NSFW and rant

The other night I had watched too many paintings on the intertubes. Since it was late I didn't have the wit to realize that it would have been a lot better to go to bed. This artrage painting is pure makebelieve and would probably would have been a lot better with the use of reference. But when gripped by sleep depravation and inspiration, one does not have time for such trivial things.

Anyways.. Why is this not as brilliant as it should have been, besides the usual too high tempo? Let me embellish on why painting is the hardest thing a human can attempt. Of course, we call it painting even when paint is randomly slapped onto any surface. Here I'm using the word in the sense "accurate, appealing and figurative."

Imagine throwing a ball at a target. Say the target is only to achieve a certain distance, i.e only one dimension. This would be the equivalent to only one of the considerations in a brush stroke. Like hue for instance. If we add a second dimension to the target, say sideways angle, that would be another consideration - brightness perhaps.

So considering in a single stroke; hue, brightness, saturation, direction of a stroke, width, length, gradation, curve, tapering, transparency, edge softness, and texture. If it is done with natural media there is also paint amount, viscosity and surface grain and absorbtion, drying times, light conditions and the much more complicated paint mixing than that of digital media.
Getting all those things right in a single stroke would be the ball-throwing equivalent of hitting a target at specific length, height, sideways shift, at a certain speed, and curvature, with the ball bouncing a specific number of times through a number of rings at different angles at precisely 12.15:45 pm a saturday while standing on one leg and reciting a shakespeare. If we're only talking about roughly the same number of consideration...

Now imagine the target moving, depending on where you hit with the last ball, as paintstrokes tend to do... And of course a brain that translates the visual information about the target into iconic representations, so that you have to squint and recheck constantly to get decent idea of where it is.

The only thing that makes it at all possible to paint something pleasing is that with paintstrokes we can chose the moment (unless you boss wants you to deliver on deadlines, at office hours,) and the pace. This makes painting to a large extent a struggle against yourself, your impatience, conflicting desires since you are going to have to "throw that ball" a few hundred or thousand times.

Oh and yes... Ctrl+Z does help a lot. I'm amazed that there are soo many geniouses out there who seem to be able to handle this every time. Like the eager young talents who will steal my job soon if they don't relax and get a bit lazier. Damn u.

Now let's see if this gets censored...