Paintings That Never Made The Cut.

This is the worst job I’ve ever loved.

They say Ishtar was the worst movie ever made. I can’t confirm that — I’ve never seen ***Ishtar. But I can say with absolute conviction that one of the worst movies I’ve ever watched is Paint Your Wagon.

Now, as some of you know, I’m a huge Clint Eastwood fan. I’ve seen everything he’s been in or directed, including that weird one where he took mushrooms and wandered around, but Paint Your Wagon? That’s the topper. The movie itself isn’t terrible… well, okay, it sucks — not because it’s a bad western but mostly because it’s a western musical. Yes, a musical. Whoever decided to cast Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in a singing cowboy flick must’ve been on the same mushrooms Clint took in that other movie.

But hey, they all can’t be good. And that’s kind of the point. Making bad things is part of making good things.

My art teacher once told me, “You have to paint 100 miles of canvas to get good.” I remember thinking, That’s a lot of canvas. So I immediately started painting on 10”x50” canvases — anything to speed up the process.

There aren’t many professions where you spend most of your time beating yourself up. In art, we fail over and over again, always hoping to get better. And when we do get better? We just raise the bar and start picking apart the next batch of flaws. It’s exhausting. I think art books and “ greatest hits” albums are partly to blame.

Art books only show you an artist’s best work. Same with instructional books — full of perfect examples and flawless demos. You never see the disasters that end up in the dustbin.

Remember records? “The Very Best of Bobby Vinton” never included his horrible rendition of “Danke Schoen.” No one puts the duds on the record. Fleetwood Mac has been around since 1967 and has released 20 studio albums. That’s about 200 songs — and from those, they’ve released 23 compilation albums recycling the same handful of hits. We love those hits, sure. But we never hear the others— the ones that didn’t make the cut, or the ones that never made it past the music-lined notebook.

All we see is the final win, so we forget the epic battles it took to get there. And when we don’t win right away, we beat ourselves up for not being geniuses on the first try.

You know who gets it? Babies and Skateboarders

When babies learn to walk from crawling, they sure do fall down a lot. They persevere, and thank goodness. Can you imagine… well, I’ve tried this bunch of times and I sure do fall a lot.  Maybe walking isn't for me. Watch a kid learning to skateboard. They fall down a hundred thousand times — and they just keep getting up. They fail 999,999 times, but once, just once, they land the trick — it’s a win. One land is worth all the attempts. There’s no shame in failure for them. It’s part of the deal.

So why not with us?

Bad paintings? Who cares. To make good art, you have to make bad art. As the great songwriter Stirgill Simpson sings Some days you blast off and some days you just smoke. Get the chicken. There will be days you swear you could heat your house by burning your entire week’s work. That’s okay.

Love your wins. But celebrate your failures, too. That’s where the real learning happens. You throw enough spaghetti at the wall, something's gonna stick.

Keep those brushes swinging

Your friend in art,

Doug.

Ps,

For some, this may be hard to swallow, but if you get too many wins too often, your work takes on a boring, repetitious, almost formulaic feel. Never be afraid to experiment. Go fall down.

Saturday Evening Post cover by the killer good illustrator Mead Schaeffer.

Here are two minutes you're gonna wish you had back. https://youtu.be/XR80miD_pT0?si=AleRoTk7jVImO45H.

Here are three more minutes of a head shaker. See how long the intro is before we get to the song. Full on space filler. https://youtu.be/X5kq12xf1Uk?si=nqyvMjBCYBlQT906.