Worth Doing More Than Once

Many of my watercolor friends hate to do a particular painting more than once. I find myself often finishing a painting saying, “I can do better than that.”  Painting is always a puzzle, and I learn where the land mines are in the first painting. In addition, repainting helps me discover and try new things. 

This is my third attempt at painting African Tulip Tree blossoms. They are so magnificent in person, and my vision for painting them was grand.  In my first attempt, I learned that the blossoms are quite complex, and it was hard to do them precisely.  

I digress—actually, my first lesson from this painting was long before this. I took this photo the first day of a trip to Hawaii in 2019.  I went venturing out to take “the best” African Tulip Tree picture I could.  In the process, I didn’t notice the strip of concrete that is at the front of parking spaces.  I tripped and fell hard into a lava rock wall.  Long story short, I had to have several stitches and wasn’t allowed to swim in the ocean for a whole week. The first lesson was:  pay attention!

OK, back to the painting.  I redid the flower petals and was much happier, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with the background.  I knew I wanted the background to make the flowers dramatic. I started with a technique called “negative painting” which would give depth to the leaves.  The background was pretty, but the flower looked like a bull’s eye. Something needed to be done with the design. Also, the red and green were just too much! 

I decided that, instead of leaves, I would put in some straight lines to balance all the curved organic shapes. I made a wide dark strip and a very narrow light pink one. I played around with background colors for probably a week or two.

I initially liked the result, but after letting it sit for a few weeks, I noticed that the flowers were floating. The dark strip could be moved up, getting rid of the dark space under the center of the blooms, but that would diminish my spatial design. Besides, I knew the dark colors would not lift. I finally decided to add the darker rose strip between the dark and light strips. This tied the color of the petals to more of the painting. The flowers still float a little, but the painting is about the flower and not the tree or how the blossoms sit in the tree. It is simply an African Tulip Tree blossom and some shapes.  

In life, we don’t always do things right the first time. Mistakes can be a wonderful thing if we take the opportunity to learn from them. We should always be willing to try, try again.  We might even find ourselves thinking outside the box and coming up with something we never would have had we not struggled. Faith is like this too. God didn’t just plop down a rule book for every situation. He showed us what good decisions are like, and sometimes he lets us struggle to figure things out. Maybe the journey is as important as the destination.