Amazing Mistakes

"When Life Gives You Lemons", oil, 10x8"

"Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art."

~Neil Gaiman

When life gives you lemons... well you know the rest! I don't know about you, but I really hate making mistakes. One of the scary things about being an artist is how easy it is to make mistakes every time you make a stroke!

The painting above went through many stages and at least one big mistake! Take a look at the "mistake phase"  of this painting...

This was actually the block in phase of the painting. Notice how I used a lot of orange in the under painting of the gold cup and the yellow lemons. Made sense to me, however...

 

When I started painting I got carried away with the orange in the cup and it didn't work with the composition.

Fortunately, I was able to scrape off the orange and get back to the original and much better suited color composition. I also warmed up the foreground to make everything pull together more successfully.

Embrace the mistakes! And have fun playing with your paints and pastels!
Judy