Looking Back - Looking Forward

Looking Back...

Another year has wound down, and I have dawdled until its final hours to begin writing this, better to see the year in its last, waning light. Reviewing my year's work, I have added 60 new images (paintings/ drawings), and 22 articles to my website. That is the visible extent of my work for the year, and in my line of work, if you can't see it, it isn't there.

That does not seem like a whole lot of work, and I was a little disappointed, when I stopped and counted it, just a few minutes ago, for the first time... 12 drawing, 34 watercolours, and 14 oil paintings, and about 2 dozen essays. Back when I was refinishing furniture, a year's work was measured in truckloads...BIG truckloads. With this year's work fitting into a portfolio that can sit comfortably on a card table, it is enough to give someone like myself, who grew up steeped in the American work ethic, and the notions that 'bigger' and 'more' are better, pause.

I began painting in January 1996, so I have been painting for six years now. When I pause as I am doing now, and take a look at the entire year's output seen as a whole, and then compare it with previous years' work, I look more at process, than product. I can see that my learning curve is beginning to level off, at least where the physical, mechanical skills are concerned. I figure this to be about normal for a learning curve in its sixth year, but I can really only guess, at what other people's experiences are.

This seeming lack of knowledge (at least I haven't been able to find much) as to the timeline of progress painters make, is part of what prompts me to write this down. I figure that if I am curious about how long it takes other painters to progress, their yearly output figures, etc., maybe there are others out there who are equally curious. The other thing that prompts me to write it down, is so that I will have something to refer back to myself, years from now, for comparison purposes with what I am doing then. I have learned that my memory is a leaky and imprecise vessel. Heh.

Where fundamental artistic concerns are concerned (colour, composition, psychological and emotional inputs, etc., it is very difficult to gauge personal progress, because one's work is so much a function of self, that a detached view is impossible. I feel like I am on the right track, to the degree that I would not consider tampering with my direction at the prompting of any other individual, but still remain flexible enough to not reject any outside influence out of hand.

To sum up what I think are the most important things that I have learned this year (and in years passed) requires no more than a short list. These things work for me, which is not the same as saying that they will work for every (or any) body else. Pick and choose as you please:

1. Allow 'choice of subject' to take care of itself without a lot of conscious pondering. 'Subject' doesn't seem to have as much to do with "subject" as emotional state of mind during execution does, in my experience. People like to believe that their actions are premeditated by their conscious decision, but I do not believe that this is necessarily the case, especially where a non-verbal, non-language act like painting is concerned.
   
   
2. Paint some pictures fast, others slow, and others slow, and then quickly at the end, or quickly at the start, and carefully at the end. Variations in speed generally play out as variations in precision. The same subject, a) painted with calculating precision all the way through, then b) begun with a quick freehand sketch, and finished with greater and greater care as it approaches completion, and then c) begun with precision, and completed with an increasing spontaneity, will produce very different results.
   
   
3. Paint and draw with both hands. If you can type with both hands, it shouldn't be more of a difficulty than learning to type. Sometimes your hands can have entirely different things to say, about the same line.
   
   
4. Where colour is concerned, less is more. If a painting won't work in black and white, colour is not going to save it... but too much colour may very well kill it. A small amount of colour, well placed, can be more effective than colour-overkill, which just dulls the senses.
   
   
5. Composition is everything. It's a good idea to give books on composition a read, just to see what they have to say, but in its everyday use, it is pretty nearly impossible to deliberately use what you learn in the books, in paintings. Composition is like juggling, in that after a lot of practice, one becomes really good at it, and if one stops to try an analyse it, the elements one is juggling, all go crashing to the ground.
   
   
6. If you take any small patch of a highly realistic painting, and look at it up close, it is a non-representational abstraction. Conversely, every abstract painting if shrunken down in size, could rest comfortably in a realistic, representational painting. It's all a matter of scale.
   
   
7. Paint every day, and as soon as one painting is finished, begin the next one with a quick layout sketch, so that there is never a blank canvas waiting for you in the morning.
   
   
8. Paint in oil, alkyd, acrylic, gouache, watercolour, and ink, at least. In dry media, work in multiple media as well. Switch medium regularly.
   
   
9. Paint people, places, and things... and animals, too. I was afraid to paint birds and animals for a long time, or, more correctly, I was afraid to paint feathers and fur. Now I am less afraid of painting birds and animals, but still would not attempt to paint feathers and fur.
   
   
10. When you get to the place in your painting where all it needs to be 'perfect' are a few more little touches and corrections... stop. The painting is finished.
    
    
11. If you need to write a long and involved essay to explain what your painting is all about... don't.
    
    
12. Treat your audience respectfully.
    
    
13. Take painting seriously... but never the painter!
    
    

Looking Forward...

In 2003, I plan on continuing along the same lines I have been pursuing, with two new additions:

1. I have purchased a drawing tablet and stylus for my computer, so I can draw directly into the computer. Also, I have purchased Paint Shop Pro. I want to investigate some of the possibilities inherent in the computer, where the lines blur, between what is drawn with the hand, with other computer tools, and input with the digital camera.
   
   
2. I also do some programming in C/C++ and ASM, and want to investigate the possibilities inherent in the programming of images, particularly fractals.
   
   

Well, the last light of the year has faded, and I am finished with my work, for 2001... and ready to get started bright and early tomorrow morning.

Many thanks to you... all of my readers, and a Happy and prosperous New Year!

Home