A couple weeks ago we were on our way home from church and along our journey I saw this beautiful sky. There were big, fluffy white and purple clouds along the horizon, the blue of the sky played so well with the colors of the bare trees and farm field, and there was one, lonely cloud up high in the sky. I knew I had to paint it, so I took a picture really quick and put it on the back burner for later.
Later came really quickly as I was able to get started on the piece a few days later, and it was turning out BEAUTIFULLY. The clouds were staying white where I wanted them to, the purple was making them look fluffy, it was just going exactly the way I wanted it to, if not better.
I finished the painting in record time, and I was ECSTATIC. I waited for it to dry, and then plopped it into a mat for framing….and then it all went downhill really, really quickly.
The white cloud at the top just was so off! It looked like a random afterthought, like I just plopped it in for the fun of it. It made the entire piece look, well….bad. I was devastated. Everything was so good, I didn’t want to have to discard the piece just because of that one cloud, but what could I do?
The voice of one of my former college art teachers popped into my head: There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.
I decided I was going to try and see what I could do to salvage the piece. As long as the lone cloud wasn’t visible, the piece was perfect! I wasn’t sure if I could crop the piece enough to be able to still get a frameable piece, I wasn’t sure if the composition would work. I happened to have a 4″ x 6″ mat on hand, so I put that on top of the piece to try it, and boom: we were back in business. The whole piece looked great again!
I cropped it down and turned it into a 4″ x 6″ painting instead of a 5″ x 7″ piece, and I’m back in love with it!
This so far untitled piece will be available soon, I don’t usually do pieces this small so I don’t have a frame for it.
What would you title this piece?
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