Changing a painting – when something unplanned happens

As human beings, we tend to plan everything. We feel a sense of being organized when things are planned. Sometimes, however, being too planned and organized and letting no flexibility enter your life is not such a good idea. Changing a painting in some way can be beneficial at times.

As artists, one should welcome all the new creative thoughts that come along in the process of making art. After all, it’s the journey and the excitement of making each piece of art that an artist craves in the first place. A part of this excitement is being ready for the unexpected change that you never thought of initially.

Story behind changing a painting that I planned something else initially:

After drawing a layout in pen and ink, I had decided a color combination for the same by using water colors. As can be seen, I used a blue background in the water color painting.

It’s a rough painting, so pardon me the twisted lines. Anyway, when I started painting the same in oils, I had a strange incident.

Every painting has a story, and so has this painting. While I was giving colors to the main body, a lady came up to me and said that she really liked what I was making. I showed her my layout above and told her that’s the final color combination I want to achieve.

The lady told me that sometimes the middle stages of a painting are much more beautiful than the final stages and we end up overdoing at final stages sometimes. These comments gave me an insight. The point at which she liked my painting was when my painting had a very light creamy background. I had never considered that as the final background.  That lady sowed a seed of changing a painting in my mind.  

Changing a painting….giving it a different look from what was planned:

By now, I had started imagining my painting in an entirely new light. I didn’t like my initial plan of a blue background either. Sometimes, less is more. So, considering this new idea, I went ahead with my painting, gave it the final touches, but never gave it a blue background.

The final call is always of the artist. An artist can take the painting in whatever direction that seems right. The experience of the journey of this painting, however also taught me an important lesson.  Sometimes the opinion of other people can also be very instrumental in the direction you want your painting to take.

The final oil painting looked like this:

So, don’t be scared of changing a painting if you have a strong intuition that it will be in the best interest of that painting!