Oh no, yellow rose.

Well, my babies and I were wandering through the grocery store yesterday morning in search of some sundry items when this beautiful yellow rose caught my eye. Now I haven't been too successful at painting yellow flowers in the past. But for some strange reason, my past failures just make me want to paint them all the more (I don't know why I like to torture myself, but I sure do ;).

What I've concluded today is that the subtlety of a yellow flower is probably just a little beyond what my eye can currently accurately see. Or maybe a little beyond what I can successfully translate into paint (clearly). But then again, I'm not going to get any better at seeing the yellows if I just avoid them.

Most of the torture of painting something difficult like this isn't in the actual struggle of finding the right colors and values--it's in battling the inner voice that makes me want to just quit trying when things get tough. The mind can be a vicious place, but all this journaling I've been doing here has helped me become more aware of those less-than-helpful feedback loops... to a point where I can almost ignore them. Of course it's always difficult to ignore your own thoughts, and sometimes it's better not to. But if I've learned something in the past few years, it's that your thoughts don't define who you are. Thoughts are just thoughts and they will come and go. For me, there just happen to be these pesky few that keep coming back. But we all have to face down our demons sometime or another, and I think most of us come out better people for having done so.

Anyway, I think I've painted this rose six times already (but who's counting??? ;). The first two times were 30ish minutes each, and then I did four 3-5 minute quick studies, just to get the larger impression. I certainly haven't mastered that yellow yet, but at least I'm six attempts closer! The darks vs. lights tend to be closer in value than I'm thinking, and that's just going to take a lot more practice to see those subtle transitions. I've heard that in some parts of Asia, the musical scales have several more steps to each octave when compared to our scale. It would take a much more highly trained ear to be able to hear pitch accurately under that system, just as all those subtle gradations of light will be more difficult to render, so I'll keep trying.