_valerian

here is what I ended up with the a few weeks ago:

I went back to Tanaka Sensei’s studio last night but I could’nt get any other paintings to work. All of my photography is figuring out how photographs work for what they are, and to switch gears like this is a struggle. An important struggle! Photography has a nature quite unlike painting. I was trying to paint from a photograph and that’s what got me into a funk. I was getting frusterated by how my painting of the house I grew up in was nothing like the photo, and even worse, nothing like the mental model in my mind. So I put it off to the side to dry and began a smaller painting. Nothing was happening. Tanaka Sensei suggested to just start with a color and go and eventually I ended up with a painting of kim jong il. But again my mental model was way more interesting than what was happening on the canvas before me. So I took some rags to the canvas and wiped away an hour’s worth of work. I will try again next week.