Solo vs. Duo

"A Time to Dance" 7"x 5" oil on gessobord

I really debated about writing this post or not.  Is it a good thing to show the "behind the scenes" goofs?  Does it take away the magic and mystery of art making if I do so, or does it help others to know that not all creative ideas work out perfectly?  Since I have publicly declared my desire to question my own perfectionist inner voices this year, (RE:Is Your Best Ever Good Enough?)I decided to share this even if it makes me a little anxious to do so. 

"A Time to Dance" was inspired by a lovely pair of swallowtail butterflies flying in the sun with a wall in shadow behind them.  The green bar on the left of the painting wasn't there at first.  When I had finished painting, I just felt something was off. I showed it to Jeff and he mentioned that the proportion of the photo I was working with was different than the 5"x 7" gessobord I was using.  Good grief, I couldn't believe I had missed that!  I added the green bar to adjust for my mistake.  It is an o.k. solution, but I felt the whole painting just didn't capture the movement and joy that I had envisioned.  Sigh.  I set it aside and went on to other things.

"A Time to Dance Solo" 8"x 10" digital detail of the original painting.

Recently I had a chance to learn how to better use the Pixelmator program on my computer and that started me thinking about this painting again.  What if I took a new photo, cropped it, and figured out how to add my signature to the new image?  It took some doing, but eventually I had something I was really pleased with.  I like the larger brush strokes and the butterfly just feels less static to me.  The other great thing is that I can make nice prints from the new image, so in essence, it is another piece of art in it's own right.

So what do you think?  Do you prefer the "duo" or the "solo" dance?  Does it ruin the mystery of a piece of art to tell the secrets about it's creation? Let me know what you think in the comments here or on facebook.

Happy fear-less creating!

>^-^<
Tina

If you would like to see how "A Time to Dance Solo" looks on a card, canvas print or pillow, click here to visit my FineArtAmerica site.