The Ugly Stage of Painting

Aug 23, 2017
2 min read

When any artist starts a painting, it's painful to say but it goes through an ugly stage. This is the early stage when you block in colours and estimate shadows and highlights. The work is ugly. If anyone saw it at this stage they would swear you cannot paint jack. If you make the mistake of showing this stage, people truly think you are on another planet. We artists know better. We know that colour blocking is in no way the measure of the end. So you as an artist are excited. You can see where it's going and the fact that no one else can upsets you but doesn't make you loose your stride.

This is painting folks. Like it or not, when a painting is in its infancy it's going to be ugly. And the critics will say what a waste. The trick is that you need to keep on going. Artists differ in their techniques which is to say that some will paint a perfect rose and then fill in the rest, others will opt to block in a background then hone in on the subject. There is really no right or wrong to this just that at the end of the day you are creating. Ahhhh, and then there are the critics. The best option is really to never let people see the ugly stage. That said I was reading a post recently that an art teacher, teaching in her house has no spot to put her "unfinished" paintings so they are open field to all her enter her kitchen/studio. How can she win? Well, a number of suggestions were given : cover her works in progress, put up signs saying don't touch and any number of other trivial solutions but at the end of the day, there likely is no great solution other than educating the audience.

We paint, we work out the composition and we paint. In the early stages, it will be ugly and people will think you suck...so be it. A painter knows, a collector never needs to know and the odd person or spouse that stops by the studio : they can be damned. It's a work in progress. I truly doubt that Michealangelo created David in a day. I bet you there was an ugly stage where observers thought he didn't have a clue....