Torn

I am torn. Come 6:00 tonight, I was really into something cool at work, and I saw no end in sight. Yet I had planned to come home and try painting... I even had the picture selected that I would plagiarize. What should I do? I could stay and play at work with the interesting new discovery, or I can go home and use my precious free time to do something else that I really want to... in the end, realizing that if I stay at work and play/work, I don't get paid for it, and come tomorrow, even though I put in overtime, I wont be able to paint at noon if I feel like it. I will however have an opportunity to try out my discovery, and in fact, if I do it during work time I get paid for it... when you look at it that way it is an easy choice.

Anyway, here is my painting so far, after a couple hours of doing one practice sketch, and starting on the real thing. I can't seem to decide what I am going to concentrate on before I start to paint. Should I worry more about the colors, and learning how to mix them and get the results I really want, or should I concentrate on learning how to apply the paint to the paper, and my stroke? It is not too difficult to make the painting look OK, but if I keep doing that I will never be able to make it look great.

I am plagiarizing a painting I found in a great big book of Japanese art from the used book store (only 100 yen!) The original artist is Kimihisa Togari, who has some really great paintings of boats. From the book, out of hundreds of paintings, this one you see below really stood out to me. I don't know why I have a fascination with boats... maybe it has to do with the fact that they can literally go anywhere, in any direction, and don't need roads. On a road you can go within a continent but a boat can take you anywhere.

Although I haven't taken my kayak out for a long time, It still fascinates me. I remember the first time I ever saw a sea kayak. I was in a sailing shop in Traverse City looking at sail boats (which are also cool, but beyond my budget) and say a sea kayak on display. I had never seen one before, but from that day I was fascinated and started seeing them all over. I think that too had to do with the fact that a sea kayak is so small that it can go literally anywhere. It can go into small areas that a yacht or even sport-motor boat can't get to, and yet, it can handle open seas as well as any yacht. Unfortunately, it doesn't handle the trip from my apartment to the ocean very well. What ever happened to that dream I had to Kayak from Maine to Brazil...

Anyway, I should paint a Kayak I guess. Instead, I am in the midst of the painting you see below.