Repost: Day 5
Stephen Eidson • May 1, 2020
Day 5. Things WILL go wrong…
It’s easy to recognize on a basic level that perfection is impossible, but it hardly stops us as people from holding ourselves to that line far too often.
Look at any artist you love. Even if they’re the pinnacle of what you’d like to be, it’s extremely unlikely you love every piece they’ve made equally. Maybe it’s your taste. Perhaps it’s the artist feeling out a new path they haven’t quite arrived at, or having an off day. If someone you look upon so highly can’t be perfect, why do we feel the need to be so unforgiving of ourselves?
Most, if not all, great artists aren’t where they are because they were born with lightning in a bottle. They worked at it, learned to cope with and embrace mistakes because it’s how you get better. Winning all the time is great. However, the longer the winning streak runs, the harder it is when reality comes knocking. Imagine how far that fall would be if we were perfect as often as we would like to be.
How does this apply to me, a not particularly famous artist? I still feel like I’m making improvements by embracing my mistakes and trying to learn from them. Oh, when things go south I have that little voice in my head screaming increasingly louder (with each passing minute I’m in that hole) about what a garbage artist I am.
I had a solid string of portraits I was pleased with that came about without too many potholes. Followed by a couple shakier days. As I said in a previous post, acrylic is a great medium for layering. I don’t use photoshop to color, but I imagine it’s similar except there’s no undo button.
That vibrancy you had with two adjacent swatches of color and painted over will never truly be the same again. Keeping this in mind is important to me because it acknowledges I can fix mistakes, but there are stakes involved so my decisions count for something.
Sometimes you don’t know what went wrong and can only do your best to right the ship in whatever way makes sense. Some artists hurl canvases or destroy the work as an act to exorcise those demons. I keep painting until I come up with something I can live with. The result may not equal the effort, but it gives me confidence that I wrestled the bear and came out the other side. Some of the work shows that struggle, but some of my favorite pieces have been birthed from this situation.
In the case of my example, I know exactly what was wrong. The concerns about previous struggles made me wistful for the breathing room of larger scale. Not that I haven’t been in the same situation with larger work, just that it feels so much less claustrophobic when I am.
I sketched Roddy’s portrait three times trying to encompass all of his head trying to rough in the basic shapes twice. The head grew larger than what I wanted to represent both times. By the third, I thought I had a solid enough map to begin. I only started taking photos after I saw Micah had tagged me for this task on Monday, so apologies that I don’t have the unpainted page. However, you can see the old sketch buried in the first photo.
As you can see, the during the painting process the image also began to grow to unwieldy proportions. If I was doing this for a commission or client, I would likely finish this piece to get it out of my system and start a new one if time allowed and present them with both options or save it for later and start again on a new canvas/page if time did not.
Since it is a sketchbook exercise, I decided to let it be as large as the space would allow and see what happened. It released some of that anxiety out of my system and the results work well enough.
As a coda, I’m also posting an image I painted of Saul Williams where I had a similar problem but, decided the hand gesture was too important. I sketched it again but left a ghost of the old sketch. This is one of my personal favorites in the series.
You’re almost done with me. Two days left. Tomorrow I’ll start talking about the three “I”s.
CONSOLATION PRIZES
Analytics show the site visits for the website are good but that most folks found it from Instagram so blog visits aren't strong. It's good to occasionally drop some kind of record of ongoings here even if it's not well seen. What have I been up to? Primarily smaller paintings like the one above where I reference music or, films that resonate with me. The above is Lee Marvin's version of Richard Stark's (aka Donald Westlake) Parker character.
I've once again neglected this blog for Instagram and Facebook. Reasonable enough I suppose since I'm not sure how many readers of this blog there are. What I should not have allowed to happen is getting very behind on updating the website with current work. That has been corrected. Find it within!
As been my habit of the past year, I've allowed my Instagram account to take the forefront as the record of what I've been up to on a weekly basis. So i'm caught playing catch up again. Above is the most recent larger scale piece I've done. It's a portrait of our daughter in younger days in one of her more spirited poses and uses the brass ring symbol I began using in the last series. Below are some other pieces that were intended as tributes to people who made my days easier.
