The image above is the most interesting part of what I painted today.
In 2019, I started taking lithium. This drug is beneficial, but it makes my hands shake. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Since I started taking lithium, all I've been able to paint are mediocre abstracts. Today I attempted a portrait.
Planning to use Strathmore oil paper, I looked around for my masking tape and it was nowhere to be found. This was strange, because there are usually rolls of masking tape everywhere I look in my design studio. I found packing tape, book binding tape, various kinds of mounting tape, but no masking tape.
The paint store with the best masking tape was closed, so I had to go to the expensive art store. The masking tape that I ended up with cost $13.99. In hindsight, at that point, I should've called the whole thing off. But I persisted.
I tried and failed to paint a passable portrait. At first, I used brushes. That didn't work out, so I switched to knife painting, which didn't improve the situation. Not including the art store trip, I spent spent four hours producing an embarrassingly bad portrait. It's muddy. The colors are wrong. It barely even looks like the person.
This isn't the first time I've created embarrassingly bad art. In fact, I have a whole shelf for it. Once it's dried, this latest work will take its place on the embarrassingly bad art shelf. From that point on, it will be viewed just once a year, during my annual review of my piles of art.
Artistic failure isn't my favorite thing. It's disappointing. Even when the stakes are low and I'm way out of practice, I expect better from myself. Maybe next time.
Moving past the disappointment, I wonder why I undertook the exercise in the first place. There's value in the simple act of creating, regardless of the outcome. And the walk to the art store was nice. It was a perfect autumn afternoon in Minneapolis, through blocks lined with bright red and yellow trees. Had it not been for the art, I would never have taken that walk. I would've only taken my usual walk, which is also beautiful.
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