Post Project Angst and the Good Painting Fairy

I am glad to have finished the leaves but, ever the irritating perfectionist, I just want to do them all over again, to correct the mistakes. At the moment I can see only the mistakes and I know, from long and bitter experience, that the worst thing to do is to try and correct at this stage. This is a familiar feeling, not only restricted to artists.The desire to go back and try to improve the work can be almost overwhelming.

I have had to put things away, out of sight, in cupboards, under the bed, faces to the wall, buried at the bottom of piles of books, for a week or two or more, just to rid myself of the accusing stare of badly applied paint or errant pencil lines. However, maybe months later, returning to the piece with a sigh of despair, bracing myself to re address the errors, I have often found that the good painting fairy has passed my way and those glaring errors have somehow been blended into the nice bits. Even better, now with the benefit of increasing age and decreasing memory, I have actually forgotten what the problems were. Sometimes when I look at a very old piece, years old, I may even occasionally say .. ‘Wow how did I do that!’

It can, sadly, work the other way and then the only option is to tear the wretched thing up and put you and it out of your collective misery. Occasionally in a desperate attempt to find some recompense for hours of work I have cropped out small nice bits so I can at least say one square inch of it worked! In my philosophical moments I say to myself, and always preach to my students, that if one centimeter has been successful then the painting has not been a complete waste of time. This is 100% true, but cold comfort when 90% of your hard won creation is languishing in the bin.

However now it is on with the game and more leaves and now flowers.. Hmmm… I am not so engaged with the showy end of plants but here in Florida there are some strange and wonderful things to discover…and for me the stranger the better.

Today’s drawing is a compromise between leaves and flowers, a dainty little grass Dichromanea latifolia or white star sedge, whose leaves (bracts) are masquerading as white flowers tipped with green. They carry their nodding heads high on long fine stems. (my drawing here shows only one third of the stem. ) There are 6 long tapering leafy bracts, shaded from white to green 3 long ones and 3 shorter ones with the flowers clustered at the tip. It is very pretty and really needs to be seen at its full elegant length and delicate colour.
_________________________________

White Star Sedge

Leaf of the Day: Experimental Grasses

Some very nonspecific grass this time just to try out a couple of techniques from the course. This is done in liquid acrylics but using a wet in wet technique. Much of it, good and bad, is accidental. The scan has picked up the texture of the watercolour paper too much and has made it more grainy than it is in real life. Even with the amount of freedom these techniques give you, you need quite a bit of pre-planning.I am looking forward to more experiments on a larger scale.
________________________________________________

Experimental Grass

Leaf of the Day: Maiden Grass

Today’s daily drawing is the maiden grass leaf. I have been putting off drawing a long slender leaf like this as it requires a steady hand and more concentration. These spiky variegated plants liven up the borders of the apartment gardens, the mall across the road and most of the public spaces in Orlando it seems. The little lizards shoot in and out of their cover as you walk by and sometimes pose nicely for a photograph.
This will be a linear shape leaf with parallel venation.
Its one of the miscanthus family

_________________________________________

Maiden Grass