I was informed on the 11th of this month that not only was my piece, Unrequited, showing at the beautiful (take a look above for yourself) Callanwolde Fine Arts Cente r from that day until April 9th but also juror Peter Ferrari selected me for a solo exhibition. I am excited and grateful to be given this opportunity by Mr. Ferrari and Callanwolde and look forward to making the most of it. I posted the day of the announcement on my linked social media because that's where I believe most of my posts are read. However, since I set up this blog I should be posting here as well. Apologies for my negligence and for lifting Callawolde's official photo from their site.
It's been a very long time since I've posted on the web blog. I'm not entirely convinced it's being read, but I'll post to keep myself honest. Haha. Since last post I've painted several more portraits, the entirety of which can be seen on Instagram. I've curated the portrait section, replaced some old ones and added new favorites. Also, I can announce that the above piece, Unrequited, will be on display as part of the juried member show at the Hudgens Center for the Arts beginning this Saturday, November 14 through January 30. So very nice to be back in galleries again. Please come and see the show if you are able.
Sadly we lost the great Ennio Morricone this week. He will be missed but we are incredibly fortunate to still have his music. Six new portraits can be found in the section including this one of Rose Stone. Also new: Fred Wesley, Sam Gooden, Fred Cash and Cynthia Robinson.
Freshening up this blog with another reminder that, while this feed may be quiet, I'm keeping busy on Instagram making portraits. This is the most recent, but I added eight new ones in the portrait section.
Realized I forgot to repost this one after I finished the Facebook post on Sunday. Here it is in all it's glory (or lack thereof): Day 7. The measuring stick This is it. My final day of the seven-day process challenge. I talked about why we shouldn’t hold ourselves to the idea of perfection on day 5. What happens when we look at our art heroes through the prism of perfection? All of their work is amazing, they do forty highly skilled drawings in an hour that are better than one drawing we could do in forty hours. If you let it, that intimidation will nourish the little devil at the back of your mind making it twice as hard to turn out something satisfying before you’ve even begun the work. The great Teddy Atlas often talks about a point where you can see two exhausted boxers making a silent pact to not put out much effort and how something similar happens to all of us when we go down this road mentally. You decide you’ll never get there, or everything you do looks like garbage. It could make you happy IF there wasn’t any point in trying. You burn more energy feeding that self-loathing and finding reasons to avoid those feelings of disappointment than you ever possibly could have actually making art. To make it worse you burn up even more energy hating yourself for ducking out on making art, but it really feels like you’re giving it all… because you have. You just gave it all to the wrong things. You can lose years of your life to this. If it remotely sounds like I know what I’m talking about here, I do. I never stopped making art, but I really fed that beast for far too long. I’m not currently bullet proof by any means. I still get intimidated when I approach comics because I feel like I’ve still got so much to learn, but time is precious and I’m looking at it speed by. I’m choosing the paths that feel most right for me at the moment and that is all I can do. I have kids to guide and I want to be the best example for them that I can. I may be well past the expiration date of getting where I always dreamed of, but I’m still here and I’d rather go out fighting for it than live in that silent resignation. If you’re there, please do the same. Make work. Start as big as life allows. At any speed you can handle, but commit to it. Recognize when you’re making unnecessary excuses and do your best to change. Forgive your mistakes. Let your own progress be the only measuring stick you use. Thanks to anyone that took the time to read this. I know there are plenty of things on the internet vying for your attention and I’m flattered if you chose my ramble to give some of it to. Here’s the link again to the work that prompted this challenge: https://www.instagram.com/eidsonart/
Analytics show the site visits for the website are good but that most folks found it from Instagram so blog visits aren't strong. It's good to occasionally drop some kind of record of ongoings here even if it's not well seen. What have I been up to? Primarily smaller paintings like the one above where I reference music or, films that resonate with me. The above is Lee Marvin's version of Richard Stark's (aka Donald Westlake) Parker character.
