Painter's Block

I've had painter's block for almost 2 years.

In the summer of 2015 a few months after I started my new job in Toronto, I purchased my favorite size of canvas (4'x5') wanting to paint something epic.

I have a few themes that I like to paint, much like choosing what genres of novel to read. For this painting, I wanted to do something Hungarian and historical. Additionally, I wanted to try something new that I have rarely done before such as blending painting.

The castle Vajdahunyad, seat of King Mathias Rex, is an imposing structure and became the centerpiece for this painting. I thought that turning the clouds into a black and white battle between the Hungarians and the Turks would also be emotionally gripping. The color scheme would of red, white, and green would be representative of Hungary's colors. This painting would be epic and cool, and of course the Hungarian National Art Gallery would need to have it immediately (pipe-dream, I know).

I spent 8 hours mocking it up while watching the Fullmetal Alchemist (anime series). Then it got up onto the easel shortly thereafter, and the first red towers were painted. They looked horrible. I couldn't believe it. I decided to switch the background of the soldiers, and they felt amateurish. Almost as if a high-school kid was painting this for a project. Not to burn high school students, but more so point out that you can sense how many years somebody has been painting just by looking at their brush strokes. And so, I stopped.

My excuses were at first obvious and understandable. "Oh, my new project at work is taking up a lot of my energy." I do believe you need energy to paint, but I never seemed to have enough. Then my excuses grew into waiting until the right time such as the holidays or a long weekend. Then during those weekends, socializing became more interesting. The socializing then drained my energy, and we were back to square one. It just seemed that every time I looked at that painting another type of excuse to postpone it came up. Other excuses were, "you are not a painter, just give up trying to do it." There was also "aren't there more interesting things to do then painting?" The final one was, "Sometimes you grow out of hobbies, maybe you're done painting."

6 months pass and my project is near it's end. I remember clearly making a decision to get back in art, but I still couldn't bring myself to paint. Instead, I wanted to get back into the basics of drawing since I never had "formal training." So I drew Jim Lee's Batman, and when I was done, I thought to myself, "Shit, I can draw." It was a similar feeling to my first painting of Iron Maiden's Eddy for a band show. So of course next up had to be Dead pool, not Castle Vajdahunyad. Then it spiraled out of control and now, there is an illustrations section on my webpage. Each time I would finish a drawing, I would look up at this canvas in my office and ask myself, "Now?"

I decided to choose this topic for my second blog post, because I created a website to showcase I'm ready to get back into art, and I still have painter's block! And now I desperately need to unblock myself because the block is more than just a blank canvas, it's blocking my dreams.