Another chameleon and a lesson in patience!

Haaaappy Friday. I cannot believe how quickly the weeks fly past and how bad l am at writing a regular blog! I don't know why l decided to draw another chameleon so soon after the last. Well, l do! It was the colors! This chameleon has the craziest colors ever and l loved them. And sometimes l see a load of colors like this and that is all l can see. My color addiction takes over and no logical part of my brain says, 'Stop! Think carefully about the work involved in this!'. No. Not me. I just see the chance to use all those lovely colors l never get to use. Or that is what l tell myself, because even that isn't true! I always pick colourful subjects so there really aren't any colors l never get to use, l even get the flouroescent ones in there at times!
My second mistake was the decision to work bigger, much bigger than l have ever drawn a chameleon before. The idea was that o would be able to really get in the detail. I didn't think this through properly. It is much bigger than before, but the dots are still not much bigger than the point of a pencil and so l can't really get much more detail than l have in the past. It just takes much longer. Much, much longer! I would have to have worked twice this size to get detail in the detail. What was l thinking!

The photo you see above is about twenty hours of work and none of it is finished and it looks weird! Truthfully, by this point l wanted to stop! But there is some kind of grim determination in me that makes me want to see a piece through to the end, so l gritted my teeth and ploughed on. It took four days of painstaking work before l even got a shot l would post on Instagram (that will be Monday if you want to see it). And l eventually even lost track of the number of days l spent on it. I thought that l had learned patience, but it was thoroughly tested. It just looked so flat, all the way until the end really. Usually parts of a drawing start to come to life and it gives me the motivation to continue, but this piece just refused! I did finish it though and l feel happy with myself if not totally happy with the picture for seeing it through. But l am certainly going to think a little more carefully before starting such a big project again.

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