This is a tough one. Show off
oil painting I don't like to overwork something as it is nice to keep it fresh. Yet at times I keep hearing you say PMII: "Put More Into It"! This is a tricky balance. I believe that a time away from a painting, in the "middle" stage is best. It is much like an argument, walk away and give it a few minutes before you say something you might regret.

The problem of High country
oil painting overworking is one of the hardest things to overcome. It reminds me of what American painter William Merritt Chase once said: "It takes two to paint. One to paint, the other to stand by with an axe to kill him before he spoils it." I feel the best way to describe my goal for a painting is to strive for "eloquence," just as a good speaker gets to the point and keeps the audience's interest without rambling on. If my memory serves me correctly, Winston Churchill rose to speak to a large audience of Ivy League college students. Expecting a typical speech they were surprised when he simply said: "Never give up, never, ever, ever, ever give up." The message was clear and I am sure that the "Eloquence" of this short speech will remain with those students for the rest of their lives.

I find that many paintings, Angela in open studio
oil painting especially many plein air works, suffer from underworking! It seems some artists call it done while still in the underpainting stage. Although an artist has to be careful not to overwork a piece, we must be equally careful to finish what we have started. Those final strokes are often what brings the painting together. The extra 10 or 20 minutes can make the difference between a hurried, sloppy-looking painting that misses the mark, and a carefully developed work that brings a scene to life.

My family often tells me
original painting to stop painting before I think I've finished and they insist that I wreck things that are good when I try to make them better. But it's so hard for me to stop fiddling. To train myself, I've started photographing works as soon as I think I've finished and then again after I've reworked them. Guess what? I often destroy the freshness for the sake of accuracy. My first teacher told me, "Perfection is the enemy of the good..." It's taken me years to prove to myself that he's absolutely right.

When an artist's work Fallen Angel IV
acrylic painting is deemed "overworked" I always think that is when they have lost focus. So many people paint the way they think things should look. Artists need to see the 'through-line" in what they are communicating. The age old "less is more" and "never sell yourself short" are just clichés from people who claim to know better. I always approach a painting by thinking my work through. I paint the background first and paint the piece to the foreground. It is a fine line to decide when a painting is finished and adding more and making it gaudy. This is also why I recommend artists paint in a series. Like writing an essay, nobody gets it perfect in the first draft.

It's important not to overuse the word "overwork" with newly-hatched painters. Students need to explore and explore and explore. This will, of course, lead to that labored, or overworked, appearance. It seems to me to be a necessary step in the process for most people as they are learning. You cannot make an assured brushstroke without knowledge and practice. I have many students who are so concerned about overworking that they try to fake assurance when they have very little knowledge. And this worry keeps them from the "Look, look again, look some more" study that they need.

This being said, it's also worth noting that these students could just do a number of studies of the same subject and probably profit more than reworking over the same painting. It's more difficult to convince people of that though.

I paint as an extension of doing and being. A few weeks ago I found a watercolour started last year and decided to get this piece of paper out of the way by just quickly adding a couple of dark tones that seemed to be missing. I stuck it up on the fridge to remind myself that I should not go months without picking up brushes. It was a fridge painting, that's all. My daughter yesterday saw it and today it is a living room painting: it is so dynamic and fresh she said - underworked?!

Since I am painting in Bamboo Window II (segment)
original painting a style that requires me to get it right the first time, it is very easy to overwork a piece. When my brush touches the rice paper the paint or ink goes right through it and that stroke cannot be reworked or removed. I can paint over it but I risk losing the lovely loose effect of my painting. I keep hoping I have learned to leave my painting alone and not 'fix' it but every now and then I get so involved in painting that I end up putting that last fatal brush stoke and then curse myself. All I can do is start again. Why do I keep painting in this style? I love the freedom and flow of the brush dancing on the paper. When it does go right it is a wonderful feeling. As an experiment I tried to keep painting over and over on the same piece to see if I could make something good out of a bad piece. It didn't work but I did find out how much paint rice paper can absorb, far more than I expected. So I learn a little more every day.

