Is it soup yet?
 

For the very experienced pros here; as simple question.

When do you know a portrait is really finished?

When you've repeatedly hurled yourself at that wall and haven't emerged, bloodied, in front of a new wall. When you've flipped your brain around to look at it from every possible consciousness. When you've gone from detail to mass to detail to mass, to large connections to small accuracies. When you've repeated this process ad nauseum, until flipping your consciousness around no longer brings any results, and you're no longer getting valuable feedback, if you're lucky enough to have someone to comment.

When you fall in love with it, have memorized it, and have decoded the essence of it: light on form, your brain, combined with what in your personal path through the history of art strikes you with astonishing force (including architecture, music, poetry, even your continuous interior monologue). When you never want it to end because it is rapturous to tinker with the finishing touches, the Rhythms, the surface quality, the hatchings that comprise the tones.

But know that it's always a choice, and a matter of how important the answer to the question "where does this stand in the history of art" is to you, at that particular moment, on your particular stage.

Beautifully and eloquently stated, Mari. "Love" does seem to have something to do with it. William Whitaker said in one of his lectures that the more you look at your subject the more you fall in love with the subject.

A painting is done when you press your finger against it and it bounces back. Wait, that's not right...

For me, a painting is "done" when I think I've done all I can to send it out into the world - the equivalent of givng it a kiss, a lunchbox and making sure its hair is combed down - and only then can I sign my name to it.

You've got me wondering whether "bad paintings" are ever truly "done".

I don't know exactly what he meant by this, but I like this quote from Da Vinci: "Art is never finished, only abandoned."

I like that quote also Linda, I also like to say that my painting is finished only when it is out of my sight.

I also think that the longer you paint the more comfortable you become in recognizing when your painting is finished. Maybe you learn to establish a clearer vision at the beginning, and thus it's easier to match up that completed vision at the end. Who knows?

I seem to go through a ritual on the front end and on the back end. I stare at an image for days and sometimes weeks, allowing myself to become seduced by it. After bringing it to what I would call an almost complete state I go through a sort of separation process. I will take the painting with me from room to room and stare at it in different lights and surroundings. Many times taking it back to the easel until my relationship with the image is complete.

Linda I do like that quote too.

I also remember Bill with his great wisdom talking about not going back to a painting and messing it up. This is what I tend to do, so my history here is to think something is done. Post it, and then their are no comments so I figure it is not well received or I have it moved to critiques and the truth be told.

Such beautiful responses! I turn it to the wall for 2 weeks. If on the 3rd nothing hits me as really wrong, including through the mirror, its done.

Harley Brown writes that you can never know when a painting is truly finished, except in the case of a commissoned portrait and that is the day when you get the check from the client.

These are all great advice. My problem is that I love to paint so much, that I love everything!

Stanka, I like the mirror idea. I think I have been using something like that which is posting here and it's amazing the things you see. I'll have to try that, I am sure that comes with much less embarrassment.

Hulings
 

Clark Hulings said he paints until he can't make the painting any better. I've always thought that was concise.

I mostly know I'm closing in on it when I come in fresh and nothing jumps out and is buggin' me. I once heard this described as the "squeaky wheel" method, where you fix what cries out to be fixed, until nothing "squeaks" any more.

A pertinent question I always ask myself, similar to Tim's response is, "Sure I can always make it different, but can I make it better?"

But, yeah, if they didn't come get them, I'd work on them forever.

When you cannot put another stroke to it.

I must agree. I too find it hard to let a painting go as finished but I have come to terms. Now I try and set a very detailed image of what I want in the finished piece and when it is there I'm done. Or when I feel I have captured what is most important.

I ask myself: Sure that area could have more detail or maybe a little more time on this or that, but will it add to the overall image as a whole or is it just fussing over minor details?

Sometimes a painting is done long before I start. What I mean is due to poor planning it is doomed to failure and I should just start over with a fresh idea.

Well that is what I try to keep telling myself anyway. But I do find sometimes I just have to say done. Other times I just do a new painting if I am unhappy with how the first turned out instead of trying to fix the first one to death.

I really want my paintings to look as if I just whipped them out with loose brush strokes and not appear worked at. So often I have to start over to fix it for I just can't get the look I want if I don't get it the first time. I try to make the first brush strokes show though to the end in the finished piece. If I keep working and working a area that freshness is lost.