In search of a painting

    The sun beams it's hot rays down. I am burdened in the heat, paints, palette, brushes, easel, a canvas, and what ever other nick knacks I need for the day. How is anyone supposed to find a painting like this. I have not been in this city in god knows how long. How do I turn on my electric view finder eye. Well the answer is you don't.
     I am carrying all my painting stuff 'cause that is my baggage. That's how I role. I may wonder around for hours and not find some spot to paint. Maybe the same thing tomorrow. This is my quest.
     Finding a painting is a challenging task. When it comes to landscape images most people are drawn to the epic. They want to capture a skyline, a bridge, they want the dramatic vastness of space. I am not unlike people, so I put my blinders on. when you work on a canvas eighteen inches wide, or even twenty four inches, in order to get that big space you have to make everything really small. Then you can't get all the details, it gets harder to line everything up. You frustratingly work into a little space fumbling into the canvas till it looks like mud.
     Our eyes can do amazing things. I can look out the door of this coffee shop, across the street, through a parking lot and across another street to read a no parking sign. My eyes are zooming in and focusing. That sign seems to enlarge because I am giving it my attention. If I were to do a painting from this perspective the sign would not be legible. I would more than likely overlook it completely.
     So when I look for a painting I observe the world on a small scale. I am looking for an archway, a tree, some sculpture in relation to it's environment, something that I can set the size and proportions and have the space to fit in all the colors, shapes, and lines that make up the complete form. There is already a daunting amount of information to capture in anything you paint. That is the theory behind going smaller.
      Dammit. I am going to end up painting the Pike street market.
      Well it makes sense. I am trying to asses if this is a good city to be making art in. I might as well go to the location that is interesting and obvious. Obvious because it is Seattle's tourist center; a place where money comes to be spent. Well I am still gonna walk around the city today and look for another spot.