Revision

In the previous post, I talked of my lack of resolve for a particular piece. Below is an updated version of the painting. 

When I first imagined the piece, I wanted some sort of gold symbolism in the background, but the only icon I could think of was the female sign for gender, which I found redundant (as the painting was already of a naked female). So I was at a standstill. But while looking at my entire body of work, I, for some reason, liked the way the above piece looked with a self portrait I picture below. 

In the work immediately above, I started with the version on the left, but was unhappy, so I let it sit, similarly to the painting of the naked girl. It did not convey the sort of flighty depression I wanted, it just looked like some superficial, try-hard fantasy. Some aspects of the painting I still really liked, such as the clouds and the color palette as well as form of the face. So, I first painted over the body then hair more realistically, eliminating the failed lotus and pitiful semi-2D-style hair. I wanted to add another sort of graphic at this point, maybe in ink. I settled on Sharpie (because that was the only medium that would write over the oil paints) and used my old journals to come up with the broken text. This alteration did not bring the piece to perfection, I am still unsettled by the composition, but, overall, I am much happier and less embarrassed because it feels like a more genuine work. 

But back to the original painting discussion of this post, looking at these two paintings together, I decided to add a textual background. When Ms. Slaughter gave me the metallic markers, I planned to use a literary text that was somewhat sexual. As a joke, I told my friend Sonya that I would write a chapter from "50 Shades of Grey." Then I actually did it. I crossed out sort of sexual or emotional words as a hypothetical censorship. And am satisfied with the outcome.