Painting - Holding the Brush
I was working with a student today and we were doing a painting together. She has a good eye and is good with color so her painting resembled mine except in one important way.
Her brush strokes were all swishy and going the same direction. I said to her " hey look at your strokes, they're boring".
Often this is the biggest giveaway that a painting is the work of an armature artist but it's easy to avoid.
For one don't paint like a robot, you're not a human inkjet printer, your a human being and you should paint the way you feel. Not mechanically.
Also, stop and hold that brush another way. Change it up. Don't lick at the painting with it like a kitty cleaning itself. Use every part of the brush to create strokes.
Cheers,
A bit about "Moonlit Meadow" I'm trying to do a "blue" painting here. Not sure I succeeded at my goal but I find this painting pleasant anyway. It went through a major revision although I've no photo of the original state.
It was blue also but the sky in the original was doing nothing special. This was another case of something that looked good in my reference photo but was too subtle and blah when painted.
And it was too subtle, as I'd resorted to rice grain like strokes in the sky in my effort to get the desired effect.
Also bothersome; the main bunch of trees was topped by a point, something that I found challenging visually. I was never happy with it and walked by day after day gritting my teeth a bit in displeasure.
Until one day it made it's way back onto my easel.
I'm actually fairly happy with this piece now. I redid the sky with one that had a hidden moon element that created strong light in the clouds and more contrast overall. I reconfigured the trees a bit and softened their edges. I also amped up the pink and aqua tones on the ground as well as pumping up the highlights on the stream.
"Moonlit Meadow" can be viewed live at my studio in the Quarry Arts Center in Whangarei New Zealand
Dark Night of the Soul
It happens to all of us as we journey deep into the realms of art or spirituality at some point. Heck it could happen on a daily basis for some.
What is a dark night of the soul?
It is when you feel lost in the dark. When you think you may not be going the right way with your art or life. It is a lapse in faith and a questioning of judgement. In short, it sucks, it's a bad time.
It happens to me. As a young man I'd say it happened a few times that lasted for months on end. These days it happens to me in sporadic bursts that I have to ride out.
Is it just depression?
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| "Clearing Up" (8x8) by M Francis McCarthy |
Is it just depression?
Maybe, but it's probably much more than that.
It's a necessary readjustment of the self at a core level. All things change as they progress from their beginnings to their end. We must change when it's time as well.
Not one thing in this universe is stationary for very long. Even seemingly permanent rocks when viewed through an electron microscope are hives of energy disguised as solid mass.
What can you do when you feel lost and unsure of your path through the darkness?
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| "Clearing Up" (5x5) by M Francis McCarthy |
What can you do when you feel lost and unsure of your path through the darkness?
I believe it's best to stay your current course in those tough times while absorbing and contemplating the shock of being unsure.
All the meaning that's felt by you in this life has been created within yourself, by you. Others may feel as you do about any perceived meaningful thing, but you cannot appreciate the meaning in anything without first opening your heart and mind to it and accepting that it may indeed be meaningful.
How does this bear on our topic today?
Simple, You have picked an apparently meaningful occupation and you have given it your attention. If you're despairing because things have gotten a bit sticky now, it's probably best to just see the hard time to it's natural conclusion.
If you jump ship in a search for something else while experiencing the dark night, most likely you will fail in your next endeavour also.
Better to keep your head down and keep working until the light starts to break on the horizon and you come into a new day filled with the light of understanding.
A bit about today's painting: "Clearing Up". Really, another sky painting. I never tire of painting clouds. I've considered doing paintings with nothing but clouds and no landscape but somehow I can't see it working.
"Clearing Up" was painted last year and is part of the series I embarked on early in 2012. I'm closing in on finishing that series in the next few months. It's been a lot of work and I've certainly had a bit of a dark night of late as it seems to be dragging on and I have other paintings I want to do. No worries though I'll persevere...
Cheer,
Art and Imortality
Why do you create art? What is the reason? Is it to impress girls or for some chance at fame? Money? Therapy? Recognition from your peers? What is it?
We all must have our own answer to that question. One answer is all of the above. But that doesn't seem to address the deepest cravings of artists to create, to communicate and relate.
In many cases all we have of our ancestors besides their DNA is their art. It reaches to us across the millennia and connects us to the minds, thoughts and feeling of those who lived before.
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| Yuzex by M Francis McCarthy |
In a sense this has rendered those who created art from the past immortal. Or, at least their thoughts, ideas and visions have attained that state.
What is it in us that causes this drive to interact with the future? To leave something of ourselves behind that will last? What drove those ancestors of ours to do the same?
My personal answer to these questions is: Yes I want to leave a bit of something behind. Something good. Something that will be worth keeping around by people living in the future I can only dream about. I'm not obsessively fixated by these ideas. But, these things do cross my mind.
Being a working artist/hired gun for those thirteen years, I was often engaged in creating the temporary, the ephemeral. I know many other commercial artists that must do the same everyday.
It's hard to create something great only to see it discarded later. Not that there's anything wrong with artists who set out with that intent. Go ahead and build sand castles or hire your art gun to the highest bidder. Nothing wrong with it. But...
It's a fact that we are all here for a time, then we aren't. One can deny it, make light of it or ignore it but the wise person realizes that their life is an expression of the infinite and that every moment of it is sacred.
Life cannot be denied and art is the ultimate expression of creation. Every artist creates and communicates what their time was like. What their feelings were. What they saw or wanted to see and what they believed in. Cheers.