{"id":4623,"date":"2013-09-05T19:42:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-06T00:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/?p=4623"},"modified":"2013-09-05T23:25:56","modified_gmt":"2013-09-06T04:25:56","slug":"long-take-paint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/2013\/09\/long-take-paint\/","title":{"rendered":"How Long Did It Take You To Paint That?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\"<\/a> Squirrel Collection – all works are 5in x 7in, watercolor on board with sterling silver, \u00a9Rebecca Latham<\/p>\n

I am asked this question rather often:<\/p>\n

How long do you work on a painting?\u00a0 How long did it take you to paint that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I stop and think.<\/p>\n

I try to give an abbreviated answer, saying it can be a few days or months depending on how complex, and cooperative, a painting is.\u00a0 ..but really it’s a guess.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I can recall starting the painting, sometimes not. Sometimes the painting was a struggle the whole way through, like attempting to tame a snarling wild animal (which occasionally are released to find their own way in the wild, ie, in the recycle bin).\u00a0 Some seem to have a permanent home in the back of my closet.\u00a0 Others are a breeze and almost paint themselves.<\/p>\n

One of my teachers answered rather perfectly:<\/p>\n

“People often ask how long it takes me to do a painting. The answer is, I don\u2019t know. I work on five to fifteen at once. I like them when I first start them, then they always get worse so I start a new one to cheer me up. By the time the fifth one looks really awful to me, the first one doesn\u2019t look quite as bad, and a new idea about it may have come along so I can work on it for a while. One took me about six years off and on!”<\/p>\n

That is precisely how it is.\u00a0 ..with the addition of having the vision of a painting that just pops in your head and you know it must be painted before you lose it.\u00a0 So you start another before it escapes.<\/p>\n

I confess, I have paintings in my studio that I started years and years ago.\u00a0 As I write this in my studio, I have stacks and piles of them sitting around me, propped on easels or leaning on shelves.\u00a0 Some of them sit together in little bins or my vertical art storage system.<\/p>\n

Unlike my teacher, I have around 125 of them the last time I bothered to count.\u00a0 ..all sizes and shapes with many nearly done.\u00a0 Some are sitting with their frames, some not.\u00a0 ..but I am not quite happy with them.<\/p>\n

They need a little fussing to correct a twig, rocks, feathers, or the eye on the left looks a little odd for some reason.\u00a0 They might need a glaze, or two, and perhaps a corner needs finished off.\u00a0 So they sit.\u00a0 Staring at me.<\/p>\n

In the past, I have tried other methods of working.\u00a0 I would make one piece, maybe two, and work exclusively on those pieces.\u00a0 Forcing myself.\u00a0 ..or, rather, restraining myself.\u00a0 I was not allowed to start another unless it was an emergency (like a gallery calling with a request that they need a painting of a red fox pronto).<\/p>\n

I found that working one or two at a time made me work more slowly, and less creatively, oddly enough.\u00a0 Though it was much easier to keep track of in-progress shots that I snapped of them as I worked, the actual paintings seemed to drag on as did the inspiration for them.<\/p>\n

So, after a year or so of working in a more targeted manner, deciding that unfortunately this way of working just wasn’t for me, I switched back to my original methods of chaos and tried to find a rhythm in having so many balls in the air at one time.<\/p>\n

Though I occasionally lose a random moose or songbird in the mass of arranged paintings, (sometimes causing frustration and sometimes leading to a pleasant surprise several months later when it resurfaces), I have accepted this way of working as what seems to fit my wiring.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t, however, lend itself well to simple answers to “how long did that take you?” questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Squirrel Collection – all works are 5in x 7in, watercolor on board with sterling silver, \u00a9Rebecca Latham I am asked this question rather often: How long do you work on a painting?\u00a0 How long did it take you to paint that? I stop and think. I try to give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[731,1370,1288,1369,1371,1368,216,1367,246,325,1789,1374,358,362,1376,1373,1212,1377,1372,410,1375,1152,412,423,445,1213,472],"class_list":["post-4623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-stuff","tag-2c-i","tag-art-storage","tag-chaos","tag-cooperative","tag-few-days","tag-guess","tag-home","tag-last-time","tag-latham","tag-painting","tag-paintings","tag-piles","tag-rebecca-latham","tag-red-fox","tag-shapes","tag-shelves","tag-six-years","tag-squirrel","tag-stacks","tag-sterling-silver","tag-storage-system","tag-struggle","tag-studio","tag-time","tag-watercolor","tag-wild-animal","tag-work"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/squirrels.jpg?fit=1241%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4623"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5162,"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4623\/revisions\/5162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lathamstudios.com\/rebecca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}