Put it away, it will be fine.

Most of you know I am a proponent of “Letting it sit”.  Turn the current piece you are working on to the wall and wait a week or longer before you look at it again.  I was reminded of why I say that today when I was teaching my class.  One of my students wanted to start the project before she came to class so I could help her after she started it.  That got us going on a conversation about working past the “Ugly Stage” as an artist.  That was where she said she needed the most help but I assured her we all fight with this.

All of us, when we are working on a piece of art; go through an ugly stage.  It is a point where we wonder are we even up to doing what we are trying to do or did we bite off more than we could chew.  The problem with the ugly stage is that it really only looks ugly to the artist.  Here is the key; the worse the ugly stage is, the better the final piece.  I have this really big cloud piece I have been working on for quite some time now and several months ago, I put it away so I wouldn’t look at it anymore.  I think it was around November when I did. 

I am trying new things with this painting and when you try one new thing, it can send you around the bend.  Trying several is enough to make you consider a burn pile.  Rather than sacrificing all of my investment in materials and time already spent, I took my own advice and hid it from my view.  I took it out this week and looked at it… it isn’t bad, to me that is.  There have been other responses, far more favorable than I felt it deserved, but it no longer needs to be destroyed.  Give me another week and I might even call it done and a success because taking me away from it helped me get over the uglies.

The students were punished by the way, I took all of their pieces to hold this week so they can see them with fresh eyes in a week.  They are all quite good but some of them were getting a little bogged down in the uglies.  I told them, they were letting it rest.  It will be fun next week when we get together again.  Moral of this blog; don’t destroy the piece, hide it for a while.  Sometimes, there is nothing wrong at all.  The problem may only lie with you.