Dreams
“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas. They’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.” – Emily Bronte
Category: Newsletter
An Artist’s Challenges
It’s wonderful to be following your dream and doing what you are passionate about – in my case, painting. Yet there are challenges to being an artist by profession that may not be obvious at first glance. For example, painting is a high energy activity for me. I keep the brush moving, and I think hard! Much as I love it, painting is not something that I tend to do when tired. So I need to plan my best time of day to do my painting. Other issues are common with those who are self employed. Such as – it’s hard to find a balance with work time and family and friend time. Still, there’s so much to be thankful for – a job I love passionately, and supportive family and friends who understand the unusual hours I sometimes keep. What about you other artists out there – what are your challenges?
Edges
One of the key elements in any painting is the type of edges employed within the image. A variety of soft and harder edges give a painting life and depth. Soft and lost edges add mystery and let the eye move through. Hard edges stop the eye and say ‘this area is important – pay more attention to this’. Artistic license is frequently taken with where the softer edges are applied. The painter may decide very differently than the camera does, depending what they wish to emphasize. Oil painters have the advantage on this one – with slower drying time, edges are more easily softened.
Do What You Love
How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love – by Maria Popova This is a bit of a longer read, but lots of interesting ideas are presented. The video on this page is pretty good too – although it’s 16 minutes long, so if you don’t have time for that, I recommend just reading the article. Any artistic soul will be touched by something in this article, and likely several things.
Kinetic Rain
Here’s a beautiful art installation at an airport in Singapore.
After Breakfast?
Did you know that if you say to yourself “Saturday after breakfast I’m going to go and paint.” you are way more likely to do it than if you just say, “I want to paint sometime this weekend.” Giving it a time and place in your imagination makes what is called an “Action Trigger”, and people tend to follow through on those. I just finished reading a fascinating book called, “Switch – How to Change Things When Change is Hard” by Chip & Dan Heath. I learned a lot about what motivates people to change. I recommend the book if you are curious about people’s behaviour. Lots of interesting studies with surprising results. I found a number of suggestions that I want to apply to myself too! Here’s a brief excerpt from the chapter ‘Rally the Herd’ – and I think it will make you smile. –
“In ambiguous situations, we all look to others for cues about how to behave. Maybe you’ve had the experience of scanning the table frantically at a fancy dinner, trying to figure out which fork is for dessert. (If you haven’t had that experience, we hope you know your forks, because the rest of us copied you.)” –
Painting Saturday after breakfast sounds good to me! How about you?
Creative Restrictions
It may seem like an oxymoron to you, the idea of creative restrictions, but it’s actually not. The imagination, to be at full power, seems to require some parameters or restrictions. For example: if I tell a class of art students to paint anything at all on their blank canvas, the results are not as interesting or dynamic as when some sort of guidelines are given. These restrictions can be as simple as: use only 2 colours, or express in paint the emotion of joy. These minimal parameters become a spark to the fuel of creativity. Of course too many restrictions are not good either. Like too much salt, they can spoil the creative stew too. What kind of restrictions spark your creative mode?
Nude
Then there was the fellow who wanted to know if I would paint his wife nude. He was quite persistent, even though I had said no thank you a couple of times to this particular commission. “No”, he said, “but will you paint my wife nude?” Finally I said, “I think I’d be way to cold.” He didn’t get it.
Paintings On the Go
I currently have 4 paintings on the go, and I love working this way! It means that when I need a rest from one painting, an incubation period, I can move to the next and keep on painting. This method has been with me since I first started to learn to paint. At that time, I was working primarily in watercolour, and moving to the next painting helped me let each one dry before painting the next layer, and not overwork it. Today, I’m using a lot of different acrylic mediums that also require significant drying time. Having multiple paintings on the go is such a part of me that if it’s ever down to just 1 painting in progress, I will suddenly notice that I’m not going to the studio as frequently! How about you? Do you like having several painting on the go at once?
Time
There is something excellent to be said about being in the moment. Certainly for many folks, the creative mode is the best way to be fully alive and in the ‘now’. Hopefully we have learned something from the past, but not in a way that we are afraid of new adventures. Hopefully we look forward to the future, but not so much that we can’t appreciate the wonder we are surrounded with right now. All you really have to live is today – and there’s freedom in that thought! Hope yours is a glad life, one day at a time.