My Lemon Painting ????  #shorts #oilpainting

This was my painting assignment for the “small scale realism” painting exercise. ???? 

Safe to say all of my perfectionist tendencies came out ???? during this week when the purpose of the week was to draw and paint as realistically as possible! ✏️ It brings me back to a time of taking school exams and we had to get grades of A or A* (if you come from an Asian household you will understand!)

???? Art making has been a process for me of undoing all of these tendencies because it’s really not about getting the A* ✨ I’ve found that I make the best paintings when I let go, experiment and allow mistakes to happen. 

And that did happen in the first two coats of oil paint. ???? I was completely in my right brain~ observing the shapes and colours that make up the whole image.

I challenged myself to paint the water splashing from the glass and the reflection of the objects and I love how those came out. ????

But in the third and final coat of oil, I felt the perfectionist gremlin came out! She taunted me with, “Remember this has to be flawless...” ???? As if the competency of myself as a painter ????depended on this painting alone! 
 
And I’ll admit I let her get the best of me and some parts of this painting (like the lemon) feel overworked.

????????‍???? But I embrace it all! The way I see it~ anytime we make art is a time to make mistakes. Even mistakes where we may have been too perfect :) It’s all a learning experience. 

#artprocess #artist #oilpainting