Fixing a painting

I rarely ever go back and fix my paintings. In fact, more often than not, I wipe them off with turps and just start over. There have been a few times when I let something dry only to regret it later, because I really couldn’t live with what was on the canvas. When that happens, there are really three choices.

The first obvious choice is to do nothing. In this case, the painting will usually lay around until I either give it away or toss it in the bin.

The second choice is to sand it down and prime over it. This is messy but at least I get to re-use the surface.

The third choice is to try and fix what’s broken. Sometimes this is fixing something small, like bumping shadows around, but sometimes it’s something a lot harder, like softening edges. Since I normally paint direct (wet into wet), I don’t have a lot of experience with softening edges after paint is dry. I generally treat situations like this as learning experiences. It either goes well and I fix it, or it goes poorly and I learn something (and then bin it).

Of course there are other things that can go wrong with a painting besides the paint. I’ve had stretcher bars crack, so re-stretching is a thing. I’ve had canvases be a tiny bit too large or just slightly out of square, so re-stretching and sometimes “editing” is in order. These kinds of changes are a little scarier since I am usually happy with the painting itself and I don’t want to ruin that just to sort out some structural issue.

All of this is an opportunity to learn though. The more I paint, the more mistakes I make and the more I learn. All I can do is keep painting.