For me it's best for me Fan Dancer
oil painting to have several paintings underway at one time. If I am working with only one piece, when I reach the point where I need to think about it, or let passages dry before continuing, then I tend to grow impatient and foolhardy. I start making bad decisions. I overwork the painting when it really needs to be left alone. Shuffling several paintings around on different easels gives me plenty of opportunity to keep my brushes happily busy, while at the same time I'm giving the work the space it needs before continuing on.

I overwork a painting when Clover point, Victoria
acrylic painting I get into the fatal cycle of cowardice and poor anger management. It all happens in my head and if I knew how not to fall into this trap ever again I would write a book. This thing attacks me periodically and it seems to get triggered by some unfortunate event.

I start a painting too timidly and half distracted, from some reason believing that the painting will find its way as I go along if I just work patiently. What really happens is that I work pensively instead of patiently. The painting starts unfolding happily, like a child frolicking through a meadow. At some point, hours later, I realize that the thing is going nowhere, the child is now hungry and scared and it's getting dark. The poor painting is begging for help. That's where the anger takes its turn and I start "fixing it" and at the same time slapping myself for being so foolish. Needless to say that the brushstrokes are by now dry and bumpy and all in wrong places, soft edges are lost, compositional errors are laughing back at me. My husband starts talking very softly and tiptoeing around the house except on an occasion when he asks – "Why did you spoil it, I loved the way it looked yesterday."

If there wasn't just a delicious passage in it, it would be chucked away, but in truth I have been able to salvage such paintings in the past and some even ended with awards and sales. My experience is that simplifying and strengthening the composition usually works well even if the surface quality is not fresh any more. When the composition is beyond help, it becomes a reusable stretcher. There is a landscape with a lovely deer and a mess of the background waiting for me in the studio.

On the radio White Cup No.4
warercolour painting a few weeks ago there was an interview with the jazz bassist Marcus Miller . Miller said that there are three levels of musical skill. The first is knowing the tools of music, the second is technique — when a musician becomes an expert at using the tools. (In painting as in playing, this is where the overworking comes in.) "Level three is when you play as if you never studied a note," Miller says, "but you can express yourself as simply as when you're talking." At that stage overworking or underworking no longer have much meaning.

I always think my work is best when I'm painting as if I don't know how to paint. But the paradox is that you can't do that until you have learned how to paint.

I came across a quote from
She Writes Language In The Book Of Trees
oil painting
by Hugh O'Donnell (2004) the artist Hugh O'Donnell which went like this: "Your creation never completely succeeds. And there's a kind of addiction that goes with that because the artist is continuously struggling and failing and struggling again. But it's always a better richer kind of failure."

I came across this in Bill Moyer's book Genesis . I was struck by it because it matches my experience as a calligrapher. I never do completely succeed but I think my failures are better.

I have been overworked Diffusion
oil painting lately, but thankfully, not my paintings. Stopping before overworking may be a good idea, but, stopping prematurely isn't. I don't believe that overworking is necessarily a by-product of working too long on a piece. It's working too long without a clear concept or direction.

I know artists that keep persistently beating a canvas to death trying to fix it and overworking it in the process. When at a loss, put the overworked painting aside, somewhere that you can glance at it now and then. One day it will call you, when you're not so invested in it, and you'll know what it needs and you can start a fresh painting right over the previous one. Perhaps some of the history of the previous will show through adding a new dimension of beauty, but the new marks will be fresh, because you are fresh. I have resuscitated many a painting this way.

If I am painting a landscape I usually know when to quit because I have an idea as to where I am going. Of course I leave open my options and remain flexible. It is when I am painting an abstract - that is when things can really become interesting, regarding if a painting is completed. The question is when to stop working. It is easy to fall in love with one particular section of a painting. Sometimes you have to destroy that section in order for the whole painting to work. Bringing an abstract painting to completion is one of the unknowns that depends on experience and intuition. It helps to take some time away from the painting either by taking it off the easel or just looking at it and then go back to it later on.

Sometimes the painting tells you what it needs. Years ago when I started to paint, I asked the artist that I was studying with what was the secret of art. His answer was one word, patience. So besides experience and intuition perhaps patience is another aspect of knowing when a painting is completed.