I really do stress over crap like this.

 

Generally each year I come up with a new "collection" of work to be released, a bunch of paintings usually relating to each other, but occasionally with random bits and pieces thrown in from work I hadn't previously finished, or ideas that I want to play around with.

I sketch everything down together in my sketchbook so I can see how it looks as a whole.

Inevitably, I take so long getting around to starting certain pieces within a collection that I've lost the inspiration for it. So then the question is, do I push forward anyway? Or change direction and follow the new burst of creativity?

There are pros and cons to both. For one thing, as I'm facing today, I've already marked the hell out of a canvas with black, permanent paint pen in a design I once thought was genius but now see as trite and boring.

I could just paint over it in white. Like it never happened.

It really screws up my ability to produce massive amounts of work though, which just happens to be one of my major goals this year. Producing massive amounts of work. If I keep changing my mind, I'll never reach the amounts I'm aiming for.

And hey, with all that black paint pen, I'm already started! I can just start painting right now!

But dammit, I'm not feeling it. If I'm not feeling it now, the risk is hating the art more as it goes on, and having to switch direction WAY down the line after it's a goopy sloppy impossible mess.

In this case, I've decided to change it. No one but me will ever know what crazy magic design lies underneath the new painting. HA! I win. At least until paint pen x-ray technology is perfected.