Finished Before I'm Done?

To be honest, sometimes I feel that way about life.  I would imagine everyone feels that way once in a while.  However, that's a little too deep and serious and not really the direction I was going with this post.  

I was thinking more along the lines of how do you know when an art piece is done.  I mean, you can't just stick a fork in it!  Well, of course, you can if that's the look you're going for.  But you know what I mean!

I've debated this question with just about every piece I've ever done.  It seems there's always more that can be added, tweaking that can be done. But how does one know when to quit?  

Good question!

This is just the beginning, so obviously, not yet.

The sky and ground were poured on and moved around with my hand.  The middle is a mix of orange yellow and red dirty poured into puddles.

A little tipping and tilting to spread the puddles and a little blowing with a straw to mess up the straight edges.  Now, at this point, I suppose I could have called this Autumn Abstract and been done with it but that wasn't the look I was going for.

The grass is always greener if you paint it that color!  You may be asking why I didn't use green in the first place, instead of purple.  I was playing around with the idea of dappled shadows under the trees, knowing that I'd probably do a green wash over it.

After playing with some ideas in Autodesk I used a sharpie to doodle on the leaves and create the trunks and branches. I also used a white gel pen on the sky.

At this point, I was considering it done and it could have been.  But every time I looked at it it seemed something was missing.

So I did what usually do: I asked someone else to tell me what to do.  Well, not exactly.  But I did ask my daughter to offer her opinion.  Sometimes having fresh eyes look at what you've been staring at can help.

Is it done?  It could be.

Am I finished? Maybe.

The Tale of Two Paint Skins

Raise your hand if you've never heard of The Three Princes of Serendip. 

Me either! 

Or am I the only one?  Since I can't see how many hands were raised, I'm going to assume I'm not alone.

According to my sources (my children and their cousins), this ancient Persian tale is not common knowledge these days.  However, back in 1754, it must have been because Horace Walpole, in a letter to Horace Mann, coined the word serendipity to describe "discovery by accidental sagacity".  Now, if you're interested in words and their origins and meanings, it's a fascinating trip down the rabbit hole.

However, the point of this post is to share a little bit of serendipity that happened here.  Serendipity in the most common usage these days: a happy accident.

Take two paint skins, created on separate occasions.  One with an accidental drip (which did not make me happy).  No plans, just playing with paints.

Put them together and we have:

Mount Serendip