1992 - Residence. Painting sits on easel the whole school year. I was using the grid copy method. In theory when all the little squares were done it would come together. I don’t know if I added to it, but I sure didn’t finish it.
Perfectionist freeze. When you expect perfection from yourself and you look at your canvas but you do not dare put paint on the canvas. How can you? You know your feeble brushstrokes are not going to create something that matches up to your vision. The same thing can happen with any creative endeavour. Example: years back I had an idea for a website that would feature the work of creatives and include a way for them to be compensated for their work. I even had a name for it, Pass the Hat. I never created it. But someone else did and Patreon is the name they attached to it. Ideas are easy! Putting the work in to make the thing is hard.
Back to 1992-1993 and the painting. What was I painting? I was copying an illustration of Namorita, the Marvel Comics character. Not just any Namorita image either, this was a selection from the 1992 Marvel Swimsuit Special Volume 1. Namorita stands in front of cascading water “near Warrior Falls” according the accompanying text. Illustrated by Geiger. Steve Geiger I presume.
Starting to paint the Namorita image again was not easy, I put it off until I felt good enough, but when would that be? I painted a few pictures with people so far and it is a real challenge. I began with the background using Phthalo blue, and then adding in the foamy water with Titanium White. I blocked out the figure with dark colours, to get the pose and proportions. Even so I tweaked and adjusted them as I painted and noticed things like an arm at a wrong angle, or not long enough. I adjusted and increased the size of the posterior several times before it was roughly correct. I added mid tones and highlights to the figure, I repaired the damage to the water from moving an arm. I added more detail, bit by bit.
One thing I struggle with painting pictures of people is the colour of the skin. Getting something that looks right and isn’t too pink, too orange, or some other shade can elude me. At one point I had a nice pile of highlight, midtone, and shadow skin tones blended up, but I hesitate to blend too much as I don’t want to waste paint. The stuff is expensive!
Let’s not forget the perfectionist tendencies. I still fight them. Every painting. This one more than most as I tried to get the proportions correct, the detail of the face, the position of the hands and the water as it was disturbed by my adjustments of the figure. Eventually I forced myself to commit and finish the painting Sunday August 23rd, it already sat on the easel for a week or more, and I would not, could not, let history repeat. I signed it and removed it from the easel, loading in a new canvas.
I spotted a hilarious error afterwards, but I’m not going back to fix it! Do you see the missing part?
