Dealing with Art Fiascos

“Artist in Residence” has taken on a new meaning, although, I guess I could say I’m always an artist in residence as I work from home. Staying home and trying to avoid the scaremongering news, hours go by normally ... mostly. (Yes, there is a problem, but the hysteria and hoarding just cause things to be worse than what it needs to be.)

So, I do what I do, facing challenges in my work and overcoming them (or giving up on one for a while to do something else.)

This week has had two … well, do I call them both fiascos? Both were unusual and not something I normally encounter. Both entailed firsts for me. One on the type of paper and background, and the other, a still life with a cat and glasses. (Guess there’s a reason I stick to landscapes, ha-ha.)

The first disaster was when I finished my black-eyed Susan painting and took it outside to spray the final fixative (which holds the pastel on the paper). The painting immediately darkened, which it usually does until it dries. I put the painting back on the easel and when I returned to the studio the next morning, the painting was still horribly dark.

Oh noooo! This has never happened before. I started to freak, but there was also a numbness in my mind. I couldn’t even cry, which is what I usually do when stressed. Instead, my hand immediately grabbed a pastel and I started in on the fix. Over and over I picked up colors and layered here and touched-up there. I redefined lines, added more brightness; not sure if any of it would work over the top of a final fixative. Excess pastel dust fell like snow, but enough color remained to allow me to make a recovery.

My mind tried to reason why this happened. I use fixative at the end of every pastel painting. What was different this time? It was cold out when I took the painting outside to spray (the stuff smells horrible and not good to use in the house), but it’s been cold on other days. Did I not shake the can well enough? I thought I did.

Was it because I used a different paper than the BFK Rives print paper I use for its smooth texture? This time I used, for the first time, Art Spectrum Colourfix, which has a lightly sanded surface. Another first was an already colored paper in a dark green tone (which shouldn’t make a difference to a fixative.)

I still don’t have the answer. I called the painting done again and resigned it (because my signature had faded.) But now I don’t know if I dare spray it again to hold the pastel on. This will be a problem with framing because the framers need to move the painting around which causes any loose pastel to come off. The dust then gets on the mat around the painting making the mat look dirty.

The second fiasco was with my “Pele and the Wine Glasses” painting. The sketch to this was done using a Tracer which projected the photo image onto the paper. I didn’t trust myself to freehand my kitty or wine glasses.

Right off the bat, I found tracing didn’t allow the symmetry in glassware. My hand shook and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the five glasses to look the same. May friend, Nan, sent me some info on drawing glassware.

I’ve been putting off that chore until I finished the black-eyed Susan painting. Yesterday, I was ready, but first I decided five wine glasses were too many. I needed to simplify the picture, so I erased two. Uh, oh, there’s a ghostly image of the glasses remaining.

I added pan pastels to the background … first the color I was using for the background, then some shadowing coloring hoping the added textural element would blend all together. Didn’t work. The ghostly glass image still showed, so I added layers of soft pastel. I rubbed. I wiped with both a smooth paper towel and a rough piece. Nothing seemed to work. I felt I was wasting pastel.

I walked away feeling crushed. What I’ve done of Pele so far, I like, so to have do over is heartbreaking. I’m going to have to, though, especially as there are still other glasses to erase in order to learn this new-to-me technique of making glasses symmetrical.

But it does look better with less glasses.

I’ll go on … and this morning in printing a new photo of Pele to work with. I made notes on it on how to make it a better painting.  I also found a photo of a bee and a spider on coneflowers which might be fun to do. I made