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Page Two of I Painted Myself into a Corner

Mike dug out additional photos and patiently described what I was looking at. One picture had perfect lighting, but the sunlight came from the wrong direction. Another had the lighting correct, but showed the train from the opposite angle. He was able to provide every conceivable combination except what I needed.

I blocked in obscure shapes and asked him if I had the right idea. He stared at my mysterious-looking dabs of paint with as much confusion as I demonstrated when he tried to describe what I was attempting to duplicate.

"It’s just like that pivot you already painted," he commented as I struggled with the layers of wheels, rods and journal boxes crammed under the locomotive. Mike was speaking ‘railroad lingo’ and I couldn’t decipher it into my ‘artist dialect’ to save my life.

More than once I looked at him in total frustration and said, "I don’t care what it’s called; I want to know what it looks like!"

A light bulb finally went off over both our heads. Mike fetched one of his model engines from me to study from any angle and lighting I pleased. It was enough for me to take a deep breath and begin making some progress.

There was hardly an area of the train that wasn’t painted over at least three or four times. I needed to rematch some of the most bizarre colors each time around, until I got smart enough to mix large batches and store the paint in empty margarine containers. One would think a basic black steam locomotive would be straightforward. The affect of sunlight, shadows, reflection and factors like dust, oil and rust made Engine #28 multiple of shades of gray with varying amounts of every color on my palette. It’s a good thing I didn’t have to name those tubs of paint, because in my current frame of mind the descriptions may not have been appropriate for future marketing.

I still believe, even with those challenges, eight weeks was plenty of time to comfortably finish the masterpiece to my satisfaction. Two hurdles suddenly appeared in the middle of my racetrack, however.

The first situation involved a six-day trip out of state for significant family concerns at what would have marked week number seven in my marathon with acrylics. The second and by far the more crippling is my tendency, to put it mildly, to fixate on matters. Obsession for elusive perfection is always stalking me and looking for that little stress-related crack as an opportunity. This time it didn’t just find a crack; it discovered a wide-open door with a welcome mat in front!

Instead of painting sweeping, relaxed strokes with no smaller than a ½" brush, I dabbled away with my nose just inches from the surface while gripping a little bitty brush too small to even consider using to apply eyeliner. I’d estimate the brush had fourteen bristles, but since I was seeing cross-eyed by then, perhaps there were only seven.

 

Page Three>>

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