it. It’s from a photo I took in New York City, of all places, because I liked the curve of the trees. I do still like the concept, though, and may try again at some point.

“Night Lights.” I did get as far as titling this, but I still feel liken it is not quite “there” yet. It’s like the crow painting before I added the red – just a little too blah. I may go back to this if I get inspired about what it needs. Not a bad painting; it’s just not a good one.

At this point in the retreat, I was feeling discouraged. Three paintings into the process, and I only had produced one that I liked enough to frame and post. But I thought of an art workshop I took in which the instructor talked about the “four Cs” in art. They were concept, composition, color and commitment. Sometimes you just have to keep going. So I did.

“Origins,” 12″ x 18″. This is an interpretation of the origins of the universe. I was intimidated by the challenge of it, but I also really wanted to do it. So I did a couple of sketches first to figure out the composition, and then a very small version first (4″ x 6″), to see if I could work out color and other details. My artist friend suggested subtle shading of the background instead of pure black, and that helped. I finished the painting itself fairly quickly for something this size, probably because I had done all that preliminary work. I like it! It has drama and mystery, which I find intriguing.

“In My Mind,” 9″ x 12″. I did use one of my photos to remind me of a pattern in the clouds that I liked, but most of this was simply invented (thus the title). Really I just wanted to play with these colors: I just find purple, magenta, and gold so delicious. It has a vaguely landscape-y quality, but the landscape is really just in my mind. Even something that seems so loose and made up like this takes a lot of work to get the color balance, values (light and dark) and composition working. But it was fun to do.

“Scotland Forever,” 11″ x 14″. The reference photo was one I took in Scotland, land of heather, ancient stones, and brooding skies. The painting is not unlike the photos, but is more vibrant, of course, and I moved the tree to help the composition. I did a fair amount of color and value adjusting with this one, and this is the painting I continued to revise over the next few days. At first it was just too uniformly purple: purples in the skies, purples in the heather. I love the color and it’s a mistake I can make quite easily. Ultimately, I complicated and lightened the colors in the heather, adding muted pinks and blues. There are at least six or eight hues in there. I incorporated some soft gray-blue in the sky. I added in more grasses to give the scene the messiness of a real-life field. I recently discovered from an ancestry DNA site that I am a wee bit (as they would say in Scotland!) Scottish!

And that’s it. A productive three days. Wearing, discouraging, fun, and satisfying – which is pretty much how you might describe anything worth doing.