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Did I say that I’m musing up my next masterpiece? What does that mean? If you are an artist, I think you know exactly what it means. Who was it that first said that if you can imagine it, you can paint an elephant on a sixty foot wall or the head of a pin?

The imagination of an artist is one of the most valuable assets they have. My situation is that I promised my daughter-in-law an Italian street scene. My problem is that I’m not in Italy so I have to rely on photographs, and, of course, I don’t want it to look like all the paintings I’ve seen at discount stores like Walmart and others. There is nothing wrong with these, I just want it to be a little more original and, hopefully, more valuable.

My daughter-in-law e-mailed me a couple of photographs she found on the internet. One was a restaurant with empty tables on an outside patio. The other was apartments and other buildings on each side of a disappearing cobblestone street. The problem is that there are no people. The scenes are vacant.

There goes the muse cranking up. I want people in the scene…at least, one person, probably more. I’m imagining putting the two pictures together. I’m thinking about the restaurant with the outside patio and tables as the lower floor of a two story building. The upper floor will be an apartment with a veranda with flowers in hanging baskets. At a table two tables back a couple is sitting. Their body language showing they may be lovers but at the moment they seem somewhat incompatible. At the next table to the viewer, a white haired man sits. He is obviously paying attention to the couple. What are they saying that is so interesting to the man? Down the cobblestone street and on the opposite side an elderly lady waters her flowers outside of her apartment with a red spouted water container.

Wow! There goes my muse. An elephant on a pinhead? Well, to create this painting (which will be an acrylic on canvas) I have to get out my 3×5 cards and making a hand full of thumbnail sketches to see which composition will work to make this a real masterpiece.

My daughter-in-law wants a large painting. When I was painting a 30″x40″ picture, she seemed to indicate that she wanted something larger. No elephant on a pinhead here. I’ve got to do some serious work. Muse! Muse! Muse!

I have only painted two street scenes. They are posted below.

Even though I painted the picture on the left, I do not include it in my gallery of work because it is my first painting in acrylics and painted from a how to acrylic paint art book.

I wanted to learn how to paint with acrylics because I was musing about the painting on the right, The Red Truck, which was my second acrylic painting I’d ever done. The painting on the left falls into the category of the many copies of other peoples compositions from art instruction books. I don’t consider them my own…even if I did paint them. I do not choose to place them in my gallery. They are under the bed or somewhere in the attic or garage.