Day 5

So here I am, five days into my journey. Actually, my journey began well over a decade ago. I just began documenting it five days ago. I may do a blog in the future about why I do portraits, and how long I've been doing them. Yesterday I felt a strange, overwhelming sense of nervousness that I haven't felt in a long time. Some of it has to do with the completion of a piece of artwork. When I get finished with a piece I've been working on for a long time, be it several months to several years, there's this sense of loss. It's almost like losing a good friend. The struggle to complete a piece is time-consuming and daunting. The desire to do a good job, and make a masterpiece is consistently on my mind, as I'm sure it is with many artists. Sometimes the colors and brush strokes don't seem to add up, but as each layer is applied, the painting begins to form. One brick doesn't make a house, but thousands of bricks, mortar, etc., later, a dwelling place is built. When I start a portrait, I get excited. Mind you, actually laying the actual paint can be intimidating. Once I get the paint going, it's not necessarily downhill from there, but it is downhill if you know what I mean. It's that single step that is the hardest. Then, I begin the struggle of putting the person's face on canvas, and my ultimate desire is to see the happiness of the customer. But the weird part is, when I get finished with a painting, I come down from the "high" if you will, and find a sense of depression. I've become attached to this painting for 'X' amount of months, and now, it's over and lives in someone's house. I haven't posted the final image of this 'in progress painting,' because I have one or two more images to post of it. The painting is complete, and the face that I looked at for all those months, will be leaving my easel and living in the house of someone else. Parting truly is such sweet sorrow.