Untitled Work in Progress

~ Camilla Laurentine

An unfinished watercolor painting of white woman wearing a twig crown and lady slippers. She has closed eyes and is kissing a wolf. They stand in front of a crumbling cathedral in the forest.

If you would have told me 4 years ago that I would be working in watercolor, I’d have laughed at you.  Too finicky.  Too much work.  Too time-consuming.  Yet here I am.

These days I don’t have time to sit for 8 hours like I once did in art school studio classes.  Which I recently discovered wasn’t a bad thing.  In fact, it forces me to slow down.  I’ve imposed a rule of only working an hour at a time now on a single piece of art, because I realized that the danger of working large amounts of time is that rushing need to be finished.  Rushing keeps me from learning a medium.  Rushing keeps me from really figuring out how to become better, because art to me is a constant movement towards improving and mastery.  I’m not there yet.  I doubt I ever will be.  But in this case, rushing is what has kept my work in the past from being the very best it could be.  Not allowing myself to stop when I was mentally tired of something has kept me from actually growing as much as I can.  Art is about quality, it’s not about quantity.  Sometimes I forget that.  Or sometimes I need to be humbled by that reminder.

5 thoughts on “Untitled Work in Progress”

  2. This is very, very nice for an early effort in water colours, which are notoriously difficult, I think. I look forward to seeing your progress. 😉

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  3. I love this picture. I hope you repost when you finish it. Also the message in your blog really sank in while hitting me in the forehead at the same time. I’m always trying to rush especially on the “good days”, which leaves things not as good as they could be. Perhaps if I slow it down i might just surprise myself at the outcome.

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    1. I’ll definitely be posting it when it’s done. And ideally I’ll be getting it scanned for prints, too.

      As for rushing… Guilty as charged. Slowing down is hard, but it’s worth it sometimes.

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