Time to Paint

I painted this weekend, somehow. It was a busy weekend. Due to a fairly thorough sub layer Saturday night (Brown Madder, Yellow Ocher, Prussian, and Flake) I had to walk away from finishing the whole upper layer as planned. It was too wet to continue in the time I had. I had hoped to catch that tacky stage for finishing some complimentary highlighting, but was unable to get started on time. I was ready too. That has become a thing in fact. More on that later.
Tonight IS a pre-designated painting night however and in that vein, tonight I paint! I prep for the final skin with some revaluing of shaded areas. I will tackle the compliment highlights tomorrow. There is a chance I could throw it off with tonight’s grays the other way around. My recent color adjustments have prompted tonight’s revaluing, but when executed, this adjustment in value will lend itself well to establishing the form of the final layer of skin I hope to tackle tomorrow. It depends on how carried away I get tonight. The fun part is, tonight is relatively monochromatic and generally just shading. It *should* be pretty straight forward and relaxed though there will be a lot of ground to cover. I have a lot of area planned and a unifying warm gray, but this gray will have to dial up and down over the variety of under layers I will be addressing. This will be tough to do correctly, but I love this kind of straight sword fight on occasion. There is less calculation and more fight.
As for the other thing, starting on time is tough in an active household. My painting is regularly deprioritized, but the fact that it has any priority at all is a testament to my perseverance for its importance. This type of struggle is historically common in the arts. I don’t intend to suggest that it is justified in any way because it is common. I won’t even argue that though most successful artists, whether musical, written word, visual, or performing artists, have experienced this priority struggle, that it is even then justified. Hell, I’m not even trying to justify it. There is no reason for that. What I would like to point out is simply this; until one experiences great success in something creative, other elements in life will attempt to unseat those endeavors claiming they are a waste of time or that they obviously are not contributing to the bottom line, the bills, or whatever. No, there is no justifying the creative endeavors because that would require that they are compared to success, time spent wisely, the bottom line, bills, or whatever. There is no comparison because those things exist to support creative endeavors, not the other way around and are not to be compared as though equal or competing.
I am fully aware only now, that not all people understand this distinction. It is an important one. The people that do not understand merely see the above observation as only moving words around while their personal interpretation remains intact. Those that understand the distinction are just nodding, hopelessly. They know the difference and know it is hopeless to explain. In a nutshell, art is life and all that we do is but a servant, obediently struggling to carve out enough time to live it.