Someone moved the finish line!

Actually, there is no finish line, no line of demarcation that signals the end of the race, the end of the painting.  Woe is me.  We artists always sense that the finish is near but that is as far as it goes.  We always think that one more correction, one more interesting passage might just take the work to outstanding.  With watercolor, especially, one of the major fears is to take that work a step too far, creating murkiness and destroying the complex patterns of transparency that one has taken so much time and effort to create.  And yes, we all know that adding just one more passage can set up an entire series of needed changes in order to bring the rest of the work "up" to the change. Yes, woe is me.  I actually know of a very fine regional artist, an older gentleman, who is notorious for adding a stroke of two decades after the first ones were laid in.  That enables him to enter exhibits where there is an age limit on the work.  But I think that there is more than trickery at hand here.  Sometimes, we just don't know when the work is done....I try my best to take completion very seriously, as, more often than not, I am displeased when I take my hand to a work at a later date, with a completely different palette and a completely changed frame of mind and emotional status.  "Strings" hung on my wall for over a year and a half.  Nagging thoughts of violet entered my brain at every glance.  After the year's drying time, I procrastinated on the varnishing time and time again.....I suppose I was building up bravery.  A couple of weeks ago, I let 'er rip.  In a sudden decision I pulled the work down and applied the violet before my left brain had time to disagree.  These photos record the change.  I am completely satisfied. 

I believe that I have crossed the finish line..........not in record time however.

Test for Doneness...

Ella   Watercolor   18.5 x 12

The other day I met an old friend for wine at a local vineyard.   She is a professional cookie baker.  We were discussing the finer points thereof when she expressed her preference for cookies that are baked JUST BEFORE browning.  I have always preferred those with a golden color....probably baked a minute or two longer.  That very evening at critique, there were two amazing works on view whose makers expressed that they were "in progress".  Whoa.  I so loved them both as they were.  Michael Nevin paints street scenes, especially Chicago street scenes.  In this case the pencil drawing was revealed....some of the buildings and windows were painted in.  The pencil marks playing with the paint was invigorating to me!  Undercooked perhaps to him.  Barbara Krans Jenkins paints with colored pencil on dried gourds.  She has a fine eye and usually renders small flowers and birds on them.  When finished, one would be hard pressed to know that they are gourds....they are ceramic in nature.  In this case, she was asked to paint abstractly on the gourd using certain colors.  It seemed that this was a bit out of her comfort zone.  She had erased some masses of color thinking that they were mistaken.  The bits of color that had settled into crevices was wonderful....it was there but wasn't.  There was a good deal of rendering on part of the gourd which meandered into the halfway places.  Superb.  I would have considered it a fait accompli.  Again, she considered it undercooked.  Which just shows to go ya that every maker-of-things has a personal aesthetic that takes them along the artistic path and lets them off at different exits.  I feel that there are artists and people of all kinds who carry things too far just because they feel they are doing a good job.  If a little if good, then a lot must be great.  Not always.  An undercooked work allows the viewer to participate in the work....he/she is therefore engaged in the work as well.  The rule of 3's.  That which has been left undone.  That in which there is space to grow.

There are two images here of Ella, a high school art student who modeled for our watercolor class.  I later took the painting to completion at home.  But in this work in particular, I so missed the rawness of the work at the end of the live session.  This lesson will suit me well.

And as for cookies.....they rule.  Undercooked.  Slightly golden.  Whatever.  Joyful participation.