Mini tulip

Today was not the success I had hoped for.  I admit to having some pretty high expectations on the outcome of my tulip, but these did not pan out today.  I think part of my difficulty was in my mindset before I went into the studio.  My mind was drifting continuously over all the things I wanted to do today, plus the excitement of the art job at hand, plus the weather was overcast and rainy which made me feel slow and dull.

So with my distracted and poorly focused mind, I went into my studio intending to produce a glorious painting.  Right...  Well it began well.  I worked on the remaining 3 petals though you'll notice that the colouration isn't what it could be.  The veining did not improve.  I also started on the stem.

And then for some obscure reason, I decided that I wasn't being heavy handed enough with the colour, especially in the middle of the flower which needed to be darker.  I admit, it wasn't a good thought.  I added to the middle, then started working on the background.  I thought I'd try for a wet-in-wet blurry idea of more tulips and leaves and stems in the background.  I don't think it worked the way I had intended.

They say that every painting goes through an "ugly" stage.  I'm really hoping that we have reached that stage in this painting.  I'm going to put this away for now and come back to it at a later date.  It may still be possible to bring this painting around, but in my present frame of mind...I just don't think so.

I've decided I don't much care for working on such a small scale.  It's too easy to make mistakes, and the mistakes you make show up that much more.  I may come back to the "miniature" approach after I have better mastered painting in general.  For now I think this will be my last mini painting for a long while.  I am going to prep paper and review the video to paint the owl.  It's unlikely I will get to start painting next time as preparation could take some time (argh! more tracing!!), but we'll see how things go.