The Failure Thread

Felix

Everyone of us has paintings where nothing goes right. This is the place to share all those mistakes and failures.

Maybe another painter struggled with the same things and has just the right tip to help you. Or you're just feeling discouraged and need to know that everyone struggles sometimes. 😊

I'll start:

After seeing some great tonalist paintings by @pathunt92 I've decided to give the style ago with the help of YouTuber Stuart Davies and this video: https://youtu.be/5jffJeeXaVQ

And here is my "masterpiece":

I did everything wrong that you can do wrong. I've used a very small canvas when you need a large board. Instead of the proper sky color I've used some kind of green mix and got discouraged super fast and tossed it. Wasn't as easy as it looks in the video at all!

I'll probably get the right board it paint on in the future and give it another to.

Voy Kay

Felix Gosh, looks like an underwater scene in Mediterranean industrial waters!
Well .... I do post my dragons on the site .... at least people can have a good daily laugh out of those, so these creatures are not totally worthless!

TheLandscapePainter

You do realise my face is in my hands at the thought of uploading my disasters. hahaha.

Felix

TheLandscapePainter I'd live to see some fails from a better painter than I am! I feel like I'll never want to pick up a brush ever again 😁

TheLandscapePainter

Felix Awe, bless you Felix, you will get through it. I've felt so frustrated with some of mine I nearly threw my brushes out of the window but I'm glad I didn't. Some days it just doesn't work at all does it. You know what to do but it just doesn't happen. I guess it's like being a singer who knows all the words but can't hit the notes. I hide mine behind the wardrobe😅

Lilikins

Ooo yes there have been some big failures. This is my favorite. This was my first animal attempt and it did not go well. Don’t make direct eye contact or it may steal your soul.

Felix

Lilikins I'm sorry, but I've got to ask. What animal should it be? Looks like a vampire with a bow tie 😁

Lilikins

Ugh apparently I fail at posting photos too lol

Felix

Lilikins I've fixed it for you. You need to link to the image (ending with .jpg or .png or similar). If it doesn't show up you most likely linked to the gallery on imgur (something with /gallery/ in the address)

Most of the time you can just right click the image and select 'copy image url' or similar

wybnormal

I failed.. but I painted gesso over them and went at it again 😃 These were acrylics. My oil failures were scrapped off while wet and tried a second or third time 😃

Lilikins

wybnormal did you try to post a photo too? At least it isn’t just me that can’t get photos to show lol

wybnormal

I put my images up on Imgur and then just put a link in the thread.

Lilikins

wybnormal I did the same but I can’t see either of our photos 🤨

JoJoSunshine

Lilikins I did the same and it just shows the link. How do you get the picture to show up.

Lilikins

Felix thanks for fixing it Felix! It eventually turned out to be a meerkat with a bow. My husband asked me to paint him a meerkat but I had never painted an animal before. I had been following a YouTube tutorial on how to paint animals until this point and clearly the lesson wasn’t working lol. It looks more like a demon version of Rafiki (monkey from lion king).

My husband heard me laughing hysterically, came into my painting room and went “what...what is that THING?” Thats your meerkat sweetie. Your welcome!

Toadi

I took it out but on my first one, I tried to put a deer in the background, Hubby walked by and asked why there was a dinosaur in my picture...I scraped real quick...lol

Felix

Toadi Ha! 😃 I'd love to see that dinosaur

ironchef8000

Felix Me too!
That could be an interesting event idea - paint a scene out of time. I saw one of the fan submissions on a Kevin Hill YouTube video that had what looked to be an ancient sword and armor rusting against a rock.

Sunnylady

Alright, my turn to post something that was a failure and I painted over it.

doggymommee8301

Sunnylady You consider THAT a failure? Ha! I'd have gladly hung that on my wall!

Sunnylady

doggymommee8301 Well, surprisingly there are days when things just do not work, I would hope amount of those days would go down as i gain experience. but nope. Another interesting aspect that i noticed that my own eyes are worse than camera. In reality blending did not look that bad, but when I aimed my camera all those circles appeared and became visible straight away. Major difference between two paintings was medium, tee is a beautiful medium, only what scares me that it will darken a lot comapre to oil+turpentine.

Lilikins

doggymommee8301 LOL I was thinking the same. Looks wonderful to me.