Perseverance in Painting

Somewhere in Spain
Acrylic on Stretched Canvas
18 x 24 in/45.7 x 61 cm
Copyright 2013

My last blog, Why Paint a Study?, discussed why a "study" may be a good tool for some painters. Today's image is my finished painting of Somewhere in Spain, painted from the study.

But today, I'm blogging about the need for perseverance in painting. By that I mean, the need to persevere--that is, keep going--as a painter on your paintings.

Because the act of painting is, generally, done in solitude, it's easy to get discouraged. What you're working on isn't developing the way you envisioned it, which I will say happens to me on just about every painting I do.

Just yesterday, I was half-way through a painting when I could see it wasn't going to work no matter what I did. So, before the paint dried--which is extremely fast with acrylic--I sprayed water on the canvas and wiped off as much paint as possible back to a toned canvas. Today I will start anew.

Without perseverance, I would have given up painting years ago. Although this sounds a bit dramatic, like the phoenix, painters must rise from the ashes of their work and keep going until they are satisfied.