Green Light -- Keep on Going

Earlier in the month I wrote a post about avoiding the trap of overworking a composition, a trap that frequently takes hold of me. I advocated stopping early in your work before mucking it up. However, I'm going to eat my words and advocate the opposite today. This painting is one that I mucked up early on in its creation. It began with a layer of red paint that I let dry, adding a layer of white, and then scratching back some of the white to reveal the red paint underneath. It looked horrible. There was no clear design to my scratching and the red poked out as pink. It was an ugly mess. I let it sit for several days, hating to toss it only because I didn't want to waste the acrylic paper on which it was created. Eventually I went back to it and pushed on. There was nothing to lose. I pulled out every green tube of paint, every green pen, every green pencil and paint marker and began working the four corners of the paper. I left a white band to divide the surface. I scribbled and layered, and kept turning those four corners. Then, all of a sudden I began to like the results. Finally, I stopped, splattered on a few finishing touches and decided maybe it was premature to advocate stopping early. Maybe that mucky mess just means it is time to press on and get over it.The painting is available for purchase as a fine art reproduction print in a variety of sizes and formats from my website. Hope you can stop by.