What do you do with a burnt cake? Do you save the good bits, ice it prodigiously, and serve it anyway? Or do you toss it in the bin with a vengeful thump and cross that recipe off your list decisively? And what do I do with a painting gone very wrong? Here is the visual evidence of my recent attempts to paint a vase of flowers.

First try: ack!

Second try: sighThird try: turn over the paper over from #1:Okay, getting better, or at least it has potential. While I wait for it to dry, I go after Painting #3 with crayons and channel the Fauvists. Opposite colors adjacent to each other. And start stamping in patterns, because, why not?
The Fauve painting:

Then I return to painting # 3 which I think of as the conventional, normal, pretty good/not bad ‘Vase of Flowers’ still life in watercolor only, and dab in some blocky brushstrokes with a square tipped brush to bring the painting out of its anemic state. So that’s it for now. The very bad, awkward #1 is hidden on the back of normal, conventional #3 and the wild beast #2 is masking attempt #2. I can live with either of these but the uncontrollable aspects of the medium tempted me to throw them all away. As for the ruined cake? I threw mine in the bin every year on my kids’ birthdays and drove frantically to a bakery to replace my awful cakes. After some years, I skipped the baking part and went straight to the bakery. But the funny thing is that my kids like talking about the awful cakes. We learn from our mistakes, plus they make some funny memories.