—Leonardo da Vinci: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
But until then you keep noodling. Noodling is the art of “just one more thing.” The question is often asked, “when do you know you’re finished.” HA! See above.
I have a shelf above my TV where I put my paintings in progress or when I think they are done where I can glance at when I walk through the room and when I watch TV in the evening. The lighting is different from my studio and changes as the sun sets.
Sometimes problems jump out at me immediately; sometimes it takes awhile to figure out what’s bothering me about it. Sometimes I make notes for work the next day, and sometimes I go directly to the studio to make changes.
Problems arise when I go beyond the correction and start “noodling” around. Just one stroke here will be better…no, one more…oh, maybe one more. Now I have to scrape that off and it hits the sky so I have to fix that too, and oh, it touched that tree so…AUGHH!
I love oil paint. It is so forgiving. It stays wet and I can scrape off and repaint to my hearts content (or until the wee hours of the night!!).
I painted “More Peonies” in the studio and you can see it is more controlled. I painted “Pink and Yellow Peonies” in my garden. I like the movement of it and the looseness, but something was bothering me. The main pink peony was right in front of a white one and it was confusing, so I went back in and made some changes and did some noodling. What do you think?
andreajeris 