PAINTING: Coursing Soldiers

I was really having a good time "painting" with a palette knife, but since I'm learning all this as I go, the nerd in me insisted on watching some edumacational how-to videos of established artists using palette knives so I could learn me sumptin'.  I mean, why would I listen to my educated painter mom and "just do it" and not "over-think it" anyway??

And I'm pretty sure that's where I went wrong.

I watched several videos, but ended up hanging out at Leonid Afremov's site and binge-watching his tutorial youtube videos.  I really like his work--very colorful, expressive, bright.  And blocky, so of course this told me it would be easy and all I would have to do was watch what he does and I'd be able to do it, too.  Clearly a perfect plan!

I did learn some things.  Primarily I learned that when I think I should stop, I should keep going.  In theory this is a great thing, been hearing it all my life: just push the envelope a little more, just go a little farther, etc.

So I grabbed an old photo of the Civil War markers in Mt. Hebron Cemetary (taken sometime around 2001) and proceeded to render it on canvas, and to keep going even after I thought I should stop.

I started out with a bang.  I LOVE using the palette knife to paint a sky!  I should know, I've done two! (snort)

And I kept going to cover the canvas and finish laying in the background of sky and snow.

And I kept going.  I was actually really happy with everything at this point.  So happy I was scared to add in the rest of the picture!

But I persevered and roughed in the horizon line and the stones and trees.  It all looked really good . . . until a toothbrush spatter effect vomited a cloudy haze all over my winter tree.  I mean, yeah, I did it on purpose at the time but afterward I realized I'd ruined it!  UGH!!

So now it's overworked and I'm mourning the loss of what could have been in the bottom of a bottle of lime vodka and/or melon flavoured jell-o.

I blame the video tutorials.

Anyway--this is getting set aside for now until I can look at it again with fresh eyes and figure out how I can save this or if I just need to paint over it.  Until then. . .