Beginning Painting - a red hot mess

This is the story of an abstract painting. It's drying on my wall (an oil painting takes almost a year to dry completely). I don't like looking at it, but making it was interesting.

collage (canvas, glue-stick, magazine paper):

you're looking at a blue umbrella, lots of drapery, tan bulletin boards, a tea towel with a blue center, and a table corner at the very bottom.

The painting (way below) began as a magazine collage from life. The tableau was at least 15 feet wide. The model was a weird clown. He irritated me. That's a giant red wig on his head, and . . . I don't feel like cataloging the rest of his outfit. You get the general idea. We quickly sketched him on newsprint, drew the best one on a large canvas board, and then colored it by filling in the shapes with cut-up magazines to match the real textures and colors. We had several days with the model, but my collage is unfinished because it took me forever to find the exact colors. Our teacher wouldn't let me slide by on the colored swatches I first thought might be close enough. I thought I would go nuts and I did, a little, trying to match the tinted shadows of the main white drapery, and matching the reds? I hate matching up reds! A very, very tiny part of me enjoys matching up reds.

I wouldn't have been so careful had I realized: 1) it didn't really matter 2) I wouldn't finish before the tableau was disassembled and the model went home 3) just because the colors and shapes are accurate doesn't mean the collage will look good 4) sometime very soon I will strip the canvas board clean, recycle the paper and re-use the canvas.

When that was finished, we cropped out a section of the collage to use as the object or beginning sketch for a painting.
I really liked the tea towel section on the far right and was trying to work out a crop there, but my teacher didn't think my sample crops over there were really working. I can now admit it's possible I was drawn more to "blue!" than by other considerations. She saved me from ending up with a big oil painting of beige and blue triangles--geez.

Here's the little crop, followed by the painted version:

They were supposed to turn out non-representational/abstract, but mine leans toward a more literal representation. daaaang it.

On the final crit day where I had it hanging 'landscape orientation' (sideways?), as I had painted it, Ms Meyer said it still looked like a portrait, or a sideways or upside-down portrait. I'd rather not own a portrait of a red-wigged, orange-egg-headed clown without facial features, much less advertise myself as its creator, but here I am.
One painting free to a good home.
Once it dries, I'll probably paint it white and recycle the canvas. The canvas had been whitewashed once already--I reused an somebody else's orphan painting from the back of the art closet.