". . . a brush with nature"

Sometimes it’s fun and challenging to revisit a favorite painting subject over and over again. I know of landscape artists (plein air painters) that like to revisit the same location multiple times to capture the site in a different light or season. Sometimes artists are just so fond of a particular subject they never grow tired of painting it, whether it be a treasured still-life piece or a favorite model. Often, as in my case, it is a much-loved pet that has become an important part of our family.

Here I am sharing two quite different “takes” on the same subject . . . one of our beautiful cats, Cappuccino. This handsome boy spent much of his time looking at the outside world through our large living room windows. I painted him several times in this particular pose. 

As you can see, the two pieces are alike in some ways, but extremely different, as well. The basic pose that I started with is the same (it was his favorite, after all), but one piece is cropped in much more closely than the other. Of course, that isn’t the only difference. The most obvious being that one painting is done in pastel and the other in scratchboard completed with a few color highlights in ink.

Each of these pieces were challenging and fun. I am happy with both of them for different reasons and I couldn’t say which I like better. 

If you are another artist, I hope this encourages you to revisit subjects you most enjoy painting. Look for ways you can change and expand on your chosen subject either by trying another medium, exploring different lighting or even time of year. Take the challenge to discover a unique way to change things up on a theme you have already explored in the past. I bet you will be pleasantly surprised and even learn something new along the way.

Sometimes you just need to cut your losses, analyze what is working for you and what isn’t, be willing to let go and be willing to make changes.

For artists that could mean moving away from a medium that we have a love-hate relationship with (i.e. we love to keep trying it, but really dislike the end results each and every time we work with it) or it may mean revisiting an idea or repainting an already completed piece. Sometimes for me it means actually taking a straightedge and knife in hand to cut what I feel is not working on a painting I once loved, but after time came to realize wasn’t what I wanted or imagined it to be. This can be painful at first . . . hardly ever easy . . . but very often freeing and enlightening in the end.

Fortunately, we have access to “tools” today that save us from making a wrong cut in the beginning. I keep a photographic record of every piece I create, as I am sure almost every artist does today. With a duplicate of that original photo and some very basic skills on Photoshop or another similar program any artist can experiment with cropping their own painting in many different ways. That is exactly what I did here.

I loved the subject matter, colors, reflections and whimsy of my first piece (the vertical one shown above), but never framed it because something just kept niggling at me. I kept it around and in sight for months and months just wondering what was bothering me. A few nights ago it hit me that perhaps the focus should be tightened more. That led me to also consider a horizontal format rather than the vertical one. By using Photoshop I could experiment and see exactly how the changes would look before I actually made a cut on the real thing.

Once decisions were made on Photoshop I committed to the crop I liked best. I saved my “new” piece with a different name and then printed a rough copy off for me to use as a guide when actually making the changes on my pastel painting. With it in hand there was no hesitation or second guessing as I cut down the piece on three sides.

“Wonderment” (the horizontal painting shown here) is the end result of my willingness to sacrifice part of my work to make what I believe is a much stronger painting. Now the focus is truly on the elements I loved in the first place – the colors and reflections in the bubbles and eyeglasses and the sense of wonder on the boy’s face.