An artist's hell is...
Nov. 22nd, 2004 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joflasherMy parents only have one painting of mine. Only one. Its a truely HIDEOUS creation I did back in school as an exercise in stretching canvas the old fashion way. Yes, the canvas was the point of the exercise. The painting on it was just to get full credit on the damn thing. HIDEOUS painting. I did it in about 6 hours and you can tell.
My parents love it. Got it framed at an expensive framing shop (which they had to do, since I made it some odd ball size like 21 1/4 x 37). At least they put a hideous frame on it to go with the hideous picture. Have you seen those horrid, wide, faux carved, faux gold, faux antique things in the framing shops? Thats what they put on it. Anyways, I've been trying to convince them to remove it from the living room for years. Last winter, I finally said to my step-dad "listen, just what would I have to do to get to you put that damn thing in the den instead of the living room" His answer? Paint a portrait of your mother and me. A big one. Okay...
Sounded simple enough. Until I got going at it.
First, my parents are getting up there in age. Yep, wrinkles. And grey hair. Or no hair, depending on which parent you are talking about. They are also a bit on the "plush" side. Wrinkles and fat. Okay, not exactly my strong point. My strong point seems to be default fantasy women (which my mother is NOT) and metal frogs. You want frogs? I can do frogs. Wrinkles, not so much.
Added to that is the fact that my mother is a very gifted artist as well. She does oil landscapes that look like photographs. None of those "fan brush = pine tree" short cuts, she actually does all the little details. Its insane.
So she should appreciate all the hard work I put into a portrait, right? Um, yeah, but she's also never once looked at painting of mine without telling me where it needed work. Not once. Now her critiques are normally dead on accurate but I want to present them with a finish, matted and framed portrait at Thanksgiving. It has to be finished then. As in, I don't want her to be able to point to this, that and the other thing and say "those need to be tightened up". Which means I keep dragging random people in to look at it and setting it upside down on the floor and looking at it in the mirror and asking my cats for advice and basically not painting it. Well, that's not true but its going twice as slow as it should and three times slower than it needs to in order to get done by Wednesday.
Stress ball, stress ball, rolly polly stress ball.
My parents love it. Got it framed at an expensive framing shop (which they had to do, since I made it some odd ball size like 21 1/4 x 37). At least they put a hideous frame on it to go with the hideous picture. Have you seen those horrid, wide, faux carved, faux gold, faux antique things in the framing shops? Thats what they put on it. Anyways, I've been trying to convince them to remove it from the living room for years. Last winter, I finally said to my step-dad "listen, just what would I have to do to get to you put that damn thing in the den instead of the living room" His answer? Paint a portrait of your mother and me. A big one. Okay...
Sounded simple enough. Until I got going at it.
First, my parents are getting up there in age. Yep, wrinkles. And grey hair. Or no hair, depending on which parent you are talking about. They are also a bit on the "plush" side. Wrinkles and fat. Okay, not exactly my strong point. My strong point seems to be default fantasy women (which my mother is NOT) and metal frogs. You want frogs? I can do frogs. Wrinkles, not so much.
Added to that is the fact that my mother is a very gifted artist as well. She does oil landscapes that look like photographs. None of those "fan brush = pine tree" short cuts, she actually does all the little details. Its insane.
So she should appreciate all the hard work I put into a portrait, right? Um, yeah, but she's also never once looked at painting of mine without telling me where it needed work. Not once. Now her critiques are normally dead on accurate but I want to present them with a finish, matted and framed portrait at Thanksgiving. It has to be finished then. As in, I don't want her to be able to point to this, that and the other thing and say "those need to be tightened up". Which means I keep dragging random people in to look at it and setting it upside down on the floor and looking at it in the mirror and asking my cats for advice and basically not painting it. Well, that's not true but its going twice as slow as it should and three times slower than it needs to in order to get done by Wednesday.
Stress ball, stress ball, rolly polly stress ball.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 02:34 pm (UTC)(yeah, I'm useful...)
(And I love the HIDEOUS painting, too... *ducks and runs*)
no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 04:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 05:51 pm (UTC)In any case, having seen your work (oddly, not in person, only on the net AFAIK), I think you're terrifically talented and the result will undoubtedly be wonderful. (I'm sure it doesn't feel that way right now.)
Coincidentally, the last creative thing I did was short fusion-prog rock thing I threw together in 6 hours for a friend's birthday. I have to say, it's unfortunate, but there's something about the whole deadline thing that forces one to make decisions that shape a work quickly, which in this case, worked for me. (OTOH, the music is all synthesized right now so last step of actually producing something someone can listen to is relatively quick.)
Best of luck!
no subject
Date: 2004-11-23 05:54 am (UTC)If she critiqued it, it wasn't within my hearing. I'm pretty sure she figured I'd use it as an excuse to take it home with me and conviently "loose" it.