Inspiration out of defeat!!!

At last! I think I've found my "tools"!

Whenever we travel, we take in the museums, go to art shows, and wander galleries. When I'm there I get all inspired, because I just know I could do a better job of it than at least 80% of the artists out there...including some of the masters! Have you ever taken a close look at a Matisse or Monet'?

Full up of artistic inspiration, my fingers are practically itching to produce work that will amaze the world. But when I get home and set to work, I'm confronted by my life long issue once again. It's not my drawing ability or lack of subject matter, time or inspiration...it's the tools!

After years of struggling with water-color paint, pastels, oil paint, acrylic paint, pen and ink, colored pencils and finally oil pastels I just couldn't get comfortable with any of them no matter how much I practiced or how well works turned out.

Then one day I decided to do an oil pastel portrait of our dog Leelu, I started it on water color paper and even blocked out the colors with water color so there wouldn't be so much white to cover. On bumpy paper this is an issue as the pastels want to stay on top of the bumps making the picture look like a 3rd grade coloring project unless they are blended down into the crevices (smooth surfaces don't have enough tooth to grab the pastels). Then I couldn't get my oil pastels to blend without copious amounts of rubbing with expensive rubbing sticks that tended to get mucked up with the wrong color. In a moment of inattention I picked up the stick which had been used to blend olive green and attempted to blend white and pink with disastrous results.

Nearly ready to throw the whole thing in the trash and with a "nothing to lose" attitude I bought some turpentine on a whim and set to work with a brush in an attempt at reclamation.

WoooHooo! It worked! I could blend, add, take away and rework to my hearts content. I have found my medium! Some people might ask why I don't just use paint to begin with, in fact I've asked myself that question.....aside from issues of mixing the same exact color twice on a pallet and having to open little tubes all the time, the pastels have an inherent soft quality I like, and it's just plain fun blending the colors right there on the canvas. Kent put it best when he observed that rather than putting specific pieces of furniture in a predetermined place in a room, I liked to get a bunch of furniture in there and move it around until it looked right.

I have run into some technical difficulties with colors bleeding through on water color paper and slick spots on canvas, but I'm still in love with the method. Much experimentation is taking place with blending mediums, brushes and canvases, so each work of art will probably have it's set of flaws for a while, but finally I'm at a place where it's hard to walk by the studio without putting at least a lick or two on the current project!