pencil crime

{this is from my NY journal: 6/14/2010}

today i came in and one of the paintings we did last time had four pencil-stab wounds and rips in it. brett told me "by no fault of yours, we're going to re-do this one. it was a bad drawing to start out with." i looked at the ruined paper with half-disbelief. he explained, "this is how i commit to re-doing it." he said something about how if he doesn't destroy it, he has the chance to try to noodle around to make it better, but in the end, you can't make a bad drawing into a good painting (that last part was my interpretation). i love it. what a great thing. i often get too attached to my art, and i need to remember, it's just art. like brett says, it's just paper and pencil.

i remember that when cary henrie came to byu as a guest artist, he was talking about the risks of art. i remember him saying something like, 'it's just a painting! if i mess it up, i can re-do it! it's not like i'm doing brain surgery. now that's scary.'

compare the differences in the top right drawing and the one on bottom.

ten points to brett for not settling! by the way, this shows some of brett's process: the above is an example of what 'underpaintings' are. {according to wikipedia, "in art, an underpainting is an initial layer of paint applied to a ground, which serves as a base for subsequent layers of paint. underpaintings are often monochromatic and help to define colour values for later painting. "} brett does his underpaintings in acryllic first; this was my job during my time there. then he comes back in and oil paints on top of them. in this particular case, the final paintings are all monochromatic, because the book that i was helping him to illustrate will be printed in black and white.

it was pretty rad. : )