Welcome to The Drawing Board, my newsletter where I share my creative process as an artist (painter) and writer, with you. I hope to inspire you to pick up a pen, paint brush or spatula and create something spectacular. If you’d like to catch up on old posts, you can find them here.
Push Past the Ugly
My friends are getting married soon and I’m painting a portrait of their dog. This painting will be multi-functional. Not only will it serve as fabulous home decor, it’ll also make an appearance at the wedding. It’ll be the face of their signature reception cocktail, propped up at the bar like a 1920’s cigarette ad. The drink will be a light, refreshing cocktail, made with gin (or vodka, but gosh I hope its gin), muddled cucumber, and some other mystery ingredients.
Their dog is a city dog, and takes daily strolls along a waterfront park with a view of Manhattan. I decided to paint a realistic portrait with the NYC skyline in the background. I’m going for a whimsical style, like my Cowboy Encounter painting, but with light muted colors. Here’s the reference image:
I started my painting with a sketch in blue paint. I do this with every portrait. By sketching in various light and dark shades of a single color, I get a feel for the proportions of the face I’m painting. I try to set the location of the eyes, relative to each other, and relative to the nose, mouth, tongue, and floppy ears. It’s better to work off of correct proportions before diving deep into detail. It would suck to finish perfecting realistic fur only to realize one eye is way off to the side like this Picasso portrait:
In my head I could see the blue sketch executed in perfect proportions. I was so confident this would be a quick and easy task. But in the end, this sketch ended up looking like a kindergartener’s finger painting:
I wasn’t feeling great at this point, but decided to keep going, and ignore my lack of accuracy. I figured I could fix the proportions while playing with different colors. After an hour of experimenting with various shades of cream, orange, purple and navy, the proportions were still off:
All of the negative thoughts started rolling in.
I suck.
This is terrible.
I’ll never get this right.
I need to start over.
I was about to give up and walk away. But then I remembered how horrible my Casper painting looked after my first pass. Had I not pushed past the ugly, I would’ve never completed my most popular painting to date:
So I put my emotions aside, and got to thinking on how I could fix this mess. Whenever I’d get stuck with proportions in art class, my art teacher used to tell me to paint the painting upside down.
Flipping the painting and reference image upside down changed the way my brain saw the painting. Instead of seeing a face, I saw a bunch of shapes: circles for the eyes, and a blobby triangle for the nose. Only then did I see that the nose and mouth had to move up closer to the eyes. I got to work and repainted his nose and mouth quickly. Once I turned the painting back to right side up, the proportions looked so much better:
Pushing past the ugly first draft is THE most important skill anyone pursuing a creative practice needs. Whether it’s painting, writing, photography, drawing, or whatever, your first draft will always be ugly. The first draft is not the final draft.
Don’t be fooled by the viral short videos on social media of artists showcasing a masterpiece work from start to finish in 30 seconds or less, and get discouraged that you’re not that fast. That speed is impossible. Great creative works take time, especially when you’re a beginner. There’s over a 30 hour difference between those two drafts of my Casper painting.
So if you get discouraged, stop what you’re doing. Walk away for a minute, then come back and evaluate. Figure out how to progress the work.
Be patient, be kind to yourself, be persistent, and push past the ugly.
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Happy Creating, Elizabeth <3
I can’t stop laughing at that dog’s face. I love him! But can someone please get him a monocle ASAP? And honestly, I kinda love the sketched out version because it looks like he has ginormous bushy eyebrows like Groucho Marx lol He's so Gatsby with that tux.
Flipping something upside down or playing with your perception in general is such a good way to detach yourself from the work. Then you can remove the focus on yourself and strip it down to what it is: a puzzle to play with and piece together.
It’s a good way and opportunity to help reframe the feedback you give yourself too. Instead of, “I suck.” Or, “I’ll never get this right,” which even if you switched to, “I did a good job on the eyes” still focuses too much on the person, you can assess based on what you're seeing and not what you think of yourself, or what you think it says about yourself.
What I love about The Drawing Board is how it emphasizes the process part of The Process™️. Because the fact that everything IS a process gets easily forgotten [we all forget at some point]. And if you can’t accept that then you’ll never get past the ugly first draft. And in most cases, you’ll never start one.
Love seeing the progress. *scrolls back and forth between both versions* It's wild how much of a difference adjusting those proportions made!
And dearest TDB, happy 20th<3 One day, I'll curate you.
What a neat trick to flip the canvas & reference picture upside down. I'll give that a go the next time I can't get past the ugly stage!