Color Study for Cling

I just finished a small color study for Cling.  It's been one of the works that's spent the last couple months in the studio going slowly.  A lot of that has to do with figuring out the color palette to use with the painting.  The freeway works have a different color palette than my urbanscapes, yet somehow working on the freeway works has coaxed me out of my creative block, so last night I decided that I'd bring in the colors from the freeway works into the urbanscapes to see what happens.  In college I always did pastel or small paintings studies for the larger paintings.  It's funny how much stuff you get away from doing that you did as a student.  Ironically, though these things are still really important to do.  I think as the years have passed since art school I've simply have formed bad habits of skipping the preliminary portion of creating paintings.  Some of it has to do with time constraints of working a day job and the need to produce work for the gallery all the same.  I think more has to do with being free of the professors who made me do all that preliminary work that was so tedious at the time.  I'm sure some of my professors would like to know that years latter one of their students finally gets it.  Granted, I'm sure they were laughing to themselves at the time "you'll understand years from now", as I was complaining to them.

This morning while painting I was also thinking about the distinction between artists that have had formal training and those who have not.  In my mind I think of it as simply those who hop onto the freeway(going to school) and those who take surface streets(read, study and paint a whole lot).  In the end both groups get there, but those who chose to get there by freeway will get there sooner.  However, I don't really know if an artist is any more or less valid based on which road they choose.  Creating art is about struggle to get what is in your head out onto the canvas(feel free to insert your own medium here) the way you see it internally. It's just like everything else that's worth doing in life - not easy.  I feel that all artists are bound together by this mutual struggle.  It reminds me of riding up a really long and steep hill on my road bike, hard work, it hurts like hell and kicks your butt, but when you crest it and are flying down the other side it's pure exhilaration.