Releasing my perfectionism

Sunday marked the one year anniversary of the last time I stepped foot inside a live show show hall.

I have some big, complicated, messy feelings about that, all of which would make for a great discussion, if only I had the time, energy and emotional bandwidth to put them together in a coherent post.

I do not.

Instead, I'm going with a related, but much easier topic: At that last show, I won this model in the raffle.

KS Raaja is a 3D printed resin by KS Arts.

I planned to take him home and paint him right away, but as usual, I got bogged down in the prepping process. This was my first experience with a full sized printed horse, and all those tiny, nearly invisible print lines wreaked havoc with my perfectionism. Try as I might, I couldn't make them go away, at least not completely. Eventually, Raaja was set aside, with all the other half prepped models.

Last week, when the show memories started hitting my Facebook page, I pulled him out again and looked him over carefully. While not perfect, his prep job was actually pretty good. 

I started thinking about a post that appeared on this blog in May.

Specifically, this part.

"You know," I told myself, "this would be a good time to practice what you preach. Release your perfectionism. Paint that horse."

So that's what I've been doing this week.

I spent one more long day prepping Raaja.

Then - before I could talk myself out of it - I slapped an acrylic base coat on him.

Seeing color on a model for the first time is inspiring.

Instead of obsessing over issues with my canvas, I started imagining the finished project.

Here he is this morning, after a first coat of oils.

I know there are some print lines hiding in his nooks in crannies, but they're no longer worrying me.

This horse will probably never see the inside of a show ring. I'm painting him for me, and right now at least, I am really enjoying that.