Action in art is the key to success

Pablo Picasso, who became incredibly wealthy and successful, said it best: "ACTION is the foundation key to all SUCCESS."

I have been working on a painting for ArtPrize for the last few months. It has gone through many "mulligans" This year for some reason I am having a hard time finding a venue to display my work,but I have not given up.


What separates the successful artists from everybody else is simple: the successful get up and do something, while most people just sit around dreaming. I'm not sure if I will find a venue this year, it goes without saying that every painting is not a success. I can see that whimsical farm animal were not what Grand Rapids was looking for this year, but it's what I felt like painting. I chose what to paint and I  keep moving forward, sometimes I connect and sometimes I don't but each time I learn a little.


Here is the work as it stands today I plan on one more time of painting add texture and finish detail.

The sketch

I started to add some base color.

More base Color. It takes awhile to fill a 30x40 canvas.

I just keep painting each day adding more as I go. Here you can see I down sized the cat on the sheep's back from the original drawing. This cat will became a real thorn for me.

I have started to work on the foreground, painting the chickens.

If you look close you can see that the cat has been changed again to look forward. As I add more base color I will need to change some of the back ground colors. Every color changes the way we see the color beside it.

Here I have started to put some character into the farm animals.

I thought I should add a duck,after all what is a farm without a duck.

While the foreground was drying for a few days I went back to the background and took a real look at it. I putting some clouds in the sky and adding more interest to the treeline. I also put some cows in the pasture. I didn't like the second silo and thought about putting a wind mill in it's place but decided I wanted more focus on my farm animals so i painted it out and I just added trees.

Now I have added my favorite little bees. I will add some more texture when this has dried. I want to wait just in case I don't like the look and it will be easy to remove when the under painting is completely dry.

Down on the Farm

30x40

oil painting

I will post the final painting in a few days with an up date about the venue if I find one. It goes without saying you have to have thick skin when you decide on an art career , so paint on my friends.

Hugs Delilah

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