So, the other day, I got this bright idea. Yeah, one of those. I was looking at some of Paul Cézanne's landscape paintings, you know, Mont Sainte-Victoire and all that, and I thought to myself, "Hey, I could give that a shot!" Seemed straightforward enough, right? Blocks of color, a bit fuzzy. How hard could it be? Famous last words, let me tell you.
First off, I dug out my old paints. Most of them were half-dried, of course. Typical. Managed to salvage a few tubes – some blues, greens, ochres. Grabbed a cheap canvas board I had lying around. Didn't want to waste good material on what I secretly suspected might be a disaster. Preparation, people, is key, even if it's preparing for failure.
I pulled up a few of his paintings on my tablet. Stared at them. Okay, those little square-ish brushstrokes. He called it "constructing" with color, or something fancy like that. I thought, "Alright, little squares, I can do little squares." So I started dabbing. My first attempt looked less like Cézanne and more like a pixelated mess someone had sneezed on. Seriously. The colors were all wrong too. His greens aren't just green; they're like, fifty shades of green mixed with blue and yellow and who knows what else.
Then there's the perspective. Or lack thereof, in some places. Or rather, his perspective. It's like he looked at a mountain and said, "You know what? I'm gonna make you tilt a bit. And that tree? It's gonna lean right into you, even if in real life it's a hundred yards away." Trying to get that deliberate wonkiness without it just looking like I couldn't draw a straight line was a nightmare. My brain kept trying to "correct" it.
This whole attempt, honestly, it was me trying to get away from things. I'd just massively messed up a big project at my old job – totally misread the client, the whole nine yards. Got a proper dressing down for it, felt about two inches tall. So, I thought, "Right, I need a win, or at least a distraction where nobody's career is on the line." And there was Cézanne, looking all peaceful on my screen. "Constructive," he called it. I needed some construction in my life, even if it was just with paint.
- My first real go: Looked like mud. Just plain old mud.
- Second attempt: A bit less muddy, but the trees resembled green lollipops. Definitely not Cézanne.
- Third serious try: I actually got a tiny patch, maybe two square inches, that felt vaguely right! Then, naturally, I overdid it and lost it.
It’s funny, trying to force those little blocks of color into something sensible felt a lot like trying to salvage that doomed project I mentioned. Pushing things around, hoping they’d magically click. Except with the painting, the only thing at stake was a cheap canvas and some already old paints. The pressure was off, but the frustration? Oh, that was familiar. It’s like that time I tried to teach my uncle, bless his heart, how to use video calls. Hours of patient explanation, demonstrating, and he still ended up just shouting at the screen, thinking it was voice-activated. Some things, you just can't force, whether it's an old dog learning new tech or me trying to channel a post-impressionist master after a career faceplant.
You see these paintings in museums, all calm and collected. But trying to do it? It's a real wrestling match. Every single brushstroke feels like a massive decision. What color? What shape? How does it sit next to the other fifty brushstrokes you just painfully put down? He was apparently a pretty grumpy, solitary guy, Cézanne. After this little experiment, I think I get why. He was probably just fed up with his paints and canvases half the time, or people not getting what he was trying to do.
I spent a good few hours, spread over a couple of days, on this. My supposed "masterpiece" ended up looking like something a well-meaning but slightly confused robot might produce. But, you know what? I kind of get his stuff a bit more now. It's not just about what he painted, but how he was trying to see things, how he broke them down into these planes of color. It’s like he was trying to show you the underlying structure of the landscape, not just its pretty surface.
So, did I manage to paint like Cézanne? Absolutely not. Not even in the same galaxy. But I did learn that things that look simple on the surface are often devilishly tricky underneath. And I have a massive new respect for old Paul. My canvas is now tucked away in the back of a cupboard, where it can't stare back at me judgmentally. Maybe I'll stick to just admiring his work in books and galleries from now on. Or, who knows, maybe I'll drag that canvas out again when I'm feeling particularly stubborn. Or just need another dose of humility.
