Had an Artist "Melt-Down" last evening

Okay, as you know, I've begun trying to do landscapes, and I've found it's really, really different from doing animals.  In my defense, I see landscape artists who try to do animals, and for the most part, they do pretty well, but they just don't quite get it.  So I understand that there are "tricks to every trade," even when it's still the trade of painting images.

I'm a perfectionist by nature (no, I don't like it; I think it's a major character flaw), so I'm trying way, way, way too hard at these landscape paintings.  Last evening, I was painting pretty much for the third time (on the same canvas, by the way) a painting I'm working on of a pretty scene near where I live with a falling-down shack, sitting by a creek.  I was really having some problems with color and light and too much detail.  I keep a timer so I'm forced to stop every five minutes to step way back and assess what I'm doing and where I'm going with my painting.  But I think I need to shorten it to three minutes, maybe.  I made a couple of bad strokes with way too much light on my brush, got absolutely disgusted with myself, and slapped paint all over the canvas, probably saying a few words that I ought not to have said.  Then in a panic, I tried to wipe all the offending marks off, which, of course, made a muddy mess of the whole thing.  Anyway, I acted in a very childish way and swore that I was never going to paint again, that I was a failure, etc., etc.  And, of course, too, I was awake most of the night, thinking about what I should have done differently.

Yes, I have a love/hate relationship with painting.  But again, as I've said many times, I'm compelled to keep trying.  We'll see.  I'm giving myself one hour today to get some sort of painting done of this pretty little shack, and I will list my result.

A Painting of the Yakima River as viewed from the Iron Horse Trail, Ellensburg, Washington

As I've said recently, I'm going to be doing landscapes for a while now, with probably a few farm animals thrown in here and there.  I'm intentionally throwing myself into an area in which I have almost no experience, and it's hard.  But I'm going to keep working on it for quite a while.  For one reason, this beautiful area that I've moved to would motivate even a non-painter to at least pick up a camera.  It's astonishingly beautiful here.  Even the most ordinary pathway has a palette of colors that forces even the most jaded person to stop and wonder at the beauty all around.

The painting below is, I know, not a great painting, but I'm going to post it anyway, perhaps to document my (I hope) progress in mastering at least somewhat the landscape.  This scene we see every few days as it's along one of the many trails we take on our daily walks.  This particular trail is one that crosses almost the entire state of Washington.  It's called the "Iron Horse Trail" (or in this specific area, it has been named also the "John Wayne Trail), and it is one of the great "rails-to-trails" projects that have occurred in the past few decades, turning no-longer-in-use railroad tracks into trails for hikers, bicyclists, horse trail-riders, or just happy walkers.  We're lucky to have it pass extremely close to where we live.

The photo left the painting a bit blurred, and I'll be doing a better shot of it very soon.  I wanted to go ahead and add it, though, before I got too afraid to do so.  At this point on the Yakima River, there are various channels coming together and creating quite a bit of rough water.  Beautiful, though.  There were a couple of fly-fishers there, but I chose to include just one.

I am now working on another painting, also of an area near our property, of a really old, falling-down shack sitting next to one of the large irrigation creeks/ditches in this part of the state.  I'm really enjoying painting it and look forward to sharing it.