Failure

There is nothing like a failed painting to remind me how much I have to learn. For that matter, what I consider my successes would be considered failures by experienced artists. Here are some examples of recent failures:

pastel on Canson Mi Teintes, textured side

 I did this painting based on a photo of breaking surf in Hawaii. The photo was beautiful, the painting isn't. The first mistake was using the textured side of the paper. The second mistake was working as I was viewing the photo on my tablet. I was unable to see all the nuances of the rocks and did not capture their beauty. The final mistake was when I sprayed on some Spectrafix fixative in hopes of being able to add more pastel. I didn't do a good spray job and some of the pastel ran. Lessons learned. If I were to try this again, I would do it on another surface (or at least on the smooth side of the Canson). I may have to try it again because, take my word for it, the photo is beautiful.

pastel on Wallis over pastel/alcohol underpainting

This is another painting based on one of my Hawaii photos. I really love the photo this was based on, but once again I couldn't capture its best qualities in a painting. I wasn't able to capture the light and shadows, as well as the beautiful variations of color and reflections in the water.

I decided to make an attempt to fix it. I removed all of the pastel down to the underpainting and tried again. I went for a looser style, but can't say that it improved matters any. And I wrecked the composition when I made the stream wider.

re-work over same underpainting

pastel over watercolor underpainting on Wallis sanded paper

This painting is supposed to be a hibiscus, but it ended up looking like either a frilly flying saucer, or huge orange lips. I was painting this as a gift for my sister-in-law for doing me a favor and ended up with nothing to give her. In retrospect, I think the problem is that the flower appears to be floating in space against the background. I should have realized the composition was a problem when this was in the underpainting stage. Maybe I can salvage this by working on the background, at a minimum add a stem and leaves so the poor blossom isn't suspended in space.