I've once again neglected this blog for Instagram and Facebook. Reasonable enough I suppose since I'm not sure how many readers of this blog there are. What I should not have allowed to happen is getting very behind on updating the website with current work. That has been corrected. Find it within!
As been my habit of the past year, I've allowed my Instagram account to take the forefront as the record of what I've been up to on a weekly basis. So i'm caught playing catch up again. Above is the most recent larger scale piece I've done. It's a portrait of our daughter in younger days in one of her more spirited poses and uses the brass ring symbol I began using in the last series. Below are some other pieces that were intended as tributes to people who made my days easier.
I was informed on the 11th of this month that not only was my piece, Unrequited, showing at the beautiful (take a look above for yourself) Callanwolde Fine Arts Cente r from that day until April 9th but also juror Peter Ferrari selected me for a solo exhibition. I am excited and grateful to be given this opportunity by Mr. Ferrari and Callanwolde and look forward to making the most of it. I posted the day of the announcement on my linked social media because that's where I believe most of my posts are read. However, since I set up this blog I should be posting here as well. Apologies for my negligence and for lifting Callawolde's official photo from their site.
It's been a very long time since I've posted on the web blog. I'm not entirely convinced it's being read, but I'll post to keep myself honest. Haha. Since last post I've painted several more portraits, the entirety of which can be seen on Instagram. I've curated the portrait section, replaced some old ones and added new favorites. Also, I can announce that the above piece, Unrequited, will be on display as part of the juried member show at the Hudgens Center for the Arts beginning this Saturday, November 14 through January 30. So very nice to be back in galleries again. Please come and see the show if you are able.
Sadly we lost the great Ennio Morricone this week. He will be missed but we are incredibly fortunate to still have his music. Six new portraits can be found in the section including this one of Rose Stone. Also new: Fred Wesley, Sam Gooden, Fred Cash and Cynthia Robinson.
Freshening up this blog with another reminder that, while this feed may be quiet, I'm keeping busy on Instagram making portraits. This is the most recent, but I added eight new ones in the portrait section.
Realized I forgot to repost this one after I finished the Facebook post on Sunday. Here it is in all it's glory (or lack thereof): Day 7. The measuring stick This is it. My final day of the seven-day process challenge. I talked about why we shouldn’t hold ourselves to the idea of perfection on day 5. What happens when we look at our art heroes through the prism of perfection? All of their work is amazing, they do forty highly skilled drawings in an hour that are better than one drawing we could do in forty hours. If you let it, that intimidation will nourish the little devil at the back of your mind making it twice as hard to turn out something satisfying before you’ve even begun the work. The great Teddy Atlas often talks about a point where you can see two exhausted boxers making a silent pact to not put out much effort and how something similar happens to all of us when we go down this road mentally. You decide you’ll never get there, or everything you do looks like garbage. It could make you happy IF there wasn’t any point in trying. You burn more energy feeding that self-loathing and finding reasons to avoid those feelings of disappointment than you ever possibly could have actually making art. To make it worse you burn up even more energy hating yourself for ducking out on making art, but it really feels like you’re giving it all… because you have. You just gave it all to the wrong things. You can lose years of your life to this. If it remotely sounds like I know what I’m talking about here, I do. I never stopped making art, but I really fed that beast for far too long. I’m not currently bullet proof by any means. I still get intimidated when I approach comics because I feel like I’ve still got so much to learn, but time is precious and I’m looking at it speed by. I’m choosing the paths that feel most right for me at the moment and that is all I can do. I have kids to guide and I want to be the best example for them that I can. I may be well past the expiration date of getting where I always dreamed of, but I’m still here and I’d rather go out fighting for it than live in that silent resignation. If you’re there, please do the same. Make work. Start as big as life allows. At any speed you can handle, but commit to it. Recognize when you’re making unnecessary excuses and do your best to change. Forgive your mistakes. Let your own progress be the only measuring stick you use. Thanks to anyone that took the time to read this. I know there are plenty of things on the internet vying for your attention and I’m flattered if you chose my ramble to give some of it to. Here’s the link again to the work that prompted this challenge: https://www.instagram.com/eidsonart/