Part of learning is screwing up. Walking, talking. It all goes wrong initially. For me, sometimes it still does, thanks to MS, but let’s leave that there. This is about painting and what I have learnt from completely screwing up a painting. Luckily, the next painting after that has been one of my best so far.
The Idea and Preparation
I mean, I thought the idea was really good. Take one of my photos and make a cubist painting of it. Brilliant! Make room, Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, here I come! Well, I never pretended I was going to reach that level, of course. As I seem to keep saying, I am no expert on art but, for some reason, I quite like cubist paintings, the same way that I quite like abstract works. I would love to give some intellectual reason why but there isn’t. I just plain like them. Which is enough, isn’t it?
So I chose a photo. Of a windmill1. I live in the Netherlands, after all. Maybe not the nicest picture I have of a windmill, but I thought it was the best basis for the painting. I then started a, for me, quite thorough preparation. No, just slapping the paint on the canvas this time! I did a couple of sketches, one based on another windmill picture. When I was happy with the form, I started the painting.
Screwing Up in Slow Motion
I did not rush this one but slowly painted a crude outline based on my sketch. I then slowly and, I thought, methodically started to add colour to the work. Slowly but surely the form of the painting came through and I realised I had actually been screwing up in slow motion. I realised fairly early on but the stubborn part of me did not want to give up.
The End Result
Picasso and Gris would have been proud of the end result! When they had been ten years old… Or maybe five. My high-minded work ended up, to my eyes, looking like something a child had produced. A pretty good child when it came to painting, it has to be said! But… not what I was looking for! Clouds looked like mountains, which is out of place in a painting involving a Dutch scene. The colours were thick, clumsy. The thin, wispy lines of the drawings were replaced by thick, clumsy strokes.
Must do better. Not sure what I will do with the finished painting. That canvas cost money.
Learning
I moved on fairly quickly because there is no point in letting one disappointment stop everything. This time, no planning. I filled a canvas with colours I liked and then started out with a kind of exercise. Painting rounded shapes. Balloons, I thought. Then someone said ‘Sperm in Hades’ and I thought to myself that perhaps I should change the central object of the painting slightly.
Then another friend, unprompted, said ‘Oh, tulips!’ and gave me an escape route to something presentable. Quite Dutch as well, not that that is a major motivator. The background was ready so I left it and then started to plan a little more to paint the tulips themselves. Nothing too deep, just scanning my own photos and also online to get a subject. Eventually found a nice picture online that I won’t reproduce here as it was an advertisement for a tulip supplier. No commercial endorsements here, not that it would have broken the internet.
End Result
After screwing up my ‘cubist windmill’ it was nice to put something on canvas that is more presentable. Also the painting that has had the most comments along the lines of ‘oh, that’s nice!’ It is good for my confidence to hear such comments. A happy accident in that what was meant to be more of an exercise turned out being liked by friends who viewed it. Personally, I preferred the beach scene but my self-esteem will take those compliments! The progress, though, is very noticeable compared to my first efforts, which were literally paint slapped on a canvas.
In the end, it is no masterwork. Still a lot to learn and if I look at it I seriously think… could be better. Ten-year-old Picasso would probably still do something better! It is an improvement, though. The next small step on this rather fun path of learning how to paint.
Next Steps
My next two canvases are primed. After the waste of one canvas I will prepare more carefully, researching what I want to paint and how to use the colours. Some kind gifts have given me a better basis in theory so I will also start to read more about how to paint and listen to the advice of my mentor, not to mention the opinions of friends. The next painting will also be undertaken slowly. Steadily. With a clear subject in mind.
In the end, learning something new means screwing up sometimes. It is not that bad a screw-up. No-one died, apart from my self-esteem perhaps? And then, not that much. I will avoid the same mistakes on my next painting, hopefully. It certainly will not be a painting of a cubist windmill.
- There is actually a small story behind the photo. I took it on a long ride in July 2019, not far from Breukelen on a side road near the A2 highway between Amsterdam and Utrecht. A peaceful-looking scene, but the noise of a busy road was very discernible. Shortly after I took the picture a Hummer rolled up next to the windmill. Someone got out and, very alarmingly, opened fire with a shotgun at some geese that were in the pond in front of the windmill. I cycled on nervously, edging past the Hummer on foot. It took up the road but I was not about to ask them to move it! ↩︎