Communication Project

The original painting

Being a perfectionist, I've always tried to tell myself that the amount of effort I've put in is enough, and that I should stop trying so hard. Yet, as my frustration grows with the task at hand, I only try harder. I hate this, and wish I could tell myself to stop being a perfectionist. For this project, I wanted to communicate this idea through my art work. My initial idea was to quickly paint a couple of paintings, instead of spending all the time for this project painting one meticulously (remember the ship?) I imagined that the paintings would turn out to be amazing, and that they would be done in a fraction of the time (what a perfectionist thought, right?)

With this mindset, I started on my first painting, one of pears. I had found a similar painting done on Pinterest and o wanted to recreate it. But I was tied to idea of creating the pears exactly like the reference picture. My frustration grew as I couldn't capture all those highlights of yellow and white and the dark values with brown and blue. I finally realized that I had to let go of my ideals and just paint in my own style. I got rid of the yellow on the surface where the pears sit, and blended the blue shadow under the pears with the red background. I also invluede D more green on the pears than the original painting had.

My version

This painting took the entire duration of the project to complete. I had hoped to complete this painting quickly yet perfectly, and it was disappointing when that wasn't the result. I felt like I succumbed to the perfectionism streak all over again. But I now realize that you can't plan everything out like I had initially hoped too. You end up fighting your flaws in the place you least expect to, and for me that was deciding to toss the picture of the original painting in the trash, and paint with the color scheme  and style I wanted, even if it didn't look perfect.