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The first real post on art in ... well, a while.
For a while I was going great guns with the series from 50 Small Paintings, and was thinking I beat the wall that I usually run into when I try to kick my artist game up to the next level. To be fair to myself, that next level was in sight.
Then I hit number forty-five and ... the engine sputtered, died, and wouldn't start up. The picture is that of an elephant, and it just kind of mocked me. And then I couldn't do it. Then the pandemic hit, and all its psychological centrifugal forces. And just like, that, my habit pancaked and I fell into the hole of too much Candy Crush Saga (we do what we do), too much Facebook posting.
It's a touchy road back, but I started blogging again. Didn't have that much to say, so I made it a sorta-daily photo blog (quite a time to do it, what with Covid-19 reshaping our world). And then, I got out the PBN.
When I started really hitting the freestyle acrylic paintings, I left a last PBN just-started. Isn't It Romantic, a Dimensions Paintworks joint, a fanciful Venetian scene full of saturated color. Well, I didn't have anything but the basic urge left, so I pulled that out, got out the paint pots, and got back to work on it.
It's feeling good, and it's confirming a hypothesis I've long had. It occurred to me that that, like repetitious workouts, when you hit a rocky spot in the road artistically, keeping the motions moving is sometimes enough. I started late on becoming an artist, I wanted to keep going, I need to remain prolific ... but then the old executive dysfunction kicks in and the inertia returns and you just scroll and hit the space bar in social media too much.
Over the last two days, I've been mixing paints out of the PBN kit, filling in numbered and lettered spaces on the card panel, and getting the sheer joy out of just the physical act of painting which, I think, is at least half the thing of it for me. It's pleasant to work, it's pleasant to work on art. It, in and of itself, is a nourishing thing.
So, I'd suggest to anyone like me who's aspiring to an artistic life to have thier own version of paint-by-number for whatever media they're working in: something that just makes them follow instructions but makes them get out the media and work it, just for the sheer somatic joy of creating an artwork even if there's no particular creativity involved in it. Just working the media is bliss, even if a limited sort.
It's the sort of lesson that may have come late, but at least it came to me. I owe it to myself, and certain others, not to quit on myself now, like I have so very often before. Some motion is better than no motion, and doing something half-assed is better than not doing it at all.
And I'm thinking I can do that elephant painting, maybe this other brush I had here will do the trick.
I'll keep y'all posted.
For a while I was going great guns with the series from 50 Small Paintings, and was thinking I beat the wall that I usually run into when I try to kick my artist game up to the next level. To be fair to myself, that next level was in sight.
Then I hit number forty-five and ... the engine sputtered, died, and wouldn't start up. The picture is that of an elephant, and it just kind of mocked me. And then I couldn't do it. Then the pandemic hit, and all its psychological centrifugal forces. And just like, that, my habit pancaked and I fell into the hole of too much Candy Crush Saga (we do what we do), too much Facebook posting.
It's a touchy road back, but I started blogging again. Didn't have that much to say, so I made it a sorta-daily photo blog (quite a time to do it, what with Covid-19 reshaping our world). And then, I got out the PBN.
When I started really hitting the freestyle acrylic paintings, I left a last PBN just-started. Isn't It Romantic, a Dimensions Paintworks joint, a fanciful Venetian scene full of saturated color. Well, I didn't have anything but the basic urge left, so I pulled that out, got out the paint pots, and got back to work on it.It's feeling good, and it's confirming a hypothesis I've long had. It occurred to me that that, like repetitious workouts, when you hit a rocky spot in the road artistically, keeping the motions moving is sometimes enough. I started late on becoming an artist, I wanted to keep going, I need to remain prolific ... but then the old executive dysfunction kicks in and the inertia returns and you just scroll and hit the space bar in social media too much.
Over the last two days, I've been mixing paints out of the PBN kit, filling in numbered and lettered spaces on the card panel, and getting the sheer joy out of just the physical act of painting which, I think, is at least half the thing of it for me. It's pleasant to work, it's pleasant to work on art. It, in and of itself, is a nourishing thing.
So, I'd suggest to anyone like me who's aspiring to an artistic life to have thier own version of paint-by-number for whatever media they're working in: something that just makes them follow instructions but makes them get out the media and work it, just for the sheer somatic joy of creating an artwork even if there's no particular creativity involved in it. Just working the media is bliss, even if a limited sort.
It's the sort of lesson that may have come late, but at least it came to me. I owe it to myself, and certain others, not to quit on myself now, like I have so very often before. Some motion is better than no motion, and doing something half-assed is better than not doing it at all.
And I'm thinking I can do that elephant painting, maybe this other brush I had here will do the trick.
I'll keep y'all posted.
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