Custom Bluebird Paintings And The Curse Of the Dreaded X.....

Well to start, now that spring has sprung, I've been painting quite a few bluebirds, some have been custom orders, like this ceiling tin above.

My customer wanted a happy, chubby little spring bluebird surrounded by lots of lavender, painted on a vintage ceiling tin.

The completed bird on a very ornate ceiling tin!!! Another customer wanted a bluebird pendant, done on glass and with a brown background to match up with as many of her work outfits as possible.....that little fused glass bluebird sits below, hanging from a satin neck cord. He has already flown on to his new home.

Now for the curse of the dreaded X or actually I should say, an X (a really giant one) and a curse (pick your favorite). What is an artist to do when she screws up a painting, a very large one, one that she has been working on diligently for over a week now?? How does she get rid of the frustration of it all and move past that failure to another piece of artwork??

I don't know how other artist's do it but here is my method put into practice by me again, just yesterday.......very unfortunatley. I had been working on a very large canvas for over a week, the subject doesn't really matter at this point but it was one that I knew could go either way, a great painting or a disaster well...... it turned out to be the later. When this kind of disappointment hits, I have a little therapy session with my painting, first of all, I make absolutely sure the the work is not worth saving and once I've determined that, I pick a nice bright color and paint a giant X through the canvas.....here is where the curse comes in, I then write my favorite curse word down across the canvas, right near the X , in big bold letters. I then proceed to go out my back door and over to my trash cans, where the canvas promptly gets thrown away, never to be seen again. This practice, followed by ordering some comfort take-out food, assures that I can put the days train wreck out of my mind and start anew on a fresh piece of artwork tomorrow. There you have the story of the Curse of the X!